• Involving customers is the opposite of the traditional marketing practice of reaching customers. 
• It helps build strong relationships with existing customers and use them to acquire new customers. 

The “Involve Your Customers” marketing strategy focuses on a customer-centric approach and goes beyond the scope of traditional marketing. The strategy is more than just pushing the marketing message at potential customers; it works by involving them to be an active part of the marketing process.

The core of this strategy is to shift the focus from acquiring new customers to building strong customer relationships. Furthermore, it delves into providing educational content, self-service tools, and opportunities for customers to share feedback and ideas. Brands can showcase customer success stories, incentivize referrals, and involve customers in the product development process. 

When a brand incorporates this marketing strategy, customers feel valued, informed, and heard, leading to a comprehensive and positive brand experience. At the same time, marketers can gain valuable insights, customers can become loyal brand advocates, and all this might boost sales and brand awareness. 

Here’s How Lego Successfully Used the “Involve Your Customers” Marketing Strategy

Lego is the world-famous line of interlocking plastic construction toy manufacturers and is a prime example of how a brand can succeed by involving its customers. Here’s how they incorporated this strategy into their business module.

The “Lego Ideas Platform” is the crown jewel of Lego’s customer involvement strategy. It facilitates fans to submit their ideas, enthusiasts can submit their creative set ideas with detailed descriptions, pictures and videos, and the toy manufacturers gain fresh ideas. 

Other Lego fans would then browse these ideas and vote for them. Ideas with the most votes would become official sets. This not only limits the pressure on creative teams but provides them with fresh ideas. It also helps foster a sense of community and allows the brand to gauge genuine customer interest in potential products. 

Lego then examines and reviews the top-voted ideas based on predefined criteria like originality, play value, and brand alignment. Suppose an idea gets enough votes and passes the preview test; it becomes an official set, where the originator receives credit and royalties, thereby further incentivizing fan participation. 

Benefits for Lego

By incorporating this marketing strategy, Lego gains multiple benefits. They get direct customer input, valuable insights on the kinds of sets customers want, and reduced risk of developing a product that might not resonate with the target audience. 

This constant flow of information in the form of fan ideas keeps Lego’s product line fresh and exciting for the consumers. It allows the brand to tap into trends and cater to specific needs of niche interests within its vast fanbase. When fans witness their ideas come to life, it helps foster a deep connection with the brand, making them brand advocates to promote Lego in their circles.  

The Strategy Goes Beyond Ideas.

Interestingly, Lego continues beyond the ideation phase and goes beyond its scope. The Lego Ambassador Program identifies fans’ passions and empowers them to represent the brand at events, workshops, and online communities, further enhancing audience engagement. 

The toy manufacturer is active on social media platforms like Instagram, X.com (Twitter), and Facebook. On these platforms, they run contests and challenges encouraging fans to showcase their intricate Lego creations using specific hashtags. This User-generated Content (UGC) is then promoted on various channels, further enhancing brand engagement. 

The Lego Life App is a dedicated platform for the younger demographic. It allows users to share photos and videos of their builds, follow other builders, and actively participate in various interactive challenges. This helps the brand foster a sense of community and keeps these younger fans engaged with the brand. 

In conclusion, Lego successfully built a loyal, engaged, enthusiastic customer base. By incorporating the “Involve Your Customers” marketing strategy, they positioned themselves as more than just toy manufacturers. They catapulted them as a platform for creativity and self-expression, where fans feel valued and involved in the brand’s future. 

What is the “Involve the Customer” Marketing Strategy? 

The “Involve the Customer” marketing strategy intelligently flips the traditional marketing approach, which focuses on attracting new customers. This strategy focuses on engaging and empowering the existing customers, creating a loyal fanbase and making them brand advocates. Proper implementation of this strategy can boost sales and customer engagement.

Building Strong Customer Relationships and Empowering Customers

This strategy’s foundation is honesty in knowing and understanding the existing customer base. Marketers should focus on conducting surveys, gathering valuable feedback, and analyzing purchase history to understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. Customers can also be segmented according to their characteristics and tailored marketing messages accordingly. This makes them feel valued, fostering stronger relationships. 

Providing valuable content like tutorials, webinars, and blog posts could educate customers on how to get the most out of the product or service. This helps position the brand as a thought leader, building trust. It also equips customers with self-service tools like FAQs, knowledge bases, and online communities, empowering them to find solutions independently and improving the overall experience. 

Leveraging the Customer Power

Understanding and leveraging the customer’s power is the core of this strategy. Marketers can showcase success stories regarding how a particular product or service helped them. It provides compelling social proof, builds trust, and inspires potential new customers. 

Incorporating this procedure can turn happy customers into brand advocates, as it incentivizes them to refer new customers and promote the brand on social media platforms. By actively soliciting customer feedback through surveys and contests, you can involve customers in product development and brainstorming new features. 

These valuable insights help improve the product and foster a sense of community. Marketers gain increased customer retention by addressing the audience’s needs; it enhances brand advocacy as customers feel empowered and valued for their input. Customer feedback helps identify areas for improvement and create products that resonate with the niche while significantly reducing marketing costs. 

Pros and Cons of “Involve Your Customers” Marketing Strategy

Like every other marketing strategy, this “Involve Your Customers” strategy has pros and cons, as discussed below. 

Pros

When a brand understands and interacts with customers, it builds trust and loyalty, leading to higher customer retention and stronger customer relationships. Empowering and valuing customers makes them brand advocates who organically promote the products and services through word-of-mouth and social media.

Customer feedback provides invaluable insight into customers’ needs and pain points, allowing brands to create products that seamlessly resonate with target audiences and enhance the scope of product development. It’s a fact that loyal customers require less marketing spend than acquiring new ones. This reduced marketing costs is achieved by positive word-of-mouth recommendations. 

Addressing the customers’ needs and facilitating their involvement in the process allow brands to achieve increased customer satisfaction. Marketers understand the value of User-Generated Content (UGC) as it brings authenticity and trustworthiness, which is tough to reach through traditional marketing messages. 

Cons

Building a strong customer relationship, gathering valuable feedback, and running compelling customer programs require considerable time and effort. Not all feedback is positive or encouraging, and a system must be in place to address negative feedback while avoiding damaging the brand’s reputation.

Although customer involvement creates a sense of ownership, brands must be cautious about the level of influence customers have on decision-making to avoid complications. Not all customers want to be involved, and marketers must respect their decisions. 

Furthermore, coordinating customer involvement programs, especially with a vast customer base, might pose significant logistical challenges. There’s considerable scope for manipulation, and improper incorporation of this strategy can backfire and damage the brand image. 
In conclusion, “Involve Your Customers” is a powerful marketing tool that provides multi-pronged benefits. Marketers must remember that the key here is to make the customers feel valued, empowered, and heard. This could lead to a positive customer experience, increased brand loyalty, and a thriving business.