Business Bunker Radio
Channel Radio

01233 220 035

on Air

07392 508 726

off Air

Customer Brands

How to turn your customers into investors and brand evangelists

By John Auckland, TribeFirst

 

I’m going to make a bold claim. The very idea of consumerism is dying. Replacing it will be deeper relationships between people and brands, born of closer bonds and greater interaction not simply transactions. Let’s call these people ‘post-consumers’. 

Post-consumerism will be driven by younger Millennials and Generation Z, those growing up now. Post-consumers will take great offence at the idea that they might be taking more than they give. They will make eco-friendly buying decisions, demand to know the supply chain provenance of their food and their clothes and reject unsustainable practices such as planned obsolescence. They will be, stakeholders rather than customers, tribes rather than crowds. Post-consumers will trust the word of influencers and friends, shunning marketing and advertising. It’s a paradigm in which churn rate is a significantly more relevant statistic than cost per acquisition.  

So how do company directors embrace the post-consumerist world? What can they do to appeal to their future socially conscious audience?

A community brand

First and foremost, the brands of the future will be communities, and to be more specific, tribes. My favourite community-focused brands include GiffGaff and Monzo. They have built democratisation into their marketing strategies by involving their customers in major decisions.

GiffGaff has used its customers to write, direct and appear in its TV ads, and the company provides discounts and rewards in return for providing customer service support. In doing so, GiffGaff has essentially crowdsourced their business model, building one of the UK’s major mobile companies with only a handful of true employees. I remember hearing a talk from their CMO, who essentially, said that the company doesn’t own its own brand, it’s just looking after it. They’ve built their brand from an ethos of their customers being the true owners. 

In many respects Monzo, the challenger bank, has taken this a step further, by opening up a number of crowdfunding rounds specifically for their customers, allowing them to become part owners in the brand. They also involve their community in every major decision they make, such as changing their name and choosing what parts of their service they should charge fees on. As such, they have democratised their decision-making.

Brands like this are leading the way, but I predict this will become the norm after the death of the consumer. 

Turn customers into investors

One in 10 of us has invested in small UK private companies through equity crowdfunding, and this number is growing. It’s also becoming more common for growth companies and medium enterprises to offer shares to their customers. Big tech companies are riding high on the stock exchange, offering their shares via public exchanges far sooner than many historical corporations could have dreamed of. Challenger stock brokers such as Freetrade are being supported by retailer investor insight platforms like Genuine Impact, allowing DIY investors to make informed and instant decisions about which investments they make. It’s easier than ever for customers to own a slice of their favourite brands, so they can be financially rewarded for their faith and loyalty.

If you’re a startup or growth company, the best way to get your customers to invest is through an equity crowdfunding campaign. If you have no idea where to start, there are a whole host of crowdfunding support partners and workshop programmes out there to take you through the process, which will also increase your chances of a successful campaign. Check out Virgin StartUp’s Crowdboost, Crowdcube and Grant Thornton’s Crowdfund Bootcamp or TribeFirst, where we offer a managed service to help companies raise.

If you’d rather just sell shares direct to your customers rather than run a public campaign, then you can either facilitate this through SeedLegals, or we recommend setting up your own fully licenced, FSA-compliant platform on Envestry. 

Investment 365 days a year

Obviously as a crowdfunding expert I am a huge proponent of equity crowdfunding. However, I do find it quite limiting for companies that wish to be always-open to investment from their customers. You could list your company on a small cap public exchange like AIM or NEX Exchange, but that means a lot of additional cost and admin that comes with being a public company. BrewDog solved this problem by running multiple concurrent campaigns across rewards and equity platforms; they built crowdfunding into their DNA. But that’s a lot of effort.

However, there is an easier way to allow your customers to invest at any stage. One of the reasons I’m a big fan of Envestry’s white label solution is that it allows a company to be ‘always on’ for investment. No time limited campaigns, just an ability for any brand to be available for their tribe to invest whenever they feel the relationship has reached that stage. 

Incentivise customers with soft dividends

Somewhat counterintuitively, most equity crowdfunding investors aren’t expecting to see a return on their investment. They want to be rewarded in experiences and ‘stuff’. The Financial Times recently ran a feature on crowdfunders searching for the next Facebook or Apple, and they concluded that most investors expected to lose their money. If they win, they win big, however that’s not the primary incentive. Feeling part of something was more of a driver.

This can be evidenced with Crowdcube alumni Wool and the Gang, where investors were given the option of receiving store credit or their original investment returned. Most crowdfunding investors opted to receive the credit. 

So, if you do decide to sell shares to your customers, take into consideration that perhaps the post-consumer will want to receive ‘soft dividends’ (exclusive stuff/ insider knowledge/ experiences) instead of just a financial return. 

Provide the tools for impressing their mates

Reward your investors and best customers with exclusive merchandise or early access. Monzo built the fastest growing bank in history by simply giving their early adopters and investors a Golden Ticket that allowed them to jump the queue in getting a zero commission/ fees pre-payment card that they could use abroad. Then when they ran a crowdfunding round, they gave their investors a sense of status by providing them with an exclusive ‘investor’ debit card. Sometimes the gestures don’t even need to be grand or expensive. But ultimately a post-consumer wants to be able to tell their mates they were part of something. By giving them the tools to brag, you’re enabling a culture of word of mouth, authentic marketing, which is pretty much the only kind of marketing that will be trusted in a post-consumer age. 

Finally, communicate with your customers regularly, not just about the good stuff – also be transparent about the bad stuff. Whether they’ve invested in your company or not, post-consumers will buy into a brand’s stories on social media or through the brand’s advocates, even more so than they do today. Communicate openly to create a transparent culture that engenders trust, and that also, importantly, deepens your relationship. This is what the post-consumer will expect, so you might as well get going. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Auckland is a crowdfunding specialist and founder of TribeFirst, a global equity crowdfunding communications agency that has helped raise in excess of £17m for over 50 companies on major equity crowdfunding platforms, with a greater than 90% success rate. John is also Virgin StartUp’s crowdfunding trainer and consultant, helping them to run branded workshops, webinars and programmes on crowdfunding. 

See: http://www.tribefirst.co.uk

Twitter: @Tribe1st