How To Turn Customers Into Brand Ambassadors

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you want to turn customers into brand ambassadors, you must get them engaged with your brand. How do you do that? Events, promotions, and conversation. There are tons of examples of how to do this with events throughout the blog, so today I’m going to focus on promotions in the latest case study example from Zengo Cycle‘s 5th anniversary celebration.

The franchise of Washington, D.C.-area spinning studios has expanded to five studios (Bethesda, Logan Circle, Mosaic District, Kentlands and Cathedral Commons) in just five years and is commemorating it this week with a different promotion every day for, you guessed it, five days. By having a different promotion or engagement opportunity each day, there is an innate sense of urgency for customers to participate.

Here’s the breakdown of the schedule:

Monday: A promo code activated at 5 p.m. provided a more than 75% discount on a single ride credit, taking the cost down from $22 to about $5 per class. How they created urgency: only 200 credits would be available.

Tuesday: Zengo posed trivia questions on its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts throughout the day. Correct answers earned a chance to win free class credits.

Wednesday: All riders got a free, Zengo-branded towel. Talk about “putting butts on bikes” (see photo), the Cathedral Common’s location along experienced more than doubled the attendance in its early morning classes.

Thursday: All studios sold limited-edition anniversary t-shirts with the campaign’s slogan “Proudly Putting Butts on Bikes Since 2011”. While the studio always sells branded merchandise, the limited edition design and steep discount got more people walking around the region in Zengo-branded items.

Friday: Each studio offered a single $5 ride for its off-peak rides at 9:30, 10:00 or 10:30 a.m. classes. Results: Classes nearly sold out in most studios (as of publishing).

It may require an investment up front (i.e. cost of swag or promotion value) but the response you get in return more than makes up for your investment. Need more convincing: I started as a rider three years ago and now am a proud brand advocate and ambassador.