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In marketing, it is increasingly common to involve the target audience in your product. This can be done through influencers, through apps, or through contests. Below we will discuss the power of activating marketing and provide tips and examples from practice.
The benefits of audience engagement
Actively involving your audience quickly brings benefits. You build customer loyalty when you engage in conversation with your target audience, and people trust content from real users more. 'We from WC-eend recommend WC-eend' does not come across as credible. You also increase your reach when you involve people in your campaign, as they are more likely to share something about themselves or an acquaintance than something from a random person.
Additionally, you get direct input from your audience. You do not need to invest in extra target audience research, but can immediately hear the pros and cons of products.
Forms of engagement
There are countless ways to make your audience part of your brand story. Below is an overview of effective formats, including examples from practice:
1. Your target audience thinks along
A great example of audience engagement is Lay's 'Make the Flavor' campaign from 2010. Lay's allowed people to submit their flavor ideas and chose from no less than 700,000 submissions one winner: Patatje Joppie. 15 years later, this is still one of the best-selling bags in the store.
The campaign greatly helped the popularity of Lay's, as well as the popularity of Joppiesaus. We call this form of marketing crowdsourcing: you ask your audience to share their ideas and come up with new products from that. In this case, Lay's did it doubly: first, they asked for ideas for a new flavor, after which the same consumers were asked which flavors were the tastiest. Now the question is: does it work? Yes. Yes, it works.
2. Use user-generated content (UGC)
People want authenticity. We just talked about WC-eend, recommended by WC-eend, and how that comes across as less credible than reviews. The solution is simple: let customers create their own photos, videos, or stories around your product and encourage them to share those with a specific hashtag. For example, look at Apple's #ShotoniPhone campaign, where users shared their best iPhone photos. The best images appeared in official advertisements. ASOS also used this form to promote clothes, via #AsSeenOnMe. Customers could showcase their outfits, and the photos were used as advertisements. And as inspiration, of course.
This form also includes the countless reviews that some companies proudly display on the homepage of their website. Sometimes this backfires, for example, when the score is low, but also when it is too high: a perfect 5/5 does not come across as credible.
3. Organize creative challenges or contests
Challenge your audience to create content, for example, through a design contest. This was the case with Starbucks' 'White Cup Contest'. Customers who designed a reusable cup had their design featured on a real cup.
Especially among younger audiences (Gen Z, millennials), TikTok challenges or Instagram reels are excellent formats to achieve viral reach.
4. Use polls, surveys, and interactive formats
Engagement is, especially through social media, already achievable on an accessible scale? Interactive polls or quizzes in Instagram Stories increase the likelihood that people will stop and think about your product. For example, let your followers choose between two product names or vote on their favorite designs. This takes little time
5. Set up communities or forums
Bring your customers together in an online environment where they can engage with each other and your brand. This can be in a Facebook group, Discord server, or on your own platform. This is certainly a fantastic way to create loyalty, but it can also help in gathering ideas. LEGO Ideas, for example, is a platform where fans can submit new set designs. Popular ideas are actually produced.
A community not only provides engagement but also valuable feedback and customer insights.
6. Work with ambassadors or superfans
Some customers are so enthusiastic that they will promote on their own. Make this a structured part of your strategy:
- Offer select fans exclusive previews or test products
- Let them create content (for example, videos or reviews)
- Reward them with visibility or incentives
Yes, you can use big influencers for this. But with smaller names, such as micro-influencers, you reach a more specific audience. This works particularly well in sectors where experience is central: fashion, tech, food, and lifestyle.
7. Activist brands: how idealism gains marketing power
Some brands do not just want to involve people or use them to gain attention, but also want to bring about social change. These activist brands use their marketing as a platform for awareness, behavioral change, and concrete action. They explicitly take a stand on issues such as sustainability, inclusivity, or ethics, challenge their audience to participate in impactful initiatives, and connect their brand identity to a higher purpose.
Take Patagonia, which calls on customers to take climate action, donates profits to environmental projects, and encourages repairing clothes instead of buying new ones. They publicly asked: 'Don't buy this jacket', a paradoxical call that went viral and led to more impact.
The Dutch Tony's Chocolonely involves consumers in the fight against modern slavery in the cocoa industry. Through storytelling and QR codes on packaging, the audience is taken along in their mission. The same goes for Ben & Jerry's, which regularly runs campaigns around social justice, encouraging followers to sign petitions, demonstrate, or exert political pressure. They do this quite decisively.
This strategy works particularly well if the mission is authentic and aligns with the audience. But be careful: idealism only sells if it is credible and consistently implemented in policy, products, and communication. Hypocrisy can be stripped away.
How do you approach it strategically?
A successful participatory campaign requires preparation. Follow these steps:
- Determine the goal: Do you want brand awareness? Product input? More followers?
- Choose the right format: Does a creative contest fit better or a practical poll?
- Set clear rules: Especially with submissions or judging, you want transparency.
- Encourage participation: Think of visibility, rewards, or publication of submissions.
Show what you do with the input: Share the results, thank participants, and showcase their contributions.
Activating marketing as a competitive advantage
Brands that take their audience seriously and actively involve them win on multiple fronts: they build trust, create a more relevant offering, and generate self-reinforcing marketing.
Entrepreneurs must dare to let go of some control over promotion, but the reward is great. Just ask yourself: do you prefer people to treat your products indifferently, or do you want them to appreciate them like no other?
