Use Video to Get Customer Feedback

I'm not sure how radical an idea this is, but I'm going to propose an interesting marketing and marketing research strategy that will generate testimonials, promote your product and it's features and benefits AND give you some interesting feedback.

VIDEO IS HOT HOT HOT for 2011

According to a Nielsen report put out by Cisco, by 2013, 90% of allweb traffic will be video!

YouTube is the second largest search engine!

Nielsen says that 13 million people watch more than 3 hours of video on their mobile phone!

This data is NOT to be ignored as you budget your time and money for your marketing plan.

If you're NOT using video in the next year - your organization will not be found by it's prospects, your customers will basically see you as behind the times and you will MISS OUT.

Now that I have your attention - HOW TO USE VIDEO

There are really 3 basic ways to use video:

1. To demonstrate


2. To Educate


3. To entertain

Now you can make this a one way message and do each of these things or a combination of these things and be successful.  But WHAT IF -- you turned this puppy upside down and asked your customers to send you feedback via video.

Organizations have been doing this for years now - but it's never been so easy to do as it is today.

Take another look at your survey or research objectives and see how you can turn those around and instead of asking customers to answer surveys - give them the opportunity to literally show you what you want to know.

Domino's pizza is doing exactly this.  They made a strategic decision to interact with their audience.  It started when they shared their dismal focus group results.  Then they took that a step further and tracked those participants down and gave them a new and improved product.  Finally, they ditched the professional photographers and got customers to send in their pictures.  The latest installment includes a not-so-good picture of a squished pizza. They took this feedback and did something about it.

You don't have to be Domino's with a multi-million dollar budget for marketing and research - but you do have to take a few moments to stop and think about your objectives and how you will collect the information you're looking for.

Once you've done that - the last step is to integrate the research function with the feedback function.  Don't do research and throw data over the wall.  Get the research folks to talk to the marketing folks.  Brainstorm ideas and interact and talk with your customers.

This not only makes for visceral feedback experiences for everyone - but it can be a lot of fun.