Celebrity endorsements, reviews from important customers & prominent product placement can go a long way to advancing your business’s reputation, but nothing is more successful for promoting your brand than loyal customers who loved their experience.

The Customer Value Journey is about creating an adventure for customers, & the culmination of that experience is the Promote stage, when they become passionate evangelists for your product or service & can’t wait to tell their friends.

But in order to create those brand evangelists, your customers actually have to make it all the way through the Value Journey—which is why it’s crucial to have all 8 stages in place.

The problem most businesses face with marketing is that they focus too heavily on the beginning stages of the Value Journey, channeling all their resources into creating awareness, coming up with ways for leads to subscribe & developing products for them to buy.

Frequently, they forget about how creating loyalty among customers & encouraging them to tell their friends about their products & services is a crucial element of bringing in new customers.

There are many ways to do this. For example, you can offer incentives for customers to refer friends & family, have a contest to see who can refer the most people & give special discounts & new products to frequent buyers.

Regardless, a strategy for creating brand evangelists is vital to making sure that you not only get customers to buy, but get them buying more, more often.

Wag! — The Path To An Army Of Pet Product Brand Evangelists

A great example of a company that does the Customer Value Journey right is Wag!, a dog-walking & pet boarding service. Through humorous, engaging marketing, they are masters at building relationships with customers & their pets & creating a loyal following.

Like any good Customer Value Journey strategy, Wag! creatively & deftly uses each stage to advance customers along the path toward becoming brand evangelists.

It Starts With Awareness

Wag! begins its journey by running Facebook video ads to cold traffic. Video marketing is one of the most valuable tools businesses can use to engage viewers, & Facebook ads are a great place to incorporate it. For one thing, video ads stop social media scrollers dead in their tracks. The movement catches their attention, & if the images are interesting enough, you’ll have an instant audience for sharing your business’s message.

That’s what Wag! did with their ads. In under 10 seconds, the ad shares the benefits of the program by posing the question, “Ever wonder what your dog is up to when you’re out?”

Viewers then have the opportunity to download the app & receive a free dog walk.

The video also makes the benefits of Wag! clear. Customers can choose the distance their dog will be walked at a time that fits with their schedules.

They will also receive notifications with videos & pictures of their dogs during the walk as well as confirmation that the door was locked when the walker leaves.

But the ad campaign doesn’t stop there.

After a few days, Facebook users who viewed the first ad receive a retargeting video ad that shows adorable barking dogs “reviewing” their Wag! experience.

The retargeting ad not only reviews the benefits of the service, but adds that customers get to join a community of dog-lovers who are available all week long for on-demand service.

The Easy Entry Point Offer

No matter how interested customers may be in the free walk that is promised with downloading the app, it’s always possible that life will get in the way or they’ll find some objection that keeps them from taking the offer.

Not with Wag!’s service. After downloading the app, the company adds urgency by adding a 5 minute countdown clock, giving them limited time to claim their first walk.

Scarcity & urgency are powerful tools for creating a need to purchase, & if the offer is enticing enough, they are enough to overcome most objections customers may have to the sale.

In Wag’s case, the timer makes it easier to get subscribers to try the service rather than letting the app gather dust on their phone’s home screen.

Once the first walk is scheduled, the app allows customers to see a map & watch its progress in real time, plus videos of their pet. Not only does this build trust in the company’s walkers, but it builds excitement as they get actual value from the convenience of the service.

The Upsell

The company also uses the app to ease the transition from the Excite stage into the Ascend stage, where customers purchase the core offer & additional products. Wag! has a popup that appears halfway through the walk asking if the customer would like to extend the walk time.

This makes it easy to generate additional profits as well as show customers the convenience of the app.

Leave a Review

At the end of the walk, customers receive a walk “report card,” which the company brilliantly foreshadows in their Facebook ads back when they were building awareness.

The report card tells them the length of the walk, whether the dog took any bathroom breaks & shows that the door was locked when the walker left.

The walker can also leave notes about how the walk went & how the dog enjoyed their time outside.

In exchange, customers can review the walker & provide feedback on the business, which creates a rewarding experience that involves customers in every aspect of the walk, even if they are not physically present for it.

But most importantly…the company’s Value Journey strategy sets customers up for the final stage.

Becoming Brand Evangelists Through Referrals

The final stage in the Value Journey is getting customers to tell other people about you, & the key to Wag!’s strategy is those photos the dog walkers take for pet owners during the walks.

Customers receive the photos as part of their report card. Then, they can share the photos on Instagram & Facebook complete with filters, funny pet    quotes & more.

And when they share the pictures on social media…they also share the company.

Wag! also allows customers to refer people easily with templated text messages that give a week of free walks to new customers.

In a space of minutes, the company takes dog owners from brand new customers to promoters.

What The Wag! Brand Teaches About Brand Evangelists

4The success of this company illustrates how crucial every stage of the Value Journey is for making customers feel excited, appreciated & invested in your brand.

Beginning with the Facebook ads, the brand builds trust through creativity & humor, & builds on it by showing the ease & usability of the app & service.

And it doesn’t stop there. At the end of the experience, customers are given simple, fun ways to share, tell their friends & refer new customers.

So, what’s your brand’s Value Journey like? Want to learn more about how to create a path from strangers to your brand to total brand evangelists?

We made a workbook to help you get started.

The Customer Value Journey Workbook will help you create the blueprint for your customer’s journey & start seeing how to make it work for your business.

Click here to download it now!