No matter where we are in the calendar year, we’re never too far from Get to Know Your Customers Day. The quarterly “holiday” falls on the third Thursday of January, April, July, and October, so it’s good to be prepared. It’s coming sooner than you think!

While it’s always a smart move to know your customers inside and out, Get to Know Your Customers Day is a regular reminder to take stock of what you actually know (and what’s changed). The day first appeared in 2011 when a marketing consultant named Lynn B. Johnson created “Customer Appreciation Month” as a way for brands to better understand their customers. The idea was so popular that it was adopted internationally as the quarterly event businesses celebrate today.

But how should your business leverage this holiday to grow your brand? With businesses everywhere using it to their advantage, you need a few strategies to stand out in the crowd. Here are a few ways you can show your customers some love and better understand them at the same time.

1. Ask Their Advice

No one knows what your customers want better than your customers. You could show your appreciation for them and better your brand by soliciting their opinions on the way you do business.

You can do this in person, through email, on social media…however you connect best with your audience, as long as it’s public-facing. You want people to know you’re doing it, after all. You can be as broad or as specific as you like. Ask questions like:

• How can we serve you better?
• What products or services do you wish we offered?
• What’s something you wish we did differently?
• Do you expect to visit us in the future? How often?
• Are we accessible enough?
• What communication style do you prefer?
• Are you happy with our customer service?

The list of potential questions is endless. Think of it as a form of market research, but on a personal level.

Offer your customers something in return for filling out a survey or questionnaire. Enter them into a drawing for a nice prize or promise them rewards in the future based on the info. You should consider anything that entices them into participating because the better you know your customer’s journey, the better you can reach them.

2. Create a Social Media Campaign

Start a social campaign days (or even weeks) before national Get to Know Your Customers Day. This would be a good way to ask your questions from the strategy above, but your campaign can be anything you need it to be, as long as it helps you know your customers better. You can run a XX Days of Customer Polls campaign, start a contest that ends on the big day, and even post profiles of your biggest fans

Whatever you do on social, use #GetToKnowYourCustomersDay, have a clear CTA, and create attention-grabbing content on all Get to Know Your Customers Day social media posts.

3. Highlight Your Reviews

If you have a public business, chances are you have been reviewed. Whether your products are on Amazon, your locations are on Google, your restaurant is on Yelp, or your profile is on social, people have likely made their thoughts known about your offerings. Now’s the time to put those reviews to work! Highlight thoughtful, funny, positive, or out-of-the-ordinary reviews.

Post screenshots on social media. Print them out and put them on your store’s bulletin board. Record yourself reading them out loud. Showing your client base that you pay attention to reviews shows them that their input matters, and that you’re listening. They’ll be much more likely to share more!

4. Publicly Thank Your Biggest Supporters

Your brand or business probably has some supporters who have stood head and shoulders above others. Now’s the time to recognize them! Publicly thanking your customers shows people that you recognize their value, which in turn makes them want to give you their business.

You can thank them by filming a video and posting it to your socials and website. If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, you can hold an in-store event, too. As long as the word is out that you’re showing gratitude, you’ll look great in the eyes of potential customers. And isn’t that the point?

5. Offer Personalized Deals

There’s no better time than this holiday to kick off a new program designed specifically to show how well you know your customers.

Offer special deals on their birthdays, if they’ll share that info. Offer deals or greetings on various anniversaries, like their wedding, their first transaction with your business, or their dog’s “gotcha day.” Create unique campaigns that seem to target them specifically, for a personalized touch. Use Get to Know Your Customers Day as a reason to solicit this information, and then be sure to follow through.

6. Interview Your Customers

The best way to get to know your customers is to interview them. Whether it’s for a few minutes or more lengthy sessions, one-on-one interviews can yield incredible insights. You can largely stick to business and shopping habits, but if you feel comfortable enough to venture into more personal territory, you can sometimes unearth some useful info (and use that info to create a customer intelligence hub).

If you conduct interviews, make sure to get permission to record audio and video. Customer interviews and on-camera testimonials can be lucrative content for social, email, and your website. And don’t forget to get your interviews transcribed, so that a wider audience can access them. Interview transcriptions also boost your SEO quite a bit!

7. Create Customer Profiles

No matter how you collect your customer data, you can use what you gather to create customer profiles that can be used for various activities and benefits. Add this info to your CRM so that you can easily access each profile and automatically generate messages based on their buying habits, anniversaries, and birthdays, or to let them know about your brand’s events and sales.

Keep in mind that sometimes a customer’s journey takes a left turn, so staying up to date on these profiles can be very helpful. Customer habits change often, and your profiles should follow suit.

8. Have a Customer Appreciation Party

If you have a physical location, celebrate in person! Invite your clients for snacks, deals, special events, and promos. Bill the event as a way to mingle with other like-minded customers. Film parts of the event to make a sizzle reel to share later. Maybe even use this as an opportunity to grab some customer testimonials on camera.

Whatever you film, make sure to transcribe the audio and add captions to the video so that your widest possible audience can find and understand it.

9. Launch a Loyalty Program

This is your client’s day, so what better time to kick off a program that directly benefits them? Whether your business is brick-and-mortar retail or a remote creative service, there’s a way to reward repeat customers. Ask every customer to fill out an info card to determine how best to reward them, and be sure to follow up with their first “reward.”

10. Donate to a Cause

The screaming majority of 25- to 40-year-olds prefer that the brands they support align with their values. If you know your customers well, you can make sure that your brand fits this mold. Celebrate Get to Know Your Customers Day by donating to a nonprofit, charity, or cause that fits into your customers’ values.

This can be a two-pronged attack: announce your contribution today and ask your customers how they’d like you to “celebrate” next time. If they see that you actually followed up and took their advice, they’ll be much more likely to offer repeat business.

11. Follow Up With Customers

This is probably good advice any time of year, but following up on a client’s purchase is a great way to let them know you care about their business and get valuable feedback on your products and services. Use the holiday as a target date to send follow-up messages to a number of your best or most recent customers.

Why It Pays To Get To Know Your Customer Base

It should go without saying that the better you know your customers, the better you’re able to serve them what they’re looking for, whether you offer products, services, content, or anything else. But it goes deeper than that.

Knowing specific details about them and their lives lets you tap into your base in a way that will really resonate with them. Hit them where they live, so to speak. Here are a few ways you can leverage what you learn on your customer day:

• Knowing their communication preferences means you can send them messages that they’ll actually open
• Birthdays and anniversaries make for easy touch-base dates for sales, promos, and offers
• Personal details (how many kids they have, are they dog or cat people, etc) let you create content that will strike a chord
• If a customer thinks you know them well, they’ll be more likely to come back to you for personal service
• Knowing how your customers like to be catered to can help you hone your customer service offering

Get to Know Rev, Get to Know Your Customers

The only way to truly know your customers is to ask them questions. At Rev, asking questions and recording the answers is something we know well! Whether you’re conducting short one-on-ones or larger interview projects, we’ll make sure you can get your video transcribed quickly and accurately so you can make the best use of your data.