During November I’m taking part in the Customer Love Challenge.
photo credit: qthomasbower
Huh? What is the Customer Love Challenge?
The Customer Love Challenge started in September of this year after Naomi Dunford from Ittybiz wrote this post about how if you needed to make a lot of money quickly, you should love on your people hard for 28 days and then ask them for money on the last 2 days.
LaVonne Ellis from The Complete Flake got all inspired, said, ‘let’s do it!’ and the first Customer Love Challenge was born.
Now LaVonne wants to run another one during November to make use of all the things learnt from the first one.
Can anyone join in?
Of course. At the moment there are at least two other artists taking part – Léan from String Revolution and Melissa Dinwiddie from Living A Creative Life – and I think it would be fabulous if more arty people joined in.
If you’re interested in taking part, you can sign up here and download a free e-book. There’s also a Yahoo group for participants and the Twitter hashtag is #customerlove (just stick that into the search box on Twitter & you’ll see all the stuff people are saying about the challenge).
Do I have to sell something at the end of the month?
Nope. Your goal could be something different like increasing your blog readership, discovering more about your customers, getting more sign-ups to your mailing list or making new connections.
I won’t be launching anything new at the end of November for two reasons.
Firstly, I’ve already got A Super-Exciting Something scheduled for the second week of November. The Super-Exciting Something will go on sale this week and you can expect an announcement within the next couple of days.
Plus I want to run a 48 hour sale on my birthday, which is on the 15th December. That feels like enough to me.
Why are you taking part?
Me, passing up a chance for some hawt internet lovin’? Are you crazy?
I’m doing Customer Love partly because the idea scared me and I like to face things down but also because I want to get to know my readers better and tell you all how much I appreciate you.
What are you going to do?
I have no freaking clue!
OK, that’s not quite true. I’ve written down a few ideas and things are starting to take shape. However, I’m very open to suggestions on this one, so if there’s any way that I can help you, please leave a comment below or drop me a line and I’ll give it my best shot.
The part that sounds scary to me is signing up! Since I’m notoriously bad at following rules and stuff, is there a stealth mode option?
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Kirsty Hall Reply:
November 1st, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Hi Monette, I don’t think there are that many concrete rules for Customer Love: it’s whatever you want it to be. And yes, you could just follow along by doing some of it or simply watching what others are doing. I just watched the first one.
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MonetteSatterfield Reply:
November 1st, 2010 at 2:48 pm
I did download the book – it’s really well done! I’ll be watching and maybe trying it out here and there. Thanks for the encouragement :)
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LaVonne Ellis Reply:
November 1st, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Monette, I’m just not that into rules. I like to make things up as I go along. And you can too. I do want you to sign up so you can get easy notifications by email, but you don’t even have to do that. The main thing is that you connect with lots of people — other challengers, your target market, whoever feels right — because that is the real beauty and power of this challenge: connection.
Hope you come along for the ride — or just watch from the sidelines to help you decide for next time. :)
LaVonne Ellis
Make Customers Love You
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Awesome, Kristy — so glad you’re taking part!
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Customer love! Now that is a recipe for sales. The best thing I can do for my “customers”/readers right now is provide awesome and practical posts that can help change their life. Maybe I can also put together a small free e-book (or a chapter of an e-book), and then I can sell a premium package at the end of the month.
Have to think more about spreading my love, but this is an awesome idea!
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Kirsty Reply:
November 1st, 2010 at 10:57 pm
Have you signed up then, Steven? It’s going to be such fun connecting with new people, not just customers but peers and bloggers in different fields. Getting out of my niche has been my golden secret this year.
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This sounds great! A bit too busy to join the challenge now and I also want to migrate my existing blog to my own domain. I’m going to watch and read for now, but I’ll definitely be in for the next one.
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Kirsty Hall Reply:
November 3rd, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Hi Tania, good luck with moving your blog, I hope you enjoy reading along with the challenge. If you sign up over at The Complete Flake, LaVonne will let you know when the next one is: http://completeflake.com/
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What a great idea! I’m in, I need to increase my blog readership and this sounds like a terrific way to get started. Thanks for the link, Kirsty!
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Kirsty Hall Reply:
November 4th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Excellent, it’ll be fun to have you along for the ride, Kathleen.
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i signed up Kirsty!
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Kirsty Reply:
November 6th, 2010 at 12:04 am
Way to go, Kat! We’re supporting each other on Twitter and in the Yahoo group.
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