This Customer Video Gave Chilis $400 Million in Q3 Sales
Your customers are better salespeople than your brand is. Every time.
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So let’s jump right in with the video that appeared on TikTok:
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This one video set off a viral trend that ended up netting Chilis a 40% surge in sales in Q3 2024. The video above, by itself, has over 21 million views currently.
Keila is using the #chilispartner hashtag so I am assuming there was some level of coordination between her and the brand. This isn’t the first time Chilis has seen a sales surge from Tik Tok. In May, videos about its Triple Dipper meal also went viral, accounting for 40% of the brand’s sales growth during Q2.
Customers Trust Other Customers More Than Brands
There has been a raft of research for years that verifies that the average customer trusts a fellow customer more than the average brand. Research from Neilsen in 2021 found that a staggering 88% of consumers said they trust Word of Mouth from friends, family and fellow customers over any other type of marketing messages.
Now to be fair, these viral trends that Chilis benefited from were driven by influencers. And while studies show that influencers are still trusted by consumers (especially younger ones), there are signs that those trust levels are weakening. This study from 2023 found that 86% of respondents were more likely to buy from a brand that utilizes content created by customers. But the same study found that 81% of respondents said that a brand using influencers in marketing messages either had no impact, or actually had a negative impact on their decision to make a purchase.
So where does that leave us in regards to the massive success that Chilis enjoyed last year from viral Tik Tok trends? In other words, if not all consumers trust influencers, how do we explain the massive success of a viral trend for Chilis, that was driven by influencers?
I believe this worked for Chilis because it was participatory. The viral trend was kicked off by a few influencers, but other customers quickly jumped in with similar videos. Chilis customers took ownership of this marketing effort. The brand had almost nothing to do with this. Which was actually a mistake, which I’ll talk about more in a minute.
Happy Customers Claim Brand Ownership
One of the key concepts I talk about often is the idea that your loyal customers see themselves as the owners of your brand. As such, they will claim ownership and act in ways that a brand owner would act. The customers participating in this viral trend did so for their own benefit. Sure, influencers wanted to capitalize on the trend. So did other customers, they wanted to be seen as ‘cool’ to be attached with this trend.
Chilis had an opportunity to lean into these trends, leverage them in paid media, and I think they missed that opportunity. To be fair, most brand do miss such opportunities. The original viral video trend involving a brand were the Eepy Bird videos. These were videos created by a couple of guys circa 2009 or so where they dropped Mentos into Coke bottles and created geysers as the Mentos reacted with the carbonated beverage. These were massively popular, and copied by many. Mentos, to its credit, leaned into these videos, and encouraged customers to create them, saying they were ‘awesome’. Mentos’ sales spiked 20% from these videos. Coke, on the other hand, totally ignored these videos, until they became a viral trend, at which point the brand literally told the press ‘We really wish customers would drink our product and not play with it’.
Customers Drive Sales, and Always Have
Happy customers are your best salespeople. Smart companies lean into and encourage customer feedback. Customer feedback has several imperative benefits:
Improved product design: By utilizing customer feedback on products, businesses can implement changes that customers request, improving customer satisfaction, and positively impacting sales.
Improved customer support: When customers are empowered to share feedback, they can proactively assist other customers with issues. This can lead to cost savings for companies as calls to customer support are deflected.
Improved customer sentiment: Customers can proactively engage with upset customers, either helping them with their issue, or deflecting their criticism.
Improved sales: Customers can better sell to other customers because the average customer typically understands the need of customers better than the brand does.
Cultivate a culture that encourages, prizes and leverages customer feedback. It’s one of the best investments you can make in your business!
Thanks for reading, I hope you have a wonderful weekend! On Tuesday, I’ll have a recap of my month of January. See you then!
Mack
Masterclass - Building An Online Community
Happy Thursday, y’all! Today’s issue of Backstage Pass will be a bit longer, as I want to do a deep dive into a topic that a lot of people and businesses struggle with: Building a following online.
So China now knows Americans like Triple Dipper Meals. What are they going to do Implement Operation Clog American Arteries.
On a serious note: Good post, especially your recap of Customers Drive Sales. Based on the number of documented success stories out there, I am surprised we dont see more UGC social movements.
Mack,
Nice article and gives me food for thought on the B2B side. I don’t see influencer marketing in B2B in the same implementation as consumer, with the exception of much more traditional applications like case studies, videos and testimonials. All which are getting harder to come by in the manufacturing technology spaces where it takes legal and others to approve. However, the concept of the customer owning the product still holds true and exclusive customer feedback programs succeed quite well. My team at Razorleaf have been doing a tech focused podcast, and we are just getting to the point of inviting customers to participate. We needed a track record and audience prior to this point. I’ll see how that unfolds as we go. Thanks for sharing the story which gave me some creative ideas. If you or others reading are aware of good B2B examples, I’d love to hear it.