How Fitbit Blew It With Author Stephen King

Good marketers plan for customer milestones.

Stephen King, the famous author of horror stories, walked ten thousand steps every day for an entire year.

Just him and the Fitbit on his wrist.

On the last day of his monumental achievement something remarkable happened. Nothing. The Fitbit app on his phone didn't do a single damn thing.

No fireworks. No award. No "birthday cake icon or something," as King says in his tweet above.

What the heck, Fitbit?

You do one thing, and you arguably do it better than most devices out there. You count friggin' steps.

Mr. King took 3,650,000 of them!

My Apple Watch congratulates me for standing up, for crying out loud. (Yes, it's annoying. Yes, it makes me feel like I accomplished something. I'm a sucker for acknowledgement.)

Imagine if King tweeted to his 6.5 million followers how thrilled he was that the Fitbit app celebrated his incredible achievement with...

A special award image he could post on social media.

Acknowledgement that he was now part of a special group of Fitbit users. Fitbit Platinum or something.

Unlocked super rare features in the Fitbit app.

I could come up with a dozen more ideas that are better than nothing. I'll bet you could too.

Recognizing customer milestones is more important that ever in our connected world. Just an email or comment on a social media post can go a very long way toward building loyalty with your brand.

If you do simple things like that, congratulations, you're a better marketer than a massive company like Fitbit.