Seth Godin has always struck me as a great thinker on modern marketing. If you want an insight into where the internet is destined I beleive this guy has the answers.
Today on his awesome blog, which you must subscribe to today, was this great post.
Most marketers are organized around more. More share. More customers.
And if you want to do that fast, it means marketing to strangers. Strangers that don’t care about you, don’t trust you and aren’t listening to you.
You market to a friend differently. A friend isn’t necessarily someone you went to summer camp with, it’s someone who gives you the benefit of the doubt. Someone who will listen, at least once, to your pitch.
I was talking to an author about his next project. The question I asked him was, “are you writing this for strangers or friends?” The implications are huge. It impacts how you design the cover, how you price it, what it’s about, where you sell it, when you publish it, how much you pay for store displays, etc…
You need to treat friends differently at every step along the way. First, don’t confuse the moments you’re supporting them or connecting with them with the moments when you are doing business. Second, understand that the most powerful win is when your friends tell their friends about you. This is worth 1000 times more than you talking about yourself.
The cool thing is that now, everyone has ten times as many friends as they used to. The social graph online is a fascinating, exponential factor in growing the list of people who might be willing to hear what you have to say (once).
Which means that your site and offer and products can be organized around friend selling instead of stranger setting.
Guaranteed: if you sell a friend the way you sell a stranger, you’ve made neither a sale or a friend.
I see first hand, everyday, how having a great relationship with your customers develop into friends.
My customers at POTN, Northampton Reptile Centre, Victor De Banke, D4, Ashmore, are all companies that have supported Me and my ActionCOACH Franchise, and are all growing as a result.
Im on a quest to assist the owners of small to medium enterprises to grow their businesses and transition them from adolescence to maturity, growing revenues and profits along the way.
In many cases they have forged links, through networking together, that has brought them greater knowledge, increased income, profits,and friendship. Companies agreeing to work to a common culture and with a common cause to professionally assist their clients to prosper is the 21st century way.
The internet has been a core method of building these relationships.