Some people just keep getting customers. They start something new and gallons of people gather to cheer them up and even pay for it! Seems like they have magnet or something. They launch a new web-app, a new outlet, new line of product, experimental flavor of coffee – they have shit loads of customers buying it.
That makes you think that you should work on getting customers and that’s it – Marketing with a capital M. But guess what? It doesn’t work that way. If you don’t want to work your asses off trying to get customers without great success then read on…
So what is it that they are doing but you are missing? How come their plans sure to succeed and yours… not so much! Why is it so easy for them and so though for you?
The answer is simple than you think – they focus on making fans & audience; not customers. They make a tribe of people who care and want listen to them… people who connect to them, people who believe in the same things that they do.
And once they have the tribe / fan-base / following in place – they can take them on different adventures. Product-after-product, launch-after-launch, trial-after-trail they keep getting bigger. They always know that whatever they want to sell – they have fans that will so easily turn to customers.
I really love Seth Godin’s book ‘Tribes’, watch this video to get a whiff:
There is lot of difference between getting fans and getting customers.
When you are trying to get customers, you keep adding stuff till it becomes unbearable, you want it to be perfect so you never ship and you are so afraid of making a point and believing in a cause.
But when you are working on getting fans & audience – you love them, teach them, grow with them, build with them, ship often and above all – it’s enjoyed from both sides.
And that’s marketing! Here is Steve Jobs crowing about it:
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Photo by BrentDPayne
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Great post Sid. In business we have to keep forming new relationships. Ensure fans become customers and customers become fans. And (since you highlighted the Steve Jobs vid) its always great when people start bifurcating themselves basis the company brand as the criteria, as in apple fanboys and the anti apple geeks. Whoever wins, its your victory!
Hey Himanshu!
So true, but I guess improving on current relationship is far more effective than trying to get new ones. That’s how you get fans, right? Fans bring in more customers (read potential fans) and so it goes.
About Steve Jobs & Apple, I remember “Every publicity is good publicity.” :P
That’s amazing that those videos were recorded so many years apart but “marketing” asa a concept hasn’t changed. We get so caught up in advertising when advertising is a tiny sliver of the marketing pie. Now, more than ever before, we need to focus on providing value and gaining fans.
Thanks for this, Sid!
Indeed Nick!
Advertisement is so dead – first reason because you can’t track most of it. That’s where fans promise everything – I wonder why it was created to begin with :P
Steve got it long before most did, I guess.
Culture is the word.”Introducing culture”. Everything else will follow.
( ON UK’s recommendation I am here. I like your energy )
Hey Sidd!
Thanks for visiting by, man! Tell me about it, these guys saw what others couldn’t see.
Thanks, man! Hope to see you here more often. Thanks to UK, never knew he actually liked what I wrote. :P
Not sure he does ! That this blog gets traffic was more like it ! Sorry to disappoint if I did.
Cheers !
Haha, this blog doesn’t get traffic. This blog get’s reader. Or thus the metrics say. Thanks!