Great Marketing Begins at Yes

On her blog, Cre­at­ing Pas­sion­ate Users, Kathy Sierra bril­liantly com­pares full color com­pany brochures with bor­ing, black & white user man­u­als to illus­trate the need for plac­ing greater mar­ket­ing focus on the exist­ing cus­tomer. For what­ever rea­son acqui­si­tion seems to trump reten­tion. Quan­tity trumps qual­ity. Imme­di­ate return trumps long term growth. Per­haps this is because it is just eas­ier to mea­sure. New cus­tomers are easy to track, much more so than the rip­ple effect of word of mouth. How­ever, this think­ing is prob­lem­atic. It puts the focus on attain­ing that which we do not yet have, instead of pay­ing atten­tion to cul­ti­vat­ing and appre­ci­at­ing the resources already at our dis­posal. It is waste­ful, lazy, and short­sighted. By truly ener­giz­ing and engag­ing exist­ing cus­tomers– focus­ing on blow­ing them away with a remark­able expe­ri­ence, a vir­tu­ous cycle of organic growth devel­ops. Word of mouth is pow­er­ful, and exist­ing cus­tomers are the source of that power. As pro­fes­sion­als, loyal cus­tomers deserve to be the absolute cen­ter the uni­verse. Of course you need new cus­tomers to grow. Sure the sexy brochure is impor­tant. It is part of the courtship of the cus­tomer and appear­ances do mat­ter. But once you have that rela­tion­ship, those appear­ances don’t stop mat­ter­ing. In fact, they mat­ter more. Other peo­ple are watch­ing. Other peo­ple are lis­ten­ing. Let your cus­tomers know they mat­ter and more cus­tomers will come. That is what GREAT mar­ket­ing is all about. The rela­tion­ship should begin and grow at “yes” — not wither and die.

Cre­at­ing Pas­sion­ate Users: Why mar­ket­ing should make the user manuals!