In Love Your Customers
0
7

Guys, as I write this, I am sitting on my bed surrounded by a gigantic pile of clothes, five jackets, a dog, and an empty Starbucks venti latte cup. I’m tired, I have a sore throat, I’m leaving for a two week trip in two days, and I’m desperately afraid of flying.

And I’m still writing this. I’ve been spending lots of time thinking about the true meaning of customer love over the past week while I run around like a hamster, and in my head, it’s sort of like contemplating the true meaning of Christmas (I know, it’s November, but I love Christmas). Sure, you know what it’s supposed to be about: meaning, connection, celebration. But there’s all that other stuff involved too, that everyone knows but doesn’t want to talk about: stress, gifts, worrying about what you’ll get in return for your efforts.

For me, that’s the hardest thing about this customer love challenge.

I have a hard time running a business where I spend a month loving people and then selling something to them right at the end of it. It feels uncomfortably like trading love for money, just like Christmas feels like trading gifts for love some years to me.

I also can’t imagine I’m the only one sitting around in a disorganized house worrying about this kind of thing. As a professional marketer (man, I really hate that title), I’m used to dealing with clients who think that marketing is the opposite of love. Marketing has a reputation as a bunch of things, and loving isn’t one that comes up a lot. And maybe that’s part of my attraction to this challenge: the inherent assumption that at some point, love and marketing work together somehow. Like Christmas and commercialism, or like the way planes are really held up by air currents, even if that seems impossible when you’re on one.

So, here comes the practical advice bit. I don’t have as much of it as I like, because more than a week into this challenge, I still have no idea what my product will be. But here are some rules that I’m trying to follow to help bridge the gap between love and marketing.

Ask Your Customers What You Can Do For Them

Catherine Caine really gets credit for this, because she gave me this piece of advice months ago. But I’m poaching off her today, because it’s simple and true and we don’t do a lot of it. It doesn’t have to be a survey; if you’ve got 30 extra seconds, just put the question out on Twitter or Facebook. What is the one thing you could produce that would improve the quality of people’s lives?

I think that, at heart, we’re all worried about producing more junk for the internet. I know I am. There’s so much pressure to produce, though, that we feel like we can’t keep up. Everyone else seems to put out eight e-books per month or a new program every two months, and it’s hard not to give into the pressure to just produce something, anything, just so you won’t be behind.

That’s not what this challenge is about. It’s about a product that serves a need, not a product for the sake of having one more sales page up on your site.

Trust the Opt-In Marketing System

I remind myself of this on a daily basis. We’re lucky to be part of a system online where we get to choose who markets to us. We sign up for mailing lists because we’re interested in the products or content. We pick people to get to know out of the sea of noise that is Twitter, because we think they’re genuinely cool.

The people who are on your mailing list or reading your blog already love you. It’s like those times in a new relationship where you’re both waiting for the other person to say, “I love you.” Those people who have opted in for your stuff? They’ve already said it, so go get them.

And now, your challenge for the day, if you choose to accept it:

Find one way to say “I love you” back to your customers. It can be as simple as a Twitter message, or as complicated as a sale for your most valued customers. Really, that’s the reason I’m writing this, surrounded by laundry and airplane fear and empty coffee cups: I love you guys, and I don’t get to say that enough.

Today, Holly is saying that she loves all of you by giving away five free spots in her Kaffeeklatsch program. Go check it out here!

Photo credit

Recent Posts
Showing 7 comments
  • Tisha
    Reply

    Hey Holly,
    Great post! I’m a newcomer to the customer love challenge and I must admit that when I first heard of the idea of “wait until the very last day to sell them stuff” it did sound a little disingenuous to me. But you make a great point here. Giving away things of value at first is very much a way to show people that what you are selling is worthy of the price you’re asking. There’s so much stuff vying for our attention, we want to know up front whether someone’s a flake or has something valuable and genuinely useful to share. With a month of pure giving, you’re just vetting yourself for your ideal customer. And that to me screams of integrity. Thanks for some great insights!

    • Holly
      Reply

      I love the points you make about why you should give things away. It’s a common tactic also used by brand new businesses, and it’s a really smart one for all those reasons that you’ve outlined, but also because giving something away shows absolute confidence in what you do. It’s the best kind of online transparency.

      Thanks for commenting!

  • Kirsty Hall
    Reply

    I’m still swithering over whether to do something at the end of the month or not. I think if I do, it’ll be a free thing rather than paid, possibly with an emphasis on getting people to sign up for my mailing list.

  • Melissa Dinwiddie
    Reply

    You are definitely not the only one sitting around a disorganized house thinking about these things!

    My goal is to offer a “pre-launch” version of my Thriving Artists Project at the end of the 30 days. In the meantime, I’m loving my Sandbox Sessions, and the wheels are spinning on what else I can offer that’s truly of value.

pingbacks / trackbacks

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.