I’m mostly bothered by the warlike analogies directed at customers, as if we are trying to fight, capture, abduct or otherwise force people to buy from us. As part of the marketing lexicon we have:

• Email blasts – Hit prospects with enough firepower, and surely we’ll get a few casualties, uh I mean customers.
• Targeting customers – Hit the bullseye, win a customer. Just hope he survives the blood loss.
• Capturing eyeballs – Possibly the creepiest analogy. For me, it conjures up images of a mad scientist’s laboratory.
• Launching campaigns - This analogy is the most pervasive in marketing-speak, but it comes from military campaigns. Don’t attack until you see the whites of their eyes (see above).
• Captive audiences – Once we’ve got them where we want them, they’ll have no chance but to pay attention! I believe this is the rationale for advertising placed above urinals.
• Guerilla marketing – In case you thought marketing warfare was only for big companies. Now small businesses can get in on the assault. You may not be able to buy enough ad space to “cut through the clutter,” but you can certainly launch surprise attacks.

All this talk of conquering makes marketers lose sight of their customers’ humanity. After all, we are marketing to actual people. And actual people aren’t coerced into their purchasing decisions and won’t be swayed by “blasts” of advertising copy. They will just ignore you.

For marketing to be effective, it has to honor the true relationship between business and customer. Marketing parlance describes an outdated model of marketing when companies felt like they were in control. That illusion has been shattered. Now customers have many options, research tools and alternatives available to them. In reality, the customers call the shots, and they are in control.

But we need metaphors and analogies. It makes marketing efforts easier to visualize and share. These descriptions need to be accurate and enforce how people actually buy. A bad analogy is like a calloused rhinocerous (and the same can be said for bad similes, eh?). Let’s try to use realistic metaphors, ones that actually depict the relationship between business and customer. Some are already in circulation, such as the following:

• Brand story – Instead of campaigns, develop a shared story between you and your customers. Think of advertising, PR and other communication methods as ways to move the story along.
• Relationship marketing – Brand stories build relationships. With war marketing, you capture dollars. With relationship marketing, you develop a relationship that leads to sustainable business.
• Seek permission – Get customers’ permission before starting up a conversation with them. Don’t waste time communicating with people who will never be your customer.
• Engage customers – It’s your responsibility to find out what interests customers and engage them.
• Build community - Engaged customers who are in a relationship with you will be eager to share that sense of community with others. A loyal community is the perfect referral network.
• Email broadcast – No need to blast customers. Once you’ve sought permission, update them with content you wouldn’t mind getting in your own inbox.

Interestingly, some of these terms don’t have to be metaphors. We can have real relationships with our customers. Do you have more metaphors for my list? Email me at amanda@zooinajungle.com.

Let’s look at some success stories (it’s too easy to find failures). Here are four companies successfully putting these attitudes into practice.

Old Spice

Old Spice took their “Smell Like a Man, Man” story from a few clever commercials to an Internet phenomenon. They interacted with followers on Twitter, responding to questions with YouTube videos by the Old Spice Man himself. Hilarious? Certainly. And the business results were nothing to scoff at: the Old Spice line of products has skyrocketed in sales, rising by 107% in June.

But why did it work? Companies create funny ads all the time without such dramatic results. The key to this effort was acknowleding the power of the customer. Old Spice made their spokesman into a celebrity then shared him with the world. They encouraged their customers to be part of the joke.

Etsy – Buy and Sell Handmade

Etsy’s Facebook marketing is tailored for those who wish to buy or sell handmade and vintgage objects. They adopt a breezy, conversational style while recommending their sellers’ products. Here’s an example, where 57 people enjoyed reading about bird scupltures:

Author Guy Kawasaki

Apple veteran Guy Kawasaki’s Twitter strategy is unique and encourages curiosity. Imagine my surprise when I saw Guy Kawasaki was following people I know. It was flattering, but I found upon investigation that he is following 286,644 people. It’s very egalitarian of him to eschew the general rule that you shouldn’t follow more people than follow you. And, for me, seeing he follows people I know created a greater interest to learn more about him and his company. Like, did you know you can hire Guy for speaking engagements?

Wal-Mart (yes Wal-Mart!)

The retailing supergiant has avoided brute force marketing lately. Their Save Money, Live Better brand story tries to connect with customers, and they are building a community of “Savers.” Here is an excerpt from their website that shows their implementation:

The story extends to public relations as well- recently Wal-Mart donated 6,000 articles of professional clothing to Dress for Success, a group that helps unemployed women get ready for the workplace. Finding a job seems like a great way to Save Money, Live Better.

Small businesses are especially poised to take advantage of this empowering, personalized kind of marketing. Who could possibly be better at creating stories and growing relationships with their customers? How can you start putting these concepts to work for your business today?

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Yesterday, an acquaintance asked me for advice on his startup company’s marketing. He just didn’t know how to get started with his first customer. He wanted to know what kinds of brochures, business card or website he needed to get people interested.

I told him, “Decide who you want your customers to be.”

He replied, “Oh, you mean middle class or upper class?”

“No, I mean decide which specific people in which neighborhoods should be your customers. Get to know them, how they talk and what their needs are. Then you can start selling. Then you will know what should be on your website.”

When people first start looking for customers, their instinct is to look for large groups of people and hope to convince a few of those people to hire them. The idea is, “If I aim for all middle class families, surely I’ll get a couple of customers.” But this instinct is wrong. The more people with whom you try to communicate, the less each one will pay attention to you. For example, I imagine you rarely pay attention to the loudspeaker at the grocery store. It’s just not that meaningful to you because the grocery store is trying to communicate a general message to the entire store. When you try to be meaningful to everyone, you end up being meaningful to no one. Generalization for the masses is the worst way to sell a new (or any) product.

To find its first customer, a startup needs to get specific. Instead of selling to groups differentiated by demographics, sell to individual people. Talk their language and address their needs.

On a related note, marketing expert Steve Yastrow wrote two very helpful newsletters on how to differentiate your customers as individuals instead of groups– Do Differentiation Differently and How to Do Differentiation Differently. Steve’s essential message is:

“Your customer doesn’t really care if you are different. But he will be blown away if he sees that you think he is different.”

Showing your customer you think he is different is more work than blanketing a city with flyers- but it will also yield more results. As counterintuitive as it may seem, startups (and all companies) will find more customers if they focus on fewer people.

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It may seem daunting to plan your business’ future. I recommend first developing a picture of success, then filling in the details based on how to paint that picture. This method was developed by Yastrow & Company, and we’ve used it for all of our joint clients.

The picture of success has two components. The first is a deadline, such as three months from now or in the next five years. The second is financial. What business results do you hope to enjoy?

Ask your small business,
“Where do we want to be one year from today?”

Asking this question may yield answers such as:

• We successfully introduced our products into three new markets and now 10% of our revenue comes from these new sources.
• Revenue has grown 20% from our financial customers.
• Sales from our new product category have grown 50%, as we’ve educated our existing customers about them.
• We diversified our customer base so our largest customer no longer accounts for 30% of sales. This stability will allow us to take advantage of new opportunities.

Once you have envisioned your picture of success, you need to assemble the tools that will enable you to create it. List what customer actions have to take place and how you will facilitate those actions. Think about the big picture and what will have to change, such as product offerings, sales efforts or reporting systems. Also think about what must stay the same, perhaps your key philosophies or an unavoidable business reality.

Then apply your picture of success to all the details of your day. Before making decisions, determine how the outcome will affect your goal. Don’t be afraid to say no to new opportunities that won’t help you to reach your goal. Small business owners face a barrage of options every day – Should we advertise in this new publication? Should we start selling this new product? Should we enter into a referral partnership with another business? By keeping your picture of success front and center, these decisions become easy.

When each decision you make fits your picture of success, you will succeed. To make your deadline, be proactive about the most important factors affecting your success, and start making improvements to your small business today.

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The possibilities for the design were endless, ranging from representing a pointillist painting to depicting the employees of a company seamlessly working together. We finally settled on the violin motif because of its beautiful simplicity – which is just what a small business’ brand should be. (Accomplished photographer Laura Poland found just the right angle to capture the cover image.)

Brand Harmony is an exceptionally good book for the small business owner or marketing professional because of its radical ideas on marketing such as:

• How to cut your advertising budget and make more money.
• Brute force branding – why it doesn’t work.
• Clear action steps about connecting with your customers and finding out what is truly important to them.
• How to create your “Picture of Success” and develop a path to reach it.

After all this to-do, I’m sure you’d like to see the cover, eh? Here are the front and back covers:

And if you’d like to buy the book, it’s only $10 at yastrow.com.

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One of the most powerful concepts in marketing is Brand Harmony, developed by Steve Yastrow. I work closely with Yastrow & Company, and have seen the benefits of Brand Harmony for our client companies. Steve Yastrow’s book of the same name, Brand Harmony, defines your brand as, “Every experience your customer has with your company.” (14) If these experiences blend into a harmonious whole, your customer develops a rich, positive brand impression of your company and products.

A company we work with, Prairie City Bakery, creates a great experience with their baked products. They sell baked goods such as cookies, muffins and doughnuts to food service vendors, convenience stores, drug stores, etc. They have faced the challenges of offering a great-tasting and high-quality product while also providing a quick snack for consumers. Part of this experience is the packaging, which makes it look homemade. President Bill Skeens is fond of saying, “People eat with their eyes,” a statement which shows an understanding of the importance of customer experience.

Netflix also creates good customer experiences. The system learns which movies you like and dislike to recommend other titles to you. If you lose a DVD, they don’t accuse you of stealing it. With their increasingly populated Watch Instantly section, you hardly even have to bother with DVDs. (But every company has room for improvement. Netflix team members…if you are reading this… please add a “Holiday” movies genre. It’s ridiculously difficult to find those titles.)

Each time a customer comes into contact with you or your products, you are creating an experience for that customer, even if you aren’t trying. Sometimes, especially if you aren’t trying. The worst– and most memorable–customer experiences come from brand disharmony.

How many times have you heard the phrase, “The system won’t let me.” from a customer service representative or retail store cashier? Technology is an area where many companies create disharmony. Rarely are systems designed with the customer experience in mind. Recently, I discovered that my bank’s idea of offering electronic payment is to print a physical check and mail it to my vendors for me. Imagine my surprise when I received a late notice from a vendor that I had paid “electronically.” The bank told me they needed four days’ notice to process the payment, and I had only given them two. How is that a better experience than simply writing and mailing a check myself? Why would they design such a useless system?

When you create brand disharmony, you confuse your customers. They don’t know what to think about you– Even worse, they know exactly what to think about you, and it’s unfit for print. But when the experiences you’ve created for your customers create Brand Harmony, they feel an affinity for your company and have a rich sense of why they want to buy from you.

Think of some companies you have an affinity for and that create great Brand Harmony with you. What experiences do you have with those companies? Now, ask yourself: How can I gain inspiration from these companies? What experiences should I create with my customers?

Don’t just think of your “traditional” marketing communications. Customers don’t care if your billing department and marketing department are separated by a chasm. If your invoices and advertisements don’t create complementary experiences, your brand will be weak in their minds.

By thoughtfully considering what experiences your customers should have and putting those thoughts into action, you can help your customers know exactly why they buy from you. If they have a good answer for that question, they will be less likely to switch to a competitor or make do with a substitute product or service.

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Download the relationship marketing MP3 file here. (13.38MB)

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You’ve probably heard about relationship marketing. Maybe you’ve even taken some steps to create more customer loyalty by being more “friendly” with your customers. Indeed, developing customer relationships can be a great way to grow your business and profits. Steve Yastrow wrote a book about the topic, We: The Ideal Customer Relationship.

In Yastrow’s first chapter, he provides compelling evidence for developing customer relationships, stating: “Relationships have become powerful differentiators. Customers can’t tell if your product is better than your competitor’s product, but they can tell if they have a better relationship with you than with your competitor.”

Even better, the profit potential for developing relationships with your customers is high. In Yastrow’s research, he found that 89% of people prefer to buy from a business they have a relationship with; 86% would prefer to buy from a business that they have regular conversations with, and 90% prefer to buy from a business that talks with them about future decisions they might make. Here’s the real revelation, though: 79% of people are more likely to buy from a business they have a relationship with rather than the business with the best prices. Similarly, 86% would be more likely to refer a business they have a relationship with than to refer a business with the best prices.

“Wow!” you say, “Sounds amazing, but what’s the catch?” It turns out developing good relationships with your customers isn’t easy (but it’s still worthwhile).

The reason customer relationships are hard is explained in Dan Ariely’s bookPredictably Irrational. In chapter 4, “The Cost of Social Norms,” he explains that we live in two different worlds: one governed by social norms, and one governed by market norms. Ariely writes:

“Social norms are wrapped up in our social nature and our need for community. They are usually warm and fuzzy. Instant paybacks are not required: you may help move your neighbor’s couch, but this doesn’t mean he has to come right over and move yours.”

There’s nothing “warm and fuzzy” about the world ruled by market norms, however:

“The exchanges are sharp-edged: wages, prices, rents, interest and cost-and-benefits….When you are in the domain of market norms, you get what you pay for—that’s just the way it is.”

What happens when we develop customer relationships, and those worlds collide?

Ariely reports on an experiment in a day care center that tested the interchangeability of social norms and market norms. Parents usually viewed their relationship with the day care center as social, but when there arose a problem of parents picking up their children late, the center imposed a fine on latecomers (thereby introducing a market rule).  The instance of late parents actually increased, because parents now felt they were paying to be late and no longer felt any social obligation to arrive on time.

When the day care center reversed the fine, Ariely saw that something interesting happened. Even more parents started picking up their children late. Because introducing the market norm violated the social norm, parents no longer felt a social connection with the center. When the fine was removed, both motivators—guilt and the fine—vanished, so there was no compelling reason to arrive on time. Ariely sums this up by asserting, “When a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time. Social relationships are not easy to reestablish.”

How does this relate to business? Let me tell you a story about a normally reasonable person who got caught in the crosshairs of social norms vs. market norms, resulting in slightly deranged behavior. (Okay, I’ll admit it. I am that person.)

Two years ago, my husband and I were planning a trip to Maine. We chose to vacation there primarily because Maine is full of natural beauty and wildlife, specifically puffins. I had heard you could take a puffin-watching cruise, and I was enamored at once. We sorted through all the puffin-watching websites to choose the best-sounding one: it took you right to the main puffin island, where you would disembark and likely be only four feet away from the puffins. The website even had a charming story about the boat, company and captain. All of the warm, fuzzy feelings and my active imagination had put me solidly into relationship, social-norm territory with this company. And I hadn’t even called them yet.

When I did call them, I had to leave multiple messages on their voicemail. Each message assured me someone would take my reservation, so I wasn’t too upset. I felt like I was already their friend, so what’s a few missed calls between friends?

Finally, someone answered my call. She was rude, abrasive and crushed my hopes of seeing puffins up close and personal: The boat was full. They don’t keep waiting lists. Then, she hung up on me.

After I got over my grief, I became furious. I signed up for a yelp.com account and wrote a scathing review. To give my review clout, I even reviewed animal-related attractions I had been to in other cities. How dare they promise to show me puffins then take it all away? I seethed over this betrayal for weeks (just ask my unfortunate husband).

To me, our relationship was based on social norms. To the puffin-watching company, we didn’t have a relationship. I was just a person they forgot to call back…for months. They thought they made a simple customer service mistake that didn’t affect their business. After all, they filled up the boat, right? Maybe, but my yelp.com review remains immortal.

Referring again to Steve Yastrow’s book, We, he advocates creating special kinds of relationships that he calls We Relationships. It involves learning about your customer and using the information you glean to develop a relationship that feels unique, fresh and equally valuable to both customer and company. To learn more about creating these relationships, I recommend you read his book.

Developing relationships with your customers is the surest route to earning their loyalty, continued business and enthusiastic referrals. However, unless you tend the relationship with care, you risk creating a jilted customer. And we all know the adage: Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned.

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Neale Martin has a great book out– Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketer’s Ignore. It’s enlightening, and his research is well documented. The basic premise is that our conscious mind can only think of one thing at a time, so it hands off as much responsibility to our subconscious mind as possible. The subconscious mind then makes decisions based on cues from the environment and what was successful in the past.

As you might expect, most regular purchase decisions get delegated to the subconscious mind. Seriously, who evaluates their toilet paper purchases each time they stock up?

One particular passage in Habit really caught my attention. Martin discovers a truth explored by Steve Yastrow in his book We:The Ideal Customer Relationship: your existing customer relationships contain vast growth potential for your company. It’s all about latent profit.

“The power of advertising to maintain and strengthen the habits of existing customers is far greater than its ability to persuade noncustomers to try a product. Seeing an advertisement in a magazine or on a billboard for your brand reinforces your choice. Similarly, seeing a product you already own used in new ways can create an immediate trial opportunity. Marketers often neglect reinforcing behavior because they are pressured to acquire new customers, often at the expense of their existing, and profitable, current customers (Neale Martin, Habit, p.118).”

As we all know, buying new customers is expensive. It involves getting someone to notice your product, realize what it could do for him, trust you enough to try it, then find a channel for purchasing it. And that’s if everything goes according to plan.

But influencing a customer that already trusts and relies on you to buy more or buy other products from you isn’t expensive. Most of the work is already done for you because of your relationship with the customer.

Here’s an example. A client sent out a blanket mailing to households within a three-mile radius of their location offering a special discount to new customers only. They stuck to the standard marketing tenet of discounting to attract new customers, but they risked alienating existing customers. (Customer surveys later proved this point as current customers complained their neighbor, relative or friend got a better deal on services.)

There are several lessons to be learned from this incident.

• First, if you are going to show an advertisement to the general population, you had better give an offer anyone can use.
• Promotions don’t occur in a vacuum. People talk and like to compare deals.
• Finally, it is more valuable to reinforce the behavior of a current customer by rewarding him and encouraging him to try a new product than to hope you receive a one-off visit purchase from a stranger.

The moral of the story (and point of the article) is to value your customers and realize how much latent profit exists in your current customer base.

We often call current customers, “existing customers.” That means potential customers don’t even exist yet! It takes much effort to call potential customers into existence, but relatively little effort to improve your relationship with your customers. A customer who is loyal to your company will buy more products more often and will rave about you to their friends.

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