“The purpose of a business is to create a customer”
That’s a quote from Peter Drucker that got us thinking today.
It shines a whole new light on customer development. What marketer doesn’t get hyped after scoring a few leads or landing a sale? It’s like finally waking up to a sunny day in Pittsburgh after third winter (it’s gonna hit 70 degrees today and it’ll be up near 80 tomorrow. We. Are. Pumped!)
What were we talking about? Right, right. Conversions. They prove that what we do actually works. But Sulte Group’s CEO, Teju Owoye, wants marketers to trudge through an extra ambitious mile: teach consumers to love the product or service and create content that produces self-replicating referral engine.
Let’s take a closer look:
1. Don’t stop building relationships at conversion. To boost growth, Teju suggests you guide the newly converted (through personalized content delivered at key moments) to become a different kind of customer – an active user who gets so much value from your product or service that the impulse to share it with others is almost irresistible.
2. Change how you view the buyer’s journey. What if, instead of applauding a conversion, a transaction, or a sale, you view a new subscriber or buyer as beginning the journey? This is what Teju calls “our new job as marketers … making sure that the consumer has a delightful experience and is unlocking value at critical points while using your product.”
3. Get inside customers’ hearts and heads. Customer behavior can change how a customer feels. The more people act like power users, the more they feel like they are power users. The result is a magical, self-perpetuating brand advocate (a power user).
4. Use data to understand power users’ behavior. First, they dug deep into website tracking data to identify a handful of behavioral markers that distinguish their most active, engaged, happy customers. The brand used the findings in a surprising way. Instead of going out to find new potential power users, Teju says, the team set out to create new power users within the existing subscriber base by developing a calendar of activation milestones.
There’s so much more awesome info to take in with this one. You know what to do!
