MARKETINGA Love Story: How to Matter to your Customers

OVERVIEW What I Have Learned What We Can Do What We Can Apply How We Can Grow Our Audience

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED People can’t help wanting to give back the kind of behavior or service that they

receive, and if we can find ways to authentically show our customers that they matter to us, then we have a better chance of mattering to them.

Marketing is the way we communicate how our ideas translate to value for people in a marketplace.

If you’re ever in doubt about how to create value, simply work out how to make your customers feel good. Then do that.

If you want to be the best in the world, don’t start by trying to create the best product or service. Start by figuring out how people want to feel.

Its far more important to reach out to the people who care than to take aim at everyone.

The key to mattering to your customers is to actually care about them just as much as, if not more than, you do about the success of your business.

In the ‘needless’ economy, the job of the innovator isn’t to make something new; it’s to make something that matters.

Marketing is not a department; it’s the story of how you create difference for your customers.

WHAT WE CAN DO Create something that people want. Know whom you want to infect. Have a great reason for wanting to infect them. Matter to one person first. Speak to that person. Change how people feel, before you try to change what they do. Notice what your customers care about most. Do more of that. Work hard to give people something to talk about. Consciously bake word-of-mouth into your product or service. Make giving people a reason to talk about your products and services part

of your culture, not just your marketing. Do it on purpose. Then do it over and over again. The businesses that

succeed wildly are not just founded on ideas that are shared in a split second; they are grounded in what will matter to their customers for decades.

WHAT WE CAN APPLY Resist relying on the description of features and benefits. Tell people what they can do with our product, not what the product does. Let the current customers do the talking. Build trust, using proof with

testimonials and customer stories. Show how customers are using our product to make their lives better. Use

images, videos, case studies and stories. Think about how we want the people who use our products and services to

feel. Write descriptions and create content that helps people to experience those

feelings before they ever use the product or service. Behave like a lover, or at least a very dear friend. Because if we’re going

about our business the right way, that’s exactly what we are. Now go write like one.