Be A Customer-Creating and Customer-Satisfying Organism
April 1st, 2009 // 10:41 pm @ Aidah Omar
credit: roland
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com once voiced this sentiment:
“We want to be the world’s most consumer-centric company… We focus incessantly on trying to get the customer experience right… See we’re not a book company. We’re not a music company. We’re not a video company. We’re not an auctions company. We’re a customer company.”
That was back in 1999 during an interview with BusinessWeek. Amazon is now an undisputed leader in online shopping and the reviews on their website make Amazon the world’s most trusted source.
The traditional mass marketing funnel looked like this: Create an an ad broadcasted to one million people. Get a 1% response on a $100 product. Then collect $1 million dollars. Finish.
This is what mass marketers do – throw as large a net as possible. The Internet would be perfect for such a model, right?
Wrong. If you are a small business, can you afford to spend the average of $1 million dollars per website by Fortune 1000 companies to market online? The answer is a resounding No.
If you want to differentiate and ensure that price is not an issue between you and your target market, you need to deepen your relationship with them. They need to trust that you are the in-depth expert on what they want. You never abuse the relationship so when you talk, your customers listen.
The deeper your relationship with customers, they will pull from you more products, services and information at higher and higher prices. They will not care that someone else in another country is pushing the product / service at 10% less.
Trust is your most powerful tool and abusing that for a quick buck will undermine your long-term business.
In this Harvard Business article: Why Small Companies Will Win, it becomes clearer that the company that does business with people rather than with organizations will win. Perhaps it is a new trend, but what is clear is that people will do businesses with people – and all the better if it comes from people that they know are passionate about what they do.
Remember the most ultimate product you can produce is a satisfied customer.
Category : Strategy
