One of the greatest opportunities your marketing has to make an impact is when you make the leap from creating buyers of your products and services into creating brands for the value that you create for your customers and the people that are around you.
You might find that odd. Especially when we all know that the lifeblood of any organization is sales and cash flow.
But if you make the leap from just making sales into building customers, you are really setting your company up for long term success.
The challenge for a lot of organizations is that they don’t necessarily understand what goes into building fans.
Here is a few primers to help make the transition easier:
1. Begin by focusing on them and their issues:
It is easy for us to begin by thinking about what we need out of a relationship.
Don’t pretend to be coy.
We have all been there.
But to move from customers to fans, you need to add something definitive to your prospects and customers so that they feel a long term attachment to you and your organization.
2. Have conversations…don’t just talk one way:
To build fans, you need to have conversations with your fans and clients.
This means you need to do as much listening and you do talking.
This sounds like some old maxim from sales training, but it is true.
You need to spend a great deal of time listening to the world around you.
3. Know that these conversations and your connection with your fans will change over time:
This may seem like something that doesn’t make sense, but you have to always keep in mind that your relationship with your fans and your customers will evolve over time.
You will need to always be staying in contact with your buyers and fans.
They will tell you different things. You will find that they want different things.