The Differences Between Marketing to Friends and Strangers

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The following guest post is by Aditya Mahesh, founder of AMBeat.com, a complete resource for entrepreneurs complete with advice articles, start-up profiles, interviews, news analysis, and more.

Take a minute to think about the ways you recommend products to friends and family. You are brutally honest and want to make sure that they are happy with any recommend product they purchase. Their satisfaction is of utmost importance, regardless of whether you economically benefit. The candor of your marketing strategy instantly builds trust and increase the likeliness that they will take your recommendations.

Now lets look at the way to we market to strangers. We show them all the features of the product and try to sell them on how great it is. However, we don’t take the time to really develop a personal relationship and intrinsically, while their satisfaction is important, it is not our main goal. Our main goal is to profit economically. Satisfied customers are simply a means to reach our goal. Hence, we “sell” to strangers instead of “recommend” as we do with friends. As a result, this trust is not instantly built and skeptical customers are more likely to test and purchase competitor’s products.

So, how can marketers use this information?

They can tailor their marketing strategy so that they see everyone as a friend instead of as simply another customer. They can be completely upfront with any potential customers and share the pros and the cons of the product and other products in the industry. They can take a personal interest and the customer’s satisfaction and take the time to build a personal relationship. This requires them to focus on customer satisfaction for the sake of customer satisfaction, not for increased profits from repeat purchases or referrals down the road.

Many of these elements are intangible and cannot be directly measured. However, when implemented it changes the feel of a marketing strategy and opens up the customer to put their trust in your company and its products. Off course for this strategy to succeed you have to provide a quality product. If there are higher quality products on the marketplace at a similar price point, this tactic will backfire and you will lose customers. However, if you know your competitive advantage and can articulate this candidly to the customer, they will be more likely to strongly consider your products.

As a final note, there is no set checklist of tasks you need to complete to shift from marketing to customers as strangers to marketing to customers as friends. Instead it is more of a general philosophy and culture which you must implement into your process and share with your marketing and sales teams.

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