Are your customers more concerned about your success or their own success? Even if you flunked out of business school (or never went in the first place), you know the answer to that question.
Your customers aren’t there to help you succeed. They are your customers because they think that the products or services you offer can help them achieve what they want to achieve. It really doesn’t matter whether you’re in a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) environment or a Business-to-Business (B2B) environment. Your customers are looking for solutions to their problems or for something that will help them their goals.
So what does that mean for you? Basically, it means that your customer doesn’t care how good you think you are. They don’t care whether you think your product or service is “industry-best”. They really don’t care how many awards you’ve won. It doesn’t really matter to them how long you’ve been in business. And frankly, they probably don’t care if you’re the highest or lowest priced option. None of this matters unless and until they see how it helps them solve their problems and achieve their goals.
One of the keys to marketing success—whether it’s B2C or B2B—is positioning yourself in such a way that you help your customers succeed. But you’re not going to accomplish this with clever slogans like, “The customer comes first” or “Our success depends on your success.”
If you’re really going to help you customers succeed, you have to listen to them and understand what they need. And you need to provide genuine help to them that helps them solve their problems. And, by the way, when you do that, you also establish yourself as someone who is knowledgeable and trustworthy.
That’s why some of the social media tools in the marketplace right now are so cool! And it’s why social media has exploded over the past few years. People are looking for information. They’re looking for help. They’re looking for anything that will help them succeed. What they’re not looking for is a sales pitch.
Tools like Twitter, blogs, webinars, LinkeIn, are great ways for companies to help their customers get the information they need to succeed. And they are great ways for companies to establish themselves as trustworthy experts who have the knowledge and resources to help. But it’s really not about the tools. They’re just tools. They key is using those tools to help your customers succeed.
And when your customers succeed, guess who else succeeds?