Customers or Fans?

May 27 2009

Fans

Is your brand trying to attract customers, or build a fan base?

  • Customers are fickle. Fans are loyal (so long as you reward their loyalty).
  • Customers don’t forgive you. Fans do (so long as you make it up to them of course).
  • Customers have to be acquired, one by one. Fans recruit more fans.
  • Customers are suspicious, and take everything with a grain of salt. Fans trust you, and will hear you out.
  • Customers will rush to join the angry mob. Fans will defend you, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Of course all of this only happens if you take care of your fans. And when they can do all this for you, why wouldn’t you?

Awesome photo courtesy of notsogoodphotogaphy on flickr

Share on TwitterSubmit to StumbleUpon

Possibly Related posts

Tags: , , , , , ,
2 COMMENTS
LEAVE A COMMENT
Jacqui
May 26, 2010
ad

I’m a fan of Orcon. We used to talk about moving our customers up the marketing ladder… You’d have suspects (who’d never even heard of you/your product) and you’d sell them so that they became customers. Give them extra good service EVERY time and they’d become clients… and so it went on up the ladder.

I liked it went I heard people referring to me as “their” marketing guru – knew they really WERE fans then (although we used the word ‘advocate’.

duncan
May 26, 2010
ad

Thanks Jacqui, glad to hear that my work at Orcon is paying off.

Definitely helps to create a story about how you get people from being complete strangers through to fans, and the various levels along the way.

It is also really useful to think about everything you do in terms of these levels. Are you trying to introduce yourself to people who have never heard of you, or are you just trying to turn someone who is happy with you into a raving fan.

Too often marketers are guilty of trying to do everything with every one of their messages.

Post a comment