One Customer at a Time

Mass Marketing Won’t Build Your Brand and Business

Here is a list of companies  that are terrible inspirations for your marketing: 

• Disney

• Nike

• Pepsi

• Coca-Cola

• Delta Airlines

• General Motors

• Progressive Insurance  

Don’t look to them as models for what you should do. 

What?  Aren’t these companies paragons of branding and marketing? 

Yes, sure, the kind of marketing they do works for them. But your company is not like theirs. 

When Pepsi puts an ad on the Super Bowl, they communicate the same message to 100 million people. Through the brute force of mass marketing, Pepsi and other large companies hope to attract a (very) small portion of the people who are exposed to these messages. They are like whales who swim through the ocean with their mouths open, catching bits of plankton that just happen to be in front of them as they move. 

Chances are, this is nothing like your situation. Most likely you are not a mass marketer. 

Virtually every person who reads this newsletter works in a company that builds its business one customer at a time. You impress customers not through marketing flash and brute force, but by demonstrating to each customer that you understand their particular needs, and that you see them as distinct and different from your other customers. 

Your Competitive Advantage Over the Big Brands (And Your Direct Competitors)

This is actually an advantage you have over these mass marketers. Pepsi must say the same thing to millions of people when they employ mass marketing techniques. You don’t need to do this. 

You build your business one customer at a time. 

But… most companies in your situation don’t recognize this, and they operate with a mass marketing mindset. They spray their messages out into the world and pray that some people respond. Their marketing teams focus mostly on the website, digital marketing, social media, and collateral printed in high volumes. Customer-facing technologies are focused on streamlining transactions with many customers, not on improving the experiences of single customers.

You don’t need to do this. 

Make Your Customers Feel Important, and Your Brand Will Become More Important to Them

You have the option to personalize your interactions with each of your customers. You can demonstrate that you value them for who they are, not because they are part of some mass, faceless audience. 

This is true whether you sell to consumers or to other businesses. This is true whether you meet your customers face-to-face, over the phone, through digital communications or through ecommerce portals. 

Even your reputation, in your community, industry or marketplace, is built one customer at a time. When people talk about you positively, or refer you to others, they are relating their personal experiences with your company and its product or service offerings. 

Your brand is not pixie dust scattered over your customers, magically transforming them into committed customers.  Your brand is what your customers believe about you as they interact with you. 

Your challenge is to ditch the mass marketing mindset, and orient your company around personalized customer experiences. Sure, you need a website. Yes, you may need social media posts and printed brochures. But these are secondary. They are like the backdrop on a movie set… providing the setting for the real action that happens when humans interact. 

What would you do differently if you embraced the idea that you build your business one customer at a time? 

What would you do differently if you jettisoned a mass marketing mindset? 

How much more would your customers appreciate you if you did? 

You are not a mass marketer.  

Don’t think like one, and certainly don’t act like one.