Stop Chasing “Likes.” Start Looking for “Loves.”
Resist the Mass Marketing Mindset
Most businesses are not mass marketers. Most of the people reading this post do not work for Apple, or Disney, or Nike, or for any other national/global brand.
Most of us work in organizations that build their business one customer at a time.
Despite this, most companies have a mass marketing mindset. They spray their messages out into the world and pray that some people respond. Their marketing teams focus mostly on websites, digital marketing, social media, and collateral printed in high volumes. Companies have marketing goals like:
"Get the word out."
"Capture eyeballs."
"Maximize our reach."
They measure success by how many “likes” they get on their social media posts.
Does this marketing approach make sense for your business? Most likely … no.
You don't make a cent when somebody "likes" your business's social media post. Sure, that "like" might lead to something ... maybe ... once in a great while ... maybe. But probably not.
And when we spread ourselves too thin, hunting for "likes" or "eyeballs," most of us are not serving our business models. Seriously, how many customers do you need to be successful?
When you hunt for thousands of "likes" are you wasting resources that could be focused on finding a smaller number of "loves?" Most likely … yes.
Customers who "like" you move on. They keep scrolling. They swipe left.
Customers who "love" you buy from you. They buy more from you. They pay you more. They pay you first. They tell people you're wonderful.
How many ‘likes’ does it take to equal one ‘love?’
Most of us earn our customers one at a time. Our customers have choices, and to encourage each customer to choose us, we need to focus our attention, whenever possible, on individual customers or small groups of customers. If you try to talk to too many potential customers, you’ll inevitably spend less effort on communicating with those who can be most important to you.
I remember back in the 90s, when digital marketing and social media became new tools in our marketing toolkit. I was excited and inspired that we’d use these technologies to create hyper-custom messages, in order to be personally relevant to each customer. And, yes, we now have that capability and, sure, that custom “targeting” happens … some of the time. But, unfortunately, most digital marketing and social media is conducted more like traditional television or magazine advertising, where marketers “spray and pray,” sending mass messages to masses of people and hoping someone notices.