Mary Mary, How Do You Grow Customers?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just grow new customers? Buy a packet, then go home and plant the seeds?

Except, you’d be too impatient. Even if you were guaranteed these seeds would grow to maturity in 3 to 4 months with the proper care…it wouldn’t be fast enough for you. You’d plant them, water them, and fertilize the hell out of them…and in a couple of days you’d be cheek to ground seeing if there was a sprout coming yet. Then, you’d dig until you unearthed the whole seed wondering what was taking so friggin’ long.

You can’t expect ANY GOOD seed to pop up overnight. Not even your “customer seeds”. The best customers will come with the proper nurturing and time. And when they finally need you, they’ll be there.

Your marketing is the entire process. It’s the planting, the watering, the fertilizing, the weed pulling, and all the sweat and time. And guess what happens when you plant more seeds every day or every week? Then, when you harvest later on…you have another batch reaching “maturity” in another week. And then another a week or a few days after that. So, start planting.

The nurturing part of the process is what you SAY to your prospects in your advertising. Are you informing them about how you can help them? Are you causing your prospects to start thinking they’ll probably try you out when the time comes? Are you connecting with them in your ads? Are you shouting at them, or seducing them? Are you saying things that make them feel really good about your company.

First, you might want to figure out what people like to hear. Do they like to “be sold”…or would they rather come to their own conclusion after being given enough information? YOU think they want the hard facts about you and your products. But THEY want the confidence to buy from you. They are buying your products and services AND they are buying YOU! They’re buying a product or service they feel will deliver what you say it’s supposed to. They’re buying a trustworthy company they feel will have their back if anything were to go wrong.

When you nurture your seeds…you have time. Time is part of the equation. And you have time to tell them things that isn’t always about your products and services. You have time to tell them a few stories about you or your happy customers. It’s not the hard sell. The “hard sell” is annoying if you ask me. I’d rather have the soft sell from someone who seems trustworthy. And when I decide to buy it will be on my terms. So, will you keep “hard selling” in your ads? Or would you rather attract a better, more frequent, and profitable customer?

If you talked to your prospects face-to-face the same way you talk to them in your ads…how do you feel they’d re-act?

Mary…how do you grow your customers?

Have a fruitful day!

Duane Christensen

Non-Fat Advertising blog