How to Make Your Customers LOVE You & Stick with You for Life
They say that life is all about relationships, and it’s easy to see why that’s true.
Everyday we move through life by moving from one relationship to another. We wake up and kiss our partner good morning. We share gossip with our coworkers. We speak sweet nothings to our house plant to help it grow. And light up when we get a text from a family member sharing great news.
We get weirded out by the guy at the store with the creepy vibe. And maybe yell right back to the person with the road rage when driving home.
And we’re utterly dependent on them… even thousands of years after we moved out of the times of our cavemen ancestors.
Most of us learned how to interact in a socially appropriate way from such a young age that we don’t even realize the rules that we’re immersed in going through everyday life.
And because it’s all so natural and feels so inherent… you probably already realized how important relationships are to your business & marketing!
What you might not know is that marketing isn’t just about platonic relationships.
In fact, it can actually help your digital marketing efforts by thinking about your potential customers and clients like a love interest!
It may sound odd… but hear us out.
Much like when you find a person you want to date, when you find a person you want to buy your product, you have to woo them... strategically.
You don’t want to lay all your cards on the table right away.
You want the other person to get to know you in a way that puts you in a great light to make them fall in love (and stick with you).
You want to treat them with respect and love… you want to get to know them and show that you care!
Marketing Success Using the Stages of Intimacy
When you think about starting a relationship, what are the first steps that come to mind?
You start by meeting.
Then you grab their phone number.
You might wait a few days before calling or texting to say hi.
After you’ve communicated a bit over the phone, you ask them on a date.
On your first date, you want to look and feel your best: you put on your favorite outfit, do something special to your hair… maybe you even come up with a list of things to talk about.
If that first date goes well, you’ll keep up communication and, eventually, ask them out again.
So goes the cycle, going on dates and getting to know one another, until you both decide you’re ready to become a couple.
Now, imagine the same situation, except you’ve known you wanted to be in a relationship with the other person since the first time you met. All you have to do is show them how great of a partner you’d be, so that they want to date you, too.
That’s marketing.
First of all… you need to make sure you’re out there in the world enough to be noticed! You want your dream customers to be able to see you and get intrigued and want to interact with you...
(you wouldn’t stay home alone on a Friday night if you desperately want to find your soulmate — you’d change out of your pajamas & go dancing with a friend!)
So the conversation begins, and just like with a person you’re interested in romantically, you don’t want to start out super-aggressive (think pushy in-your-face ads that end up pushing them away). After all, your product or service is making the world a better place! You believe in it wholeheartedly, and you think your ideal customers would, too, if they’d give you a chance!
But they’ll be less likely to give you a chance if you come on too strong.
So how can we market products in a way that truly connects us with our customers? So that, when we pop up in their newsfeeds or a google search, we feel like a friend and not an annoying ad to be scrolled past?
Treat your ideal customers like you’d treat someone you’re romancing.
Seriously: it’s the best way to make sure your customers get the love, attention, and consideration they deserve!
So if you want to learn how to make your customers love you, read on…
Step 1: Start off slow
What’s one of the most important parts about building a romantic relationship with someone?
You gotta build up to the romance.
If you jump right it, trying to get the other person to marry you on the first date — you’re not going to get very far! (and you’re definitely going to come off like a creepy weirdo)
The same goes for trying to market your product or service. One of the best things you can do is start slowly.
Begin by introducing your mission. Not your flagship product, not your lead magnet, but your brand itself. This is how you build authority.
What does that look like?
On Facebook, you might create an ad that looks something like this:
But wait, no call to action?
Yes! Exactly.
The point of this post is to introduce yourself to your ideal audience. You want them to start to recognize your brand. You also want them to engage with your posts, so ideally they’ll start clicking those like, comment, and follow buttons — in addition to falling in love with your business.
Another way to introduce yourself? Upload a video explaining who you are and what you stand for. Caption it with something as simple as, “Who are we?” And watch as an audience gathers around to learn more.
But, again, marketing is all about human relationships. As you create your retargeting campaign, keep in mind the metaphor of the desperate texter:
After you go on a date with someone, you’ll most likely send them a quick text. Something casual, like “I had a lot of fun tonight. We should do it again!”
Even if you’re pretty sure they’re into you, you probably won’t immediately text them, “Let’s move in together!” Cringeworthy, right?
The same goes for over-eager marketing. That’s why we start things slow!
By coming on to strong, or asking for too much commitment before they know you… you’re actually PUSHING them away!
Generally, we advise our clients to make three ads like the one above, focused on engagement. Ads that emphasize the humanity of your brand. (After all, we’re not robots writing your ads — we’re real people!)
After that, it’s time to move onto the next step: get your ideal customers to make a small commitment.
Step 2: Build the momentum
So, someone’s taken the next step and given you their email address.
Congratulations! That’s the human relationship-equivalent of getting a prospective love interest’s phone number.
But that doesn’t mean it’s time to sell yet. (Would you ask someone to exclusively date you right after they gave you their phone number? Or would you wait a few dates first to see how well you click?)
When someone first subscribes to your emails, the best first thing you can do is send them a welcome email. In the email, let them know:
Who you are
What your brand is and what it stands for
What they can expect from you, in terms of number of emails and type of content
Again, the goal of the welcome email isn’t to ensure your leads buy your product or service, but to get them accustomed to your brand. That way, they’ll be much more likely to open your future emails, when you are ready to start explicitly selling your product.
As always, keep in mind that you don’t want to rush right to selling your product.
Even when they’ve given you the tiny commitment of an email address.
You’ll want to show them you’re the real deal before you try to get them to buy.
Step 3: Give them real value
Picture this: you’re at a cocktail party talking to a group of friends. A stranger comes up next to you and asks for money for a taxi home. Neither you or your friends have ever seen this person before. But they’re standing there waiting, with their hand out expectantly.
Now, imagine you’re at the same cocktail party. A stranger comes up to you and starts chatting with your group, eagerly talking about the same topic of conversation you’ve been discussing with your friends for weeks. Turns out, you share a lot of interests! You have a great time talking with them for a few hours. At the end of the night, your new friend tells you, cheeks pink, that they’ve forgotten their wallet, and asks if you’d be able to give them cash for a taxi home.
Who are you more likely to give money to: the stranger in the first scenario, or the stranger-turned-friend in the second?
Probably the second, right?
It’s no surprise that audiences are much more likely to make a commitment to your brand after they’ve already become familiar with you. Even if it’s only a small commitment.
Enter the lead magnet.
If you aren’t sure what, exactly, lead magnets are or what they should look like, check out our article on How (and Why) You Need to Optimize Your Lead Magnet Today.
For the rest of you, we’ll assume you know all about lead magnets and have your’s perfectly optimized ;)
You want to move customers through your marketing funnel by creating a lead magnet that is specific and helpfully targets concerns or desires they actually have.
When lead magnets are successful, they’re a great tool to make sure your ideal customers are both familiar with your brand and aware of how much value you bring to the table.
A successful lead magnets tells your potential customers, “Hey. I’m the real deal. I’m here to give you the information & inspiration you need.”
Kind of like how, on a first or second date, you want to discuss all the things you have in common. It establishes street cred and generally lets the other person know, “Hey, we’d get along!”
This is how we make customers that will keep loving you for life. Not by trying to sell to them as soon as they give you a little information... but by showing them how much value you can bring to them the longer they stick around.
Step 4: Don’t be afraid to puT yourself on the line
Okay, so you’ve played it cool. You started slow. You took your time and made sure it didn’t feel like you were rushing into anything.
But eventually in marketing, just like in human relationships, you reach a crux. A point when the will they/won’t they has to come to an end, and it’s time to decide which direction you’re going in.
In romantic relationships, that crux comes when you decide between becoming a couple or moving on and finding someone else.
In marketing, that point comes when someone is warmed up to your brand, they know your products, and it’s time for them to decide if they’re going to make the leap and buy your product or service… or not.
At this point, your customers know you. They’ve seen your posts on social media, they’ve read your emails, and they’ve opted in for your lead magnet. They know what type of value you bring because you infused each step of your marketing with the right message.
Now it’s time to sell.
This is it! The moment you’ve been waiting for since the first date, when you knew you wanted to be in a relationship.
So, put yourself out there!
It’s time to pitch yourself. Let your customers know you’re ready to take the next step.
If you’re selling your product or service over email, you might send 5 emails over the course of a week where you try to sell your product.
If you’re selling through Facebook, come up with a series of ads explaining exactly why they should purchase your product or service. Address the top 3 questions or concerns people have that prevent them from using your service. Use testimonials to strengthen your argument.
This is where you’re proving why your product works, and showing what makes it stand out on the market.
The goal is to ease your potential customers’ concerns and convince them you’re special. Sell your product like you’ve been on a few dates and you’re ready to make this thing official!
Here’s another great strategy:
After you’ve already been pitching to your leads for several days, let them know you’re almost done pitching to them. Tell them, “hey there, I notice you haven’t signed up for our course yet… And after tomorrow, I’ll stop bugging you about this. But I really think you’d be a great fit for our program.” By putting a deadline on it, you’ll get more people to commit to you.
(Kind of like if you told a romantic interest, “Look, this has been fun, but if you’re still not ready to commit by the end of this week, I can’t keep waiting on you.” You don’t want to pressure anyone into doing something they don’t want to do — but you do want to let them know that, if they’re on the fence, they have good reason to act now.)
This is the part of your marketing campaign you were probably most excited about (or least excited about if you’re afraid of rejection!)
And we promise that, if you warmed up your audience by starting off slow and building up to the pitch, they’ll be much more likely to buy from you.
Step 5: Assume they like you
Don’t panic if you followed these steps and your audience isn’t ready to take the next step.
Just like if your romantic interest hasn’t responded to your texts in a while, there could be a ton of reasons why.
Maybe something came up and they had to close the app on their phone.
Maybe they’ve been super busy and you totally slipped their mind.
Maybe they’re waiting on you to make the next move (perhaps in the form of a coupon for anyone who left your product in their cart).
Either way, assume they like you.
Because if you start feeling like your warm audience doesn’t want your product or service, that discouragement won’t help your campaign. And if you decide to give up on those audience members who haven’t bought from you yet, you could be missing out on new, lifelong customers who just haven’t gotten around to saying “I do” and pushing the “purchase” button yet.
The truth is, we’re all busy people! That’s why it’s so important to keep inviting people who haven’t converted yet to take the next step. If they’ve made it this far in your funnel, they probably love you.
Step 6: Don’t give up
An often overlooked part of a successful marketing campaign is retargeting.
In retargeting, we focus on people who have already interacted with you, or have been on your website and viewed your sales page, but didn’t purchase your product or service.
Retargeting campaigns are wonderfully powerful tools to persuade people who you already know are interested in your product to come back and try again.
Kind of like how it’s easier to try to date someone who’s already admitted they think you’re cute than it is to date someone who hasn’t shown any interest in you.
If you haven’t read our blog on Why You Need to Be Retargeting Your Potential Customers, give it a read to learn all about how you can use this brilliant marketing tool.
Retargeting shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should be one of the main ways you’re converting your leads.
Don’t give up just because someone visited your sales page but didn’t convert.
We already discussed the importance of assuming they still love you.
It’s not that they 100% don’t like you if they didn’t purchase the first time you asked…
In many cases… something else just came up.
Step 7: Be willing to let them go
That being said, if you’ve done all the previous steps to build the brand-customer relationship, but your prospects still aren’t buying…
...Sadly, it’s time to move on.
You don’t want to be that annoying person who doesn’t get the message. Time to put your attention (and ad spend) onto other potential customers.
And don’t be discouraged. There are a lot of other fish in the sea.
At the end of the day, marketing is just another relationship.
The relationship you have with your customers is not so different from one you would have with that special someone.
You’re a human... marketing your products and services to other humans. Keeping in mind how human relationships work is a vital tool to generating leads, and converting those leads into sales.
Wondering how to incorporate this process into your marketing plan so you can score lifelong customers?
Here at Lumen Digital Marketing, we know how to build your marketing funnel in a way that does more than just sell your product…
… but actually scores you tons of customers who love your brand and want to stick with you for the longrun.
If this sounds like the customer base you’ve been dreaming of (yes, please!), let’s talk.
We’ll help you create a custom digital marketing strategy that looks at your entire customer value journey. One that will help you increase your impact & seal the deal with your ideal customers.