Who is your next customer?

To predict who your next customer will be, know your existing customer first.

You want a new website? First, understand your advocates, how they become advocates, then
build the site that provides that process.

You want a social media presence? First, understand your advocates, how they become advocates and then put the social mechanisms in place that help that process.

You want to sell direct to your consumer? First, understand your advocates, how they become advocates and build a business model (retail, web, catalog, wholesale environment) that allows that to happen.

You want to grow? First, understand your advocates, how they become advocates and put the right message in the right place at the right time to nurture existing customers and convert new ones.

Seth Godin says it maybe a touch more succinctly, “Start with [knowing your customer] before you spend time on tactics, technology or scalability.”

The view from the inside

Customers live outside your organization. View your business from that perspective and see how much your internal view is negatively impacting this external experience. It’s a guarantee, when viewed from the perspective of your customer you’ll find myriad issues to repair that will improve your sell through, conversion rates, customer satisfaction, word of mouth, etc.

Information and innovation

This is the slide show from a lecture in 2010 given at Keio University by Oliver Reichenstein of InformationArchitects.jp. There is no voice over, and much of it is specific to the development of iA Writer for iPad, but starting on slide 25 is a wonderful flow of slides reminding us all about how ideas innovate the forms of the things we use.

Enjoy…

iA on creativity, information and innovation from reichenstein

Good washing

It’s the difference between doing good and talking about doing good.

Customers have been voting with their dollars based on a company’s impact on social good since early in this millennium. It’s becoming more and more the norm, especially for global brands, that consumers expect brands to act responsibly for “society’s well-being.” This ethical consumerism is a point of loyalty, and savvy marketers know it. As result, good, is the new green, and lots of companies are jumping on the bandwagon.

Unfortunately, talking about it and actually owning up to the responsibility are two different things. Enter the B-Corporation.

“This new class of corporation is a milestone for two reasons,” says Kyle Westaway, a lawyer who studies corporate forms and represented Launcht, the first company to file and officially become a Benefit Corporation in Vermont. The law, he says, “broadens the goals of the corporation from [just] profit to: profit, people and planet. Secondly, the Benefit Corporation increases transparency and accountability, by using an independent third party to verify that a business is acting in a socially and environmentally conscious fashion.” 

— Good.Is, Business

Now law in 31 states with bills pending in 9 more.