How showing your values creates loyal customers
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A few posts ago I talked about finding out what your customer really needs. But there is more to it: When choosing a product, most people rely more on emotions than rational thinking. We use rational thinking to justify the decision, but usually it’s the decision that comes first and not the other way round (although we’d like to think it happens like that).
And if there are many products for the same purpose, it’s not rare at all that we choose a more expensive alternative over a cheaper one. That might seem a bit counter-intuitive: if all of the products do the same thing, why do we choose the expensive one?
The answer lies in our emotions. Somehow that specific product and its marketing has touched a part of you and created emotions, made you feel that it’s better than the rest. To illustrate the point, let’s look at an example product and the reasons why I would choose it instead of some other, cheaper alternative.
Values matter (The Moleskine notebook)
I enjoy journaling my thoughts and writing down ideas that pop into my mind. To do that I need to have a notebook. There I have the need, so is that all there is to it? Do I go with the cheapest basic notebook and a regular ballpoint pen?
No.
Although the cheapest notebooks fill my need on a rational level I’ve noticed that they don’t work for me. When writing on a cheap notebook I feel that my writing is cheap and written to be thrown away just like the notebook. But when the notebook itself looks and feels valuable I pay more attention to what and how I write. The thoughts written on a notebook like that are meant to be saved for years.
Moleskine goes one step further: it tells you that you should be proud of writing your thoughts to a notebook, going as far as quoting Oscar Wilde:
I never travel without my notebook. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Wow! They are saying that my writing is sensational. How does that make you feel? It makes me feel that they appreciate me and want to support me in my writing. And by doing that they get me thinking that our values match, they appreciate me and put me in the same league with authors like Oscar Wilde… And then the only reasonable thing for me to do is to go and get one of these notebooks, right?
What about us?
Let’s end this analysis with a few questions:
- What are you doing to make your customers feel that you appreciate them?
- What do you value most? And then even more importantly: are you presenting your values to your customers?
- Are you selling just products or do you also sell your world view and values?
- Why should your customers choose you over the competition?
Now I’m off to think about my own answers to these questions.
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