The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 17: Customer Acquisition vs Customer Cultivation

This is a graph I drew to give you a visual representation of The Communication Gap between most companies and their customers.  The blue shading on the left represents the desired level of communication from the company’s side.  The company wants to communicate with almost all new and potential customers.  The number of existing customers the company wants to communicate with falls sharply, and the company makes little effort to communicate with its customers that have some brand affinity, and its brand advocates.

On the right side, the red shading represents that customers that do want to communicate with the company.  It’s almost all brand advocates, some customers with brand affinity, then a sliver of existing and new customers.

But note the purple sliver at the bottom.  This represents customers that want to communicate with the company, and that the company is communicating with them.  Also note that the company tries to communicate with its customers when they aren’t looking for communication (new and existing customers) then when they are wanting to connect (when they develop some affinity for the brand and become advocates), the company stops trying to talk to them.  It’s completely backwards and creates a huge communication gap in the middle of the customer’s journey from being a new customer to becoming an advocate.

When it comes to communication there’s a massive disconnect between what customers want and what companies are giving them.  The reason why is because companies are focused on customer acquisition when they should be focused on customer cultivation.

And that’s what I’ll be talking about during this episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show!

Show Notes:

0:40 – The disconnect between customer acquisition and customer cultivation.

1:00 – Companies focus on acquiring new customers, but do little to cultivate existing customers.

1:30 – An explanation of The Communication Gap graph, which is posted above.

4:15 – Most of us do not want to talk to brands that we have no affinity toward.  ‘Your brand is not my friend.’  But if I am an advocate for your brand, I do want to connect with you.

5:00 – There needs to be a balance between focusing solely on acquiring new customers, and cultivating existing ones.  Customer cultivation helps transition existing customers into advocates for your brand.

6:10 – Can your company connect with me on a bigger level than simply your product?

6:40 – Notice how the orange shaded area almost perfectly overlaps the customers that rock stars focus on.  Rock stars do the exact opposite of companies, they focus almost solely on marketing to current fans, vs new customers.

7:45 – The Communication Gap is basically a hole where customers leave you.

9:00 – The value of creating a communication plan that focuses on the differing communication needs of each type of customers, to help new customers transition to eventually becoming brand advocates.

11:00 – We trust fellow customers more than we do a brand we have no connection with.

Here’s where you can download the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well! Thanks for listening!