Get a Herd with Zebra Stripes – Jungle Marketing Tip #3

Zebras roam in herds. Their stripes help each other get ahead by camouflaging them from predators. At the same time each Zebra has its own pattern, which makes her recognized by other members of the herd.

You can apply these Zebra-striping principles to your business as well. You want to help your customers, or herd. You want to protect, or camouflage, them from predators. (Predators are those unscrupulous companies or individuals who scam people.)

You can do this with Permission Marketing, which is a term coined by Seth Godin. As Seth Godin says, “Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.”

He discusses how consumers want to be treated with respect. They have learned to ignore the noise of most advertising messages, so they tune it out. When someone pays attention to you, they are giving you a gift. You can get and keep their attention with valuable information on things they are interested in. As you develop your permission marketing methods, you create a herd, or village of people who like, trust, and know you – so they are more likely to buy from you. You can help them avoid scams, which further develops your relationship with them.

We all like to do business with people who we like, trust, and know. It’s more fun that way.

So how do you develop your customer relationships?
(P.S. Stay tuned, Monday I’ll talk about roaring.)