Why is there so much information about building relationships online with customers? Maybe it’s because we have forgotten or never learned how to build relationships face to face, how to make new friends, how to find our tribe. For those of us ho are still waiting for the mothership to come back, online is often friendlier than local-brick-and-mortar.
With so many ways to communicate, and so many people and companies wanting our attention, it is hard to know whom to trust unless we actually know the person. Yet as anyone who has been through a divorce can tell, even knowing a person for a long time may not let us know who that person is, or who he or she has become in the time we have been acquainted. Lovers and friends lose touch, grow in different ways, and move on.
I have come to use Amazon.com for a lot of my shopping–enough to have gained two “gift” cards. Part of that relationship came from saving money on books for grad school, but some of it was because Amazon offers other items that I want–like 11WW shoes. Barnes & Noble is my coffeeshop of choice only 2 miles from my house, and I often buy books there, but I don’t get the same kind of choices at the local store or at BN.com that I do at Amazon.
Why pay full price to order a book from my local bookstore, when I can get a discount online that makes the purchase cheaper even when shipping is added?
Amazon is my convenience store. That’s the basis of the relationship. I use reviews on Amazon to promote my name in cyberspace, hoping one day soon to have my novel for sale there. I can’t sell my stuff on BN.com.
But Amazon is not my friend. I don’t take Amazon out for lunch, though I do try to make a few nickels by promoting their stuff. I don’t ask Amazon if my new hair color is right for me, or if I really should try a different style. It’s cheaper in many cases, and offers things that my local stores in Spartanburg, SC just don’t carry. But I go to Amazon when I am looking for something in particular, not to shop for the sake of shopping.
Amazon got my business by having what I wanted at the price I wanted to pay and by making it easy to find without smacking me in the face with hardsell copy. Attraction marketing builds relationship, both the kind of softsell attraction copywriting and percieved value information, and the kind of attraction that comes from raising one’s own vibration away from poverty consciousness.
Recently I added an affiliate link for my college to make a few extra bucks in these slim times. If you would like to support chiropractic education when you are shopping, go here first: http://www.sherman.edu/amazon/
You must log in to post a comment.