You Can't Buy Customers. You Have To Earn Them.

 
Warning: this is an unfinished post. A thought I'm still thinking through and I'm hoping you can help me frame it.

Last night on a plane ride home from Chicago, I was reading Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone, by Mitch Joel (amazon link) and he ended one of his chapters with "You can't by community. You  have to earn it." He's right with respect to community and I think in today's world, he'd be right with respect to customers too - hence the title of today's post.

As I look around it seems to me that consumers are getting increasingly fed up with poor products and poor service. They're no longer willing to accept substandard as acceptable. And they're taking steps to remove the substandard from their lives.

Why?

Maybe because it seems like today any great idea or service can be copied in days not months or years. And a good idea can be morphed and improved upon even quicker. With how easy information flows over the internet consumers are more quickly made aware of new options.

And it seems to me that today poor products and services fail faster. It used to be that it was hard for an upset consumer to share their story with more than a handful of friends/family/co-workers. Therefore, they had to be really upset or have a real bone to pick with a company before they'd invest the time necessary to give a company pause. But with today's social media networks, any consumer (not just social media experts) can tell the world about a substandard experience. And best of all, the world will listen. And then tell their friends.

No, I'm thinking the days of being able to just carpet bomb the consumer into believing that yours was the best or maybe only real solution are over. Sure there are other tricks to buy consumers. Just look at the wireless phone service space. Want an iPhone? You're stuck with AT&T, whether you like it or not. But even there, I think you'll one day see change that will mean wireless phone service companies will have to earn their customers loyalty each and every day -- just like the rest of us.

Anyone see this from another angle? A counter point or maybe something to add a bit more depth to this thought. Would love to hear.