What’s your Customer Magnet?

For Amazon it is was books, for Zappos it’s shoes, for Trader Joe’s it may be that chips collection, for Google it’s search and so on. Books, shoes, chips and search are the customer magnets for Amazon, Zappos, Trader Joe’s and Google respectively. Customer Magnet is that one thing that really attract customers to your door steps.

It is very important to have customer intelligence around the customers coming to you and identify the magnet that is attracting them over there. Equally important is how to put this magnet to work. First, make sure you are continuously improving on that product and beating competition squarely when it comes to the magnet product. This will help you build the equity for your brand. This should be done to an extent where your name becomes synonymous to the product. Next is developing the ecosystem around that product. This is something that can make a huge difference. You got to do brand extension “correctly” and use the equity you have built for your brand.

Do you got to have a customer magnet to be successful? I am a die-hard advocate of serving the niche, so I believe yes. You got to start from somewhere. Get hold of one thing and do it in the best possible way beating all the competitive options out there. That product will be your customer magnet and the center of the ecosystem that you could develop around it.