A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
– Henry Ford
Many of us are mistaken and we think the purpose of running a business is to make money. Many times even our mission and vision reflect the same restricted views.
However, as a marketer, I couldn’t agree more with Henry Ford. Businesses have higher purposes than earning money and these purposes are what make a business unique and different from each other.
Money is important otherwise nobody would be running a business. But you grow your business on the basis of non-monetary things. Here’s what you’ll need to build a strong business:
Customer Trust
The first digital marketing inspiration from Henry Ford is customer trust. Henry Ford’s words have become even more relevant in the digital age. Now, businesses can’t hide behind a brand name anymore. Those days of writing to a company and never hearing back again are gone. Companies can’t do that anymore.
Now, companies are out there on the internet. They are present on most of the social media channels, they run a blog, they send newsletters, and many times, they even provide chat facilities. They are interacting with customers every day and becoming responsible for their actions.
There is no doubt that this digital age has given rise to many spammers, scammers, cheaters, manipulators, and hackers. The Internet made it easy for them to hide behind a fake name, fake social media account, or even a fake website. You never know who is running a website.
That’s why it becomes very important to start building trust. The number one reason why web visitors don’t buy from many websites is trust. The stronger trust you’ll build, the more sales you’ll be able to make.
When a customer is on your website, he is going through this mental analysis if you are a real company, if this is the real website, if the website is safe or not, if they are going to lose their money to you or not. You have to ease their questioning mind.
If you have gathered the trust of your customers, you have paved the way for a long-lasting business. Customer acquisition becomes easier when you have already built a powerful foundation for your business with deep-level customer trust.
Not to mention that for building customer relationships, you will need trust. If your customers feel unheard and ignored, they will lose their trust in you.
Customer Equity
The second digital marketing inspiration from Henry Ford is Customer Equity. You’re in this business because of your customers. If tomorrow, your customers stop buying from you, you will cease to exist.
However, if you run out of money, you can always make more. So, the number of customers you have gained in your years becomes more important than the amount of money you have earned.
In short, customer equity means building and managing profitable customer relationships. It counts both current and future value your customers will provide to you during this mutual relationship. Share on X
Let’s say if this month you have 100 happy and satisfied customers, and next month you have 120, then you have increased your customer equity. If you continue focusing on it and building more and more customer relationships, then soon, you will have an army of happy and loyal customers.
When you’ll reach a stage like that, even if you run out of money, you know you can rebuild your business because your customers still love and trust you.
Loyalty is one of the most important factors for measuring customer equity. You can say that Apple, Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Facebook, all have great customer equity.
Don’t forget that the more customer equity you have, the more competitive advantage you’re going to have and more irreplaceable you will become for your customers.
Brand Equity
The third digital marketing inspiration from Henry Ford is Brand Equity.
Brand equity is something that defines whether the customer will pay a higher price for your product if other similar quality products are available in the market?
It also defines whether a customer is going to ask for your product by mentioning its name or by using a generic word. It is the difference between people saying “Let’s get some coffee.” v/s “Let’s get some Starbucks.”
If you are just focusing on making money, then you will be very disappointed later when you will realize that even after so many years your customers are still not loyal to you and can leave you in the blink of an eye.
And the reason for this is that you have spent your time making money rather than gaining a competitive edge by building brand equity. This makes you easily replaceable.
If you would have built a brand, then you have made replacing you tougher. Many coffee businesses can come into existence but moving Starbucks out of the market is not going to be so easy for any one of them.
This should explain to you that you don’t want a business that is still not valued and trusted by its customers; you want a business that becomes an integral part of your customers’ lives.
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