Score More Traffic, Subscribers, and Buyers by Discovering Your Second Customer

Score More Traffic, Subscribers, and Buyers by Discovering Your Second Customer

Reader Comments (33)

  1. I’ve always been somewhat aware of the Second Customer, and I’ve preached the concept to my clients, but this is a great way of laying it out. I think that the trick (and challenge) is in finding the balance between serving First and Second Customers.

    Thanks for another awesome post Sonia!

    • Balance is definitely key — there are some who are looking so hard for “buzz” and “engagement” that they’re not doing any business. Not useful. 🙂

      • Thanks for putting a name for the “Second Customer”. They are the reason we have those FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Stumble Upon and Google+ buttons on our sites. We are hoping they would share it even if they don’t buy our products/services. They might have readers who would want to be a “First Customer”.

        And yes balance the act for both of your customers.

  2. Thanks for this series, Sonia. I think people underestimate just how well you should take care of your second customer, even if that person doesn’t buy from you.

    I know one company that I’ve never purchased from, but I’ve referred 2 customers to them who each paid $1k for the service. Why did I do it? Well, that company has been showering me with free help, in the form of content marketing for years. It’s the least I could do.

    • Agreed, and it pains me when I see people give the advice to purge “non buyers” from your email lists, for example. Some buy, and some help get the word out. They’re both very useful people to have on board!

  3. Great advice Sonia! In the marketing world, it is vital to take care of your second customer as well as making sure the first customer has everything they need too. The second customer can impact how many first customers you get especially with social media and word of mouth marketing.

  4. I think we’ve all been guilty of it at some point in our lives… some more recent than others- where we put out content just for the sake of putting out content, because that’s what we’re supposed to do.

    When the ‘second customer’ has a choice between crap and not-crap, the latter is usually triumphant. I think that if it’s good enough for someone to spread to others then you probably got it right with your primary customers too.

    I think this is a nice warning letter and a little bit of a wake-up call towards those of us that may have ‘phoned it in’ a few times. The days of content for the sake of content are long-gone, because of the noise that it creates- noise that no one is listening to.

    I know that I’ve tried a lot harder to step up my game, once I started to compare myself to what other people are offering. People don’t want to be yelled at or lectured, just a little entertained and inspired as they try to figure out things for themselves.

    I really appreciate this post, because I’m in the process of delivering more zen-like content that people may enjoy spreading instead of just pushing an agenda so hard… now where did I misplace that second customer? She was around here somewhere.

    -Joshua Black

  5. I’m definitely the second customer. I don’t own credit cards. My only source of online currency are contests. I prey off free e-books.

    Yet, I can be share-happy.

    So here’s a tweet!

  6. Great post Sonia. Immediately I think of our clients and their social media marketing strategy. If as marketers, we focus on only the first customer we are neglecting a whole other market. The task at hand is to create engaging content for those second marketers to share while not forgetting about those first customers!

    Brittany Lough
    Account Executive
    The BLÜ Group – Advertising & Marketing

  7. Having a well-defined target market is more important than ever. No one can afford to target everyone.Many businesses say they target “anyone interested in my services.”

    Targeting a specific market does not mean that you have to exclude people that do not fit your criteria from buying from you. Rather, target marketing allows you to focus your marketing dollars and brand message on a specific market that is more likely to buy from you than other markets.
    Reading about the “second customer” was interesting. Often, it could be a “by-product” of the so called “target market”

  8. Sonia,

    Thanks for the important reminder about the “second customer.” This “person” you describe is definitely the difference between mediocre results and meteoric results.

  9. fantastic post Sonia! I guess in the conventional (offline) and online sales environment we get taught that the ultimate measurement of business success is converting leads to SALES!

    But, thanks for reminding us of the importance of ‘non paying’ customers who bring us paying customers through sharing our content.

    Ultimately, you emphasise the need to good, quality content which we can easily place on the back burner as we chase for more sales.

    Lovely post once again!

  10. Awesome post!

    Got to agree with most people here – the second customer is so important. Often more so than the first – who knows the potential of a share? Its the ripple in the water effect – one person may not like it enough to buy it, but that share to their thousands of followers may spark multiple sales off the back!

    Great post.
    Reagrds,
    John

  11. HI Sonia! I never have the idea about the second customer and your article gave me the idea to think about it and work on that. Thanks for sharing great idea 🙂

  12. While there is no magic formula for getting your web based business of the ground, there does seem to be a few social media elves who can make all the difference. My most popular post seem to be have been discovered by such an elf. In one day the number of people visiting my site quadrupled and most of the people who left comments had an aol.com address. The idea of catering to the “Second Customer” is intriguing and I hope to see more on the topic.

  13. I work with Chambers of Commerce, and more often than not they are on an endless chase for first customers, not realizing that their current member base could now be their best “second customer.” Instead they keep running after what they don’t have at the expense of what they do. It’s a churn that would be much easier to manage if they just realize their most powerful sales tools are already in the house. Thanks for the insight, and helping me give a name to a soapbox I tend to live on!

  14. Second customers are currently my number 1 source of traffic to my blog. Though a lot of people find me via organic search, my traffic really spikes when people share my content, or when I guest post.

    I never take it lightly when someone else shares my content even if only a handful of people come to my blog as a result of that one share. The reason why is because you never know where even that handful of new readers may lead. They may become a first customer or may be another second customer, and so the potential is great, each time my content is shared by a second customer.

  15. I am yet to have any second customers coming to my website and with all this advice I’ll be sure to make some amends as to how my content is written. I was always under the impression that second customers are pretty much useless to the success of a website since they won’t contribute to the development of it in any way. But I guess that I just looked at it from the wrong perspective. I would never thought that these people could actually be the key to get people more noticed and as a result get more of their first customers. This is some really great info here. Thanks so much.

    • It’s the second customer who links to you (without whom your SEO is dead in the water) and shares your content on social sites. So yes, they matter quite a lot. 🙂

  16. I read another article here at copyblogger that also emphasized the point about how important it is to get people to share your content. This added another perspective on that for me and reinforced the idea. Do you recommend any other articles on this topic?

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