I’m listening to my Pandora station, created around my favorite song, “If Today Was Your Last day” by Nickelback. The best thing? I love 90% of the songs that come up! And if I don’t, I’ll just skip it (fortunately it doesn’t happen very often). Are you doing the same? My friends sure do!
Why is Pandora so popular? Because it gives you the surprises that you want — you don’t know which song will come up next, but you know that it’s similar to the song that you already like, so you’ll probably like it too. And about the surprises that you don’t want? You call them problems!
How can you create surprises that your customers want? Simple. Put yourself into their shoes.
Easy? Heck no!
It’s extremely difficult to think from the other person’s point of view when all the filters (e.g. backgrounds, peers, education, worldviews) are different. That’s why it’s best to serve customers that are like you. In the book Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson call them “scratch your own itch”. You want to create a product or service that targets people in the same group as you. If you’ve never listened to music (although I doubt so), it’s very difficult for you to know what music lovers actually want.
Answer: We want to listen to music that we love, but we don’t want to hear the same song over and over again because we’ll get sick of it, and then we won’t enjoy it any more. Radio stations are NOT doing the job because they repeat the same songs for 3 months, every single hour! And that’s where Pandora came in.
It’s really hard for someone who doesn’t listen to music to understand this phenomenon, unless he talks to his customers A LOT (that’s a whole different story).
Next time you sell something, consider using surprises as part of your customer service/marketing strategies. It’ll blow your customers away! And if you use it on your family and friends, it’ll make them very, very happy. But you have to know what surprises they want, so understand them first. If you sign up for my email newsletter, I’ll give you access to my zero-to-hero marketing course, and the first lesson is exactly about understanding your perfect customers.
Till then, enjoy yourself with Pandora!
Image Credit: SqueegyX
