To spread the word, build relationships

Think about the first business ever created. A bartering arrangement, I’d imagine, between two people. A couple things likely came together to make it happen. Probably complementary skills and shared needs (I can do this, you can do that; let’s trade). But most importantly, they knew each other. Their respective businesses needed a customer and they got that customer by building a relationship with them.

To this day, the ability to create a successful business is the ability to build relationships with people. People that share your passion and become valued employees, people that love your product and help you spread the word, people that give you feedback to make it better, and, of course, people that buy from you.

But building relationships with people is hard and becoming increasingly harder. With the tools to create something now directly in the hands of anyone who wants to reach out and grab them, so many more things are being created now than ever before. And because more things are being created, there are more people out there trying to spread the word about their thing — whether it’s a blog about cheese, a store on Etsy, a store down the street, a collection on Medium, or a startup poised to be the next Google.

That means the competition for those relationships is fierce. As a result, new methods of building relationships with people are being quickly adopted by those building a brand around something. Advertising, for a long time, was the most important method for a business wanting to build relationships with people. They would attach themselves to someone else’s content — a TV show, a highway, a search results page — get as many of the right impressions as possible, and hope their message makes enough of an impact.

But the depth of connection you get with someone that becomes a customer from an advertisement is pretty lousy. Social media has opened up new doors, allowing brands to talk to their customers directly and with a more human sounding tone. Content marketing has helped too. If a brand helps me learn something on my way to becoming their customer, certainly the connection is stronger than if they interrupted me with an ad. Video marketing is taking off now for the same reasons; when you deliver content in front of a camera and show off your personality, the relationship you’re building has a chance to be stronger still.

These methods are great. We use them all at Ticketleap. But the absolute best way to form a relationship with another person is to share a unique experience with them in person. Those early human barterers were onto something. They built their relationships in person and had customers for life. There’s a word we throw around in the office a lot at Ticketleap called “communitas.” It’s the sense of connectedness two people feel when they share a unique experience together. There’s a bond that forms that goes well beyond what you can expect to get from a tweet or a blog post.

When our customer, Yards Brewing Company, has a smoked ribs event, luring in the beer drinking community of Philadelphia (me included), they’re forming connections with those people. The next time I’m at a bar and Yards is on tap, not only am I more likely to order it, but I’m probably going to tell the friend I’m with about the time I met the head brewer at Yards and he explained to me the origins of the India Pale Ale.

So throw events. Fun ones. Interesting ones. Those designed to give people in your community a great experience. If you do that, you’re building something all great business have: a great community. It’s that community who will be your best source of customers, employees, and will be the seeds that spread the word to build relationships with many many more.