Retention, Part 24: Retain Your Own Audience

By Sanya Weathers

In our sound bite world, it’s so tempting to try and describe your brand new product in terms of what people already recognize. When a reporter at a trade show asks you to describe your product, you can’t afford nuance. And your potential customers are even more of a challenge. They know what they like and don’t like about the products they’re already consuming, but the majority can’t articulate exactly what those things are. Instead, they want to know if your product is going to be like Competitor X or Option Y.

In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar, it’s a trap.

First of all, one post, announcement, or quote isn’t going to define your product to potential customers. You will need to repeat the same message hundreds of times, and everyone who speaks on behalf of your company should be saying the same thing. In other words, you should have your sound bite prepared so far in advance that you never find yourself flailing around looking for one.

Second, if you compare yourself to a game no one has heard of, the audience will stop listening and start trying to figure out what you’re talking about.

Comparing yourself to existing products is even worse, because a customer’s relationship with a social product is complex:

–    First love. Everyone secretly loves their first experience with a niche. The adventure, the newness, the excitement. If you compare your product to someone’s first love, you will create the expectation that they’ll feel the same rush… and they won’t.

–    Established relationship. If you compare your product to one that has perhaps grown a bit stale for your target customer, they might come check you out… but the instant you annoy them, they have no incentive to stay, because all their stuff/their friends/their money is in that other game. New relationships are hard. Ruts are comfy.

–    Nothing better to do. If someone is playing a competitor just to kill some time, and was hoping your product would be different, do you really think you’ll win them over by saying your product is like “X but better”?

–    Following the crowd. People probably like the market leader. That’s usually why a product is a market leader. Saying you’re like the market leader means you’re promising to match and exceed *every* aspect of the experience a customer has with that product. And you can’t.

You please no one when you define your own product in terms of how it compares, and while you might raise temporary interest, your long term retention prospects are dim.

Retention comes from offering customers something new. (Newness isn’t the same as innovation, by the way.) Whether the newness comes from the features or from your attention to detail or your price point, it doesn’t matter. Figure out what you’ve done that is new, and sell it to your own unique audience. You can’t retain someone else’s customers.