Do you offer Loyalty Card ?

I was ordering my daily dose of iced mocha at the much celebrated Lint cafe next to our office in Martin Place Sydney when the waiter serving asked me if I had a loyalty card. He mentioned that he sees me visit their cafe religiously every morning before work and he was surprised that I didn’t yet have a loyalty card which would entitled me to a free macarons (a biscuit) after every 5 cups of coffee. I thought about it for a second and I realised something....

I realised that I was visiting the Lint cafe daily because their products were remarkable; simply the best in the chocolate cafe industry and my daily dose was giving me the perfect start to my day. I didn’t need a loyalty card to keep coming back to their store. I tried to explain my theory to the waiter that only average cafes need loyalty Cards which is used as bait to try and have repeat business from their customers; remarkable businesses use the quality of their products and services as bait and hence don’t need to participate in cheap marketing schemes like loyalty cards. The waiter offcourse was speechless and I’m sure he would have thought about it when I had left.

Remarkable businesses don’t need cheap strategies such as ‘Loyalty Cards’ to have repeat customers, the customers choose to be loyal because they offer remarkable product, service and experience. The fact that they are remarkable makes people come back over and over again and they go and tell their friends who also get addicted to the experience and tell their friends and the success of the business spreads like a virus, I call this the remarkable virus and in my 10 years experience in studying successful businesses, this is the common DNA that all successful business share; they are simply remarkable.

The same is true for online businesses. Successful online businesses know their business is not for everyone but it is for someone. The most successful online businesses very brilliantly bring together a community of people with shared interest and give them something that they want; they don’t try and be all things to everyone. Deals Direct did it well by gathering a community of bargain hunters when they were only trading on ebay and switched that community to their ecommerce shop and continued to grow by providing discounted products to their community, who spread their word to other likeminded people and their community grew big enough to make deals direct one of the most successful ecommerce businesses in Australia. Zazz did the same thing, they were remarkable because they had a unique business model (just 1 product offered at a heavily discounted price per day) and they very successfully gathered a community who because raving fans and spread the word of Zazz and made them successful. Facebook is another perfect example of this and so is Gumtree or UniqueCarSales.

The secret to success offline or online today is simple but not necessarily easy:

Step 1:  Don’t try to be all things to everybody but rather be remarkable to somebody. Only focus on what you can do best and be the best at that.

Step 2: Gather a community around your product and service. If your product or service is remarkable, people will find you and they will get addicted to you and they will talk to their friends about you who will also find you and get addicted to you and your business will grow like a virus.

Step 3: Repeat.

Talk to Macquarie IT today and ask us how your business can become remarkable, I am certain it has the potential to be a lot better than what it is night now. All that is missing is your initiative and our partnership.

Kind Regards
John Singh.