Fishing for the Big Picture

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:17:15 -0800

With the end of 2009 just around the corner, I thought it would be useful to write a "big picture" post here instead of a specific "how-to" article.

I was recently asking myself "where do customers come from?" and "how do I reach out to more of them?" I've long been a big fan of metaphors, so I started brainstorming metaphors as a way to visualize the many dimensions of how customers come to know about one's products.

After a few false starts, I remembered the "fishing for customers" metaphor used by Daniel Jalkut in Episode 19 of Core Intuition. I decided that this is a great metaphor, and it's worth thinking about some more.

The question is: Who are the fish and who are the fishermen? (Uh... fisherpeople?)

Metaphor 1: Your Customers are the Fish

This is the metaphor from Daniel's podcast. Think of your customers as swimming by in a stream, and you are trying to do whatever you can to get them to notice you and become a customer. A net to catch some might be a newsworthy event or review or word-of-mouth recommendation that the fish come across. The more (or bigger) nets you cast, the more fish are likely to notice you and get caught.