It doesn’t make sense to ignore your friends while trying to get the attention of strangers, but businesses do it all the time.

Friends (not your personal friends) are already familiar with your business, and have probably purchased from you before. Strangers know nothing about your business and have to be introduced from zero.

I think the compulsion to look for more strangers comes from how businesses start. If I start a consulting business, it’s new, so it has almost no friends. The only way to grow is to recruit strangers. I successfully recruit 20 strangers a year to give me 1 project each. After 5 years the business has 100 friends, most of whom are not giving me any new projects.

The natural thing is to keep doing what’s working, so I continue spending resources to recruit 20 new strangers a year.

What if I spent equal resources to make what I offer more valuable to the 100 friends? What if I made sure I was the best possible solution to their current problems? What if I asked those friends to send referrals? Would I ever need to recruit another stranger?

Marketing to strangers is not bad, it’s just difficult and expensive. Focus a lot of attention on your friends.