Cultivating your fans
Jeremy Epstein runs Never Stop Marketing, a firm that specializes in “cutting-edge Community Driven Marketing” for such clients as Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Yes To Carrots, and best-selling author Dan Pink. He blogs religiously at Igniting the Revolution and can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo, FriendFeed.
Who wouldn’t want customers like those of Dan Pink’s book “The Adventures of Johnny Bunko,” who volunteered their own time and money to host events for other readers?
Or the the fans who love Yes To Carrots enough to donate their Facebook status updates to spreading the natural cosmetics company’s message
Sure, everyone wants that. But, it doesn’t just happen. It takes work. (Ugh, I know, I wish it didn’t).
The full business case and process for Community Driven Marketing is outlined in my white paper, “Community Driven Marketing: The Power of the Raving Fan,” but for now I’ll summarize the 3 steps of building a CDM engine:
- Identify your most passionate customers (your Raving Fans).
- Cultivate the relationships
- Activate them
Identification just isn’t that hard. There are enough “listening” tools out there that anyone can find their most passionate customers. (If you don’t have them, you have more fundamental problems and CDM can’t help you.)
Activating them is work, but it’s not impossible. Marketers have been building plans, guidelines, and programs for years. There are some special elements as it relates to Raving Fans, but these can be taught.
No, I am afraid the middle ground, the cultivation, what Seth Godin might call “The Dip” between finding them and activating them is where wanna-be CDM marketers are most likely to get tripped up for a few reasons.
- It’s not a total science.
- You need to truly care.
- Customers don’t care about your quarterly objectives.
- You can’t rush relationships.
The more I practice CDM with my clients, the more I realize that it comes down to “Cultivation. Cultivation. Cultivation.”
Fortunately, there are plenty sources from which to draw to figure out how you can cultivate your Raving Fans.
From classic models such as that executed by Mary Kay Ash to the wisdom offered by Emanuel Rosen in his recently updated “The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited,” you can find ideas for cultivation in many places.
One of my more recent finds was in Andy Nulman’s new book “Pow! Right Between the Eyes: Profiting from the Power of Surprise.”
I’ve described the paradigm shift that we are undergoing as the transition of marketing from matches to gasoline. Your Raving Fans are burning with passion. Your job as a CDM practitioner is to pour gasoline on that fire so that it spreads like wildfire through the social graph.
How are you cultivating your relationships with your fans?
Image credit, iStock
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Tags: Community Driven Marketing: The Power of the Raving Fan, Dan Pink, Seth Godin, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, Yes to Carrots
Categories: Ideas in Action
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Posted by Topics about Microsoft » Cultivating your fans on April 29th, 2009 at 7:38 am
[...] SmartBlog On Social Media put an intriguing blog post on Cultivating your fansHere’s a quick excerptJeremy Epstein runs Never Stop Marketing , a firm that specializes in “cutting-edge Community Driven Marketing” for such clients as Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Yes To Carrots, and best-selling author Dan Pink. He blogs religiously at Igniting the Revolution and can be found on LinkedIn , Twitter , Facebook , Plaxo , FriendFeed . Who wouldn’t want customers like those of Dan Pink ’s book “The Adventures of Johnny Bunko,” who volunteered their own time and money to host events [...]
Posted by Never Stop Marketing on April 30th, 2009 at 8:25 am
SmartBrief…Very Smart…
If you want to stay on top of the latest developments in Social Media, there are few better or higher quality places than the Smart Brief of Social Media . That’s why I was particularly honored and excited to be featured twice recently. Once, as a gu…
Posted by Custom Trade Show Displays on April 30th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
“Cultivation. Cultivation. Cultivation.” – Wise words. Inspiring article, Mary. Thanks!
Posted by Harold (SMM) on May 1st, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Great post. You are so right that cultivation is key and I can’t stress enough how important the “need to truly care” really is to the success of that cultivation. If your customers aren’t feeling true concern and love for them you will fail in the long run and find that the seeds you planted could even turn against you.