What makes some products spread like wildfire while others grind for years to break even?
The world has changed. Some brands are dominating with minimal advertising, sometimes none. Everyone hopped on to Twitter not because of ads but because a friend eagerly talked about it. iPhone 1 sold only 6.1 million units, but with almost zero direct ads, that turned into a whole 2.3 billion.
How can your brand save years of hustling? How can it be the one that people pick and eagerly talk about?
The soul of Modern Marketing is this: giving your customers a motive to turn into an army that eagerly markets your business on your behalf. Here’s how:
Remarkability: Create Your Purple Cow
No one gets out of their way to watch a cow. Even a nice, cute cow. But a purple cow? That would make anyone stop to watch and take selfies and talk about it for weeks.
Being very good is no longer good enough. We rarely talk about things that are ‘very good’. Most of your competitors are already very good. How will you beat that?
You must be insanely exceptional. So distinctive, like a purple cow in a field of brown ones. A remarkable brand that gets customers to distinguish it in the crowd and triggers the network effect (word-of-mouth, in the old days).
There isn’t sufficient promotion to make an average product beat one with an army of customers who fight for it (unless you have the budget of Unilever or General Motors or Samsung).
Virality: Leverage The Power of Network Effect
Virality is marketing gold. And in the age of social networks, so many businesses are busy hacking and hustling for a little more followers, likes, re-shares. But no one likes being disparately spammed to like, comment, or share. Only when we feel strongly about something will we share it with a thousand others.
Remarkability is key here. But you need more. You need the right language for your fans, one that strikes an emotional chord enough to create widespread sharing. You also need to make it easy for them to share.
Your people can run with your idea years faster than ads and spam.
Cultural Shift: Connect a Tribe
Do more than sell a product. Create a movement. The desire to belong and identify with others is deep-seated in human nature. And when a new idea or product turns up in a group, it is noticed quickly.
Look at Harley Davidson to see how we become so open to new ideas when we see people like us embrace them. Think about that cafe in your city, the popular one that’s jammed with people. Why? Very few are there because they’re thirsty or hungry. They’re not there for the food. They’re there because everyone else is there.
Connect people who want to be connected around your idea and tailor your message to align with their aspirations. Culture can be as tiny as a Facebook group or a YouTube channel, making it easier for you to be more impactful and concentrate on such a little group. Intertwine that with virality and remarkability, and you are up to cultivating an army of loyal fans eager to invite more people like them to join the movement getting you significantly closer to a brand that makes you proud.
Tribal Behavior: How We Identify Your Tribe from a Distance
Now, what flags do you want your culture to wave? What cultural behaviors can you make visible to the people outside your tribe?
Think of this: someone who doesn’t know about you sees a friend wearing your logo or fixing your sticker, asks them what that is, and a whole marketing conversation starts on your behalf.
Promotion: Get the word out
You see now how marketing is so much more than just promotion. Having built remarkability and virality and connected your culture, and set its visible behaviors, you can now choose to add more fuel to the already spreading wildfire to make it reach even further. Promotion in modern marketing isn’t only advertising. It’s the culmination of your investment in both the media and the user experience.
By delivering the right message at the right time, promotion becomes a highly effective tool in your modern marketing arsenal.
Conclusion
It takes work to build a brand that people respect and get behind. Real work, not mechanized, templated managing. It takes emotional labor and a deep understanding of your audience and their behavior. It takes leadership and time. But it earns you respect and trust and sustainable growth that scales on its own as time passes.
