What makes great marketing? I think it’s when you can really see, through the eyes of your customer, how great it is to use your product and are able reflect the emotions and passion related to the use of your product back to the masses.
I’ve studied marketing and word of mouth for 20 years. Marketers love control, but over the last several years of social media growth we, as marketers, feel we’ve lost some control. That’s not a bad thing. If you have a great product or service and you know how to facilitate rather than broadcast, you can catapult past competition.
In 1995 I wrote a book called “How to Market WITH Computer User Groups.” Back then, user group leaders and members (i.e. the geeks) were the analog version of every person in today’s digital participation culture. The point of the capitalized “WITH” in the book title is that it was ineffective to market “TO” user group leaders. The only way to be effective was for them to be the voice. It was important for them to own the message. And for the marketer, to enable them by reflecting the voice of the customers back onto them. Marketing with a mirror.