Why I Love Marketing is Why I Love Community
And Vice Versa
This is a guest post from my friend
Community and good marketing have always had a common thread that runs through both, while binding both to one another. It’s a thread that most companies miss, because they never look for it.
I have always had a very visceral, emotional reaction to seeing a happy crowd of people. It’s why I’ve always been enamored with sport fans and music fans.
It’s always baffled me that businesses can’t, and don’t, seek that same type of relationship with their customers. Who wouldn’t want to have a customer base that absolutely adored you?
Apparently most companies, that’s who.
Rock stars, in particular, have cracked the code. Whereas most companies seek a transactional relationship with customers, rock stars seek an emotional relationship with fans.
This is the Loyalty Graph. It shows, in one graph, the difference between how companies market to customers, versus how rock stars do.
The difference is simple, but profound: Companies market to potential customers UNTIL they purchase, then almost all effort to build a relationship with the customer ends…as soon as they become a customer. For most companies, when a purchase is made, that’s the end of the relationship.
For the average rock star, it’s the beginning. The average rock star TOTALLY IGNORES you…until you are a customer. THEN they start to build a relationship.
But it’s more than that…
What My Aunt Alyce Taught Me About Marketing
In the early 1980s, every year at Christmas my family would make an annual trip to Birmingham to visit relatives on both my mom and dad’s side of the family. I would have been around 10-13 during this period.
Typically, we would first visit my dad’s side of the family. I would be told repeatedly “Wow you are getting so big!” by aunts that hadn’t seen me in a year, while the uncles said from the living room ‘hold it down, we are trying to watch the football game in here’. I’d collect a small toy that was appropriate for a 10-13 year old.
Next was visiting my uncle Jim and my aunt Alyce. These annual visits to see Alyce and Jim and my cousins were honestly some of the happiest memories of my childhood. A highlight was seeing my aunt Alyce. While my other relatives noted that ‘how big I was getting’, my aunt Alyce was a little…extra.
She would see me as soon as I entered the room and start smiling. She would say ‘Mack, come here!’ Then she would hug me and run her hands up and down my arms and say ‘Look how tall you are getting! And look at these broad shoulders!’ Then she would smile at me slyly.
And instead of getting a small toy, she would give me a bottle of cologne, or one year my first pair of boxers.
Whereas my other relatives saw a child who was a year older, my aunt Alyce saw a child who was growing into a teenager, who would soon be a man. She saw my potential, and she made me feel special just for growing a year older every time we met.
Throughout my life, any time someone treated me the same way, like I was ‘better’ than I realized, it had a profound impact on me. When I got into college, I decided to major in marketing. I loved the idea of marketing being used as a tool to help people feel good about themselves. To help them see how products could make their lives better.
That’s about the most idealistically naive take you could expect from a college student with no real-world marketing experience to have about the field, isn’t it? I truly believed I could work in marketing and it would be a tool to make customers feel better about themselves.
But the reality is that most marketing is horrible. And it makes us feel horrible. It makes us feel like we need to be some person that we aren't. That we need to measure up to an ideal that was never meant for us.
It makes us feel...empty. It reinforces all the secret insecurities that we carry about ourselves. The ones that weigh us down when we let them, that could crush us if we gave into them.
The ones that, at the end of the day, are only in our minds.
But there was something about rock stars. They used marketing to connect with their fans in a way that validated my (idealistic?) theory that marketing could be used as a tool to make people happier.
Watch that video, and notice how Taylor’s fans react to receiving a gift from her. One girl can barely read her note from Taylor, she’s crying so hard.
THAT is what every company should want. Customers who absolutely adore them.
But…how? There was still something missing.
What Kathy Sierra Taught Me About Marketing, and Community
A few years out of grad school, I got into the world of social media. Suddenly ‘customers have a voice’ was all the rage, and I was more determined than ever to find a way to use marketing as a tool to make people that better version of themselves.
Then one day I discovered Kathy Sierra. Kathy, much like my beloved aunt Alyce, is a bit…extra.
While other marketing ‘experts’ talked about how marketing could be used to create customers, Kathy had a better idea.
What if, instead of how can we make people happy to buy our products, what if we made customers happy AFTER they bought our product?
While almost every other ‘marketing expert’ on the planet was focused on teaching us how to create sales, Kathy was focused on teaching us how to make our customers fall in love with us AFTER they buy from us.
That’s pg 39 from Kathy’s book Badass: Making Users Awesome. Isn’t that genius?
Kathy is exactly right, before the customer purchases, we focus our marketing on how they will USE the product (amazing photography), then when they buy the amazing camera, we give them a black and white manual for it.
It’s almost like we are giving them the middle finger for being dumb enough to buy our product. It’s like you open the box for the camera, see that stale, plain manual, and all your dreams of being an amazing photographer fly out the window.
Gotcha, sucka!!!!
Note what Kathy says: “After they give us money or join our service we should focus even more on what they really want to do.”
We have to validate why they bought from us in the first place.
And one way to do that is...with a COMMUNITY! What if we built a community for our customers around the 'thing they really want to do'.
For instance, in the above example, Canon could make an online community of and for their customers who are passionate about becoming amazing photographers. Build a forum where Canon SMEs and select customers moderate customer questions and provide advice.
This way, Canon’s customers can come together and connect with each other over their shared love of photography.
Think about this: Why doesn’t Canon have a user conference? Say a two day conference where users are given access to the latest cameras and products. But in addition, they are given workshops that show them how to use their cameras to take amazing pictures!
Plus, two days of passionate Canon customers connecting with each other! Talk about community building! Canon could even have representatives on site that will work with users to help them set up local ‘camera clubs’, where local Canon owners can meet regularly. This helps them better use their Canon camera and become better photographers, while also becoming more loyal to the Canon brand!
But it all starts with shifting our mindset away from viewing marketing as a tool to separate the customer from his wallet. Instead, marketing could focus more on POST PURCHASE ACTIVITY. It could be about helping the customer become better at the thing they bought the product for.
A community is a big part of that. I’ve always said that a rock concert is the greatest marketing tactic ever invented.
Think about what a rock concert is: You take hundreds, often thousands of people who are part of the same community (fans of a certain rock star), and you put them together in the same space for several hours.
What do they do? Talk to each other! They connect over a shared love of their favorite rock star. In doing so, they share stories, experiences, thoughts and ideas. They validate to each other why they love that rock star.
This is why I love community; Everyone connects and helps other members become something…more.
Good marketing does the exact same thing. It doesn’t focus on the product, it focuses on the impact the product will make on your life. It shows you how to use that product in a way to become something…more.
Want to bring it all home? Create marketing that focuses on HOW and WHY customers will use your product, instead of the product itself. Then when they buy the product, give them access to a COMMUNITY of customers focused on the HOW and WHY of your product.
There’s that common thread that runs through community and good marketing that I was looking for.
“What’s the ‘Bigger, Cooler Thing’ that our product is a part of?
Build your marketing around THAT. Build a community around THAT.
And you’ve already won.
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He is a digital marketing strategist who helps companies connect with their most loyal customers. He is also a good human.
Other Guest posts this month are:
on March 20th on March 25th on March 27thThank you for taking the time.
I'm a fractional COO, turning startup chaos into clarity. With 22+ years of experience across Technology, Apparel, Construction, Interior Design, Civil Engineering, and Manufacturing, I help companies scale without breaking.
 | A guest post by
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Thank you Neela for letting me post here, it is an honor I do not take lightly.
I think many people, marketers in particular, mistake what makes a great community, and what makes great marketing. Because it’s the same thing: The focus on the ‘bigger, cooler thing’.
The community isn’t about the individual anymore than great marketing is about the product. You talked about how in Trinidad everyone in your community checked on each other. Yes, gossip was involved, but it was mainly about everyone working together to stay connected to each other. Everyone played a role in helping achieve the LARGER goal.
Great marketing is about asking the tough questions. “What’s the bigger, cooler thing that has nothing to do with us (the brand) and that has everything to do with the customer?”
Build a community around THAT. Build your marketing around THAT.
Happy Tuesday, sis!
Be sure to check out Mack's publication for my article today -
https://mackcollier.substack.com/p/the-brand-diaries-in-n-out-burger