If you want to make your marketing life easier, seek out your superfans.
As a marketer, do you aim for the one percent, or for all the rest? Before you start writing me flaming emails about being elitist, I’m not talking about the super-rich, though kudos to you if you market to them. By one percent, I mean the superfans of your product or service.
In customer loyalty expert Jackie Huba’s book Monster Loyalty, Huba explains the most important lessons for marketing by studying pop’s top marketer: Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga didn’t just rise to fame based on a great voice and top songwriting; she marketed to her “one percenters.”
Focus on your one percent.
Superfans are the most engaged of any company’s customer base. These are your one percenters. Forget the top 20 percent who are 80 percent of your business. 100 percent of your advocacy comes from one percent of your customers.
When Huba conducted research of online communities for her book Citizen Marketers, she discovered the people who were the most engaged comprised just one percent of users. These one percenters created the most discussion threads and advocated the most for the company.
Retain your superfans.
When it’s 5x cheaper to focus on keeping your existing customers, said Huba, it doesn’t make sense to spend twice your efforts and money acquiring new ones. People are your best marketing resource.
According to a Forrester Research survey of 191 Chief Marketing Officers, most marketers focus their efforts on acquiring new customers. In fact, marketers spend twice as much time trying to acquire new customers (59% of CMOs) than on increasing customer retention (29%).
Promote your advocates.
Marketers should promote their company’s advocates. When word-of-mouth is a powerful tool of personal persuasion, it makes sense for marketers to promote their superfans.
Superfans might seem a little strange or weird to a marketing team, but these advocates are the diehard lovers of your brand. They love your brand more than you do. They talk about it and sell it whenever they can.
Your product doesn’t have to be super sexy like a rockstar to have superfans. Huba has found superfans are everywhere from Dish detergent to Costco to T.J. Maxx.
So if you want to make your marketing job easier, find your most vocal proponents on social media, cultivate them with your efforts, and promote their advocacy whenever you can. By focusing on your superfans, you might just become a superbrand.