Building your marketing snowball

The purpose of marketing isn’t just about getting a customer to purchase your product. The purpose of all marketing is to move people from one general state of engagement with your product or service to a greater or deeper stage of engagement.

If the person is unaware of your product, the marketing objective is to make them aware. If they are not knowledgeable, the goal is to equip them with knowledge. If they aren’t interested, then your goal is to spark their interest. If they’ve never tried your product, then you need to get them to give it a try. And if they liked what they tried, your goal is to engage them in the process of engaging other people in the process.

If you do this right you will create a marketing snowball, where each cycle will build an increasing amount of momentum and size. If you do it wrong, your marketing snowball rolls once and then falls over (melting on the side of the hill).

A few tips to increase your chances of keeping your marketing snowball rolling:

1. Focus on engagement – Instead of trying to use brute force (advertising) to convert 2% of a large audience through your cycle, focus on building advocates. Champions are the backbone of any movement, not the leader.

2. Think holistically about the marketing process – Yes, you can dupe a customer into buying your product by being deceitful. However, in the long run you’re only killing the cycle.

3. Provide great tools/rewards for your advocates – Make it easy for your champions to tell your story and reward them for doing so. Having a great product and/or remarkable customer service is probably the best tool you can provide; it makes recommending your product waaaay easier (who wants to suggest a dud to their friends?)

4. Don’t try to rush things – Getting a marketing snowball started takes time. But, if you can get it rolling your ROI will exceed your wildest dreams.