The Nod Friday, July 14, 2006
Kathy Sierra has a great piece on "The Nod" - what should be the aspiration for most companies of having a passionate customer base, which is proud to use the product/service and almost wear it as a badge of honour acknowledging others users with the nod. It is questionable whether a mainstream product can achieve this or whether a niche product can preserve this when it goes mainstream. I say this because part of the "Nod" intuitively involves a certainly smugness - "we're smart because we know this is a great/cool product". If everyone feels the same, then this smugness evaporates.
Passionate users are a fantastic marketing vehicle - they freely proclaim the virtues of the offering to anyone that will listen i.e. "grassroots marketing". People will often trust other people's recommendations far more than advertising because it's assumed to be based on good experiences. Often these customers don't need to even be incentivised to promote the service - they are so happy with it, that they simply want to share their "joy" with others.
What's the magic formula for creating passionate users - simply put, over deliver on your promise to the user so that their reaction to the product/service turns from initial surprise into delight, ensuring of course that you give them what they want as a minimum. Kathy has much more to say on her blog on this subject - defintely worth checking out.
posted by John Wilson @ 9:48 PM Permanent Link
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