Building communities is something people have been trying to do on the web for some time. It began with bulletin board systems (BBS) in the dial up days. With the growth of the Internet it moved to message boards. In the last few years people have used Social Networks and other social media tools in the name of building community. But how does much of that translate to marketing your business let alone to making sales and generating a profit to show a return on these types of efforts?
The solution seems to lie in creating a community of customers/clients that willingly do your marketing for you.
Seth Godin calls it “giving your customers the megaphone.”
Many used to call it “customer evangelism”.
Jeremy Epstein calls it “Community Generated Marketing”.
Recently, I was able to sit down with him and discuss his work and growing success in this area. Here is the transcript of that interview:
Steve: You have been working in marketing for a while. Could you share with us some details of your background and experience in the marketing arena?
Jeremy: My passion for marketing began in Tokyo, Japan where my career started. My boss handed me a copy of Peppers and Rogers’ classic “The One to One Future.” From that moment, I knew my calling.
My team conducted the first email marketing campaign in Japanese Internet history for McVities (a British cookie company) and we did some neat stuff (by 1997 standards) for companies like Heineken (they had a bar in their offices) and Unilever.
After returning to the US, I headed up marketing for 2 years at the start-up I co-founded with my brother. It was called “SilentFrog” and was a marketplace for buyers and sellers of odd jobs to get together.
Then, I wanted to see “how the big boys do it,” so I spent just about 6 years in field sales and marketing at Microsoft, working mostly with services partners.
Steve: How did you come up with the term “Community Generated Marketing”?
Jeremy: I am blessed to have some phenomenal clients who push me as much as I push them. I was discussing with one of them what we had achieved in helping Dan Pink’s new book “The Adventures of Johnny Bunko” reach the Business Week best-seller list…and how it had happened, in large part, because we were able to get his most passionate fans to host events on Dan’s behalf, for free.
It kind of just clicked…after about 17 different (far worse) names.
Steve: You mention in your blog that one of your early successes in “Community Generated Marketing” was with the author Dan Pink and the customer-led Bunko Breakfast series. Could you explain how that came to fruition?
Jeremy: Originally, we were just leveraging the fact that Dan’s publisher was sending him around the country to do book signings at Barnes and Noble and the like.
We figured that since he was already in, say, Minneapolis, we could communicate to his fans (via the Blog and his Facebook fan page) and let them know that Dan was willing to “hang out” with them at Starbucks, with no particular agenda.
His readers really liked this, so we blogged about it.
Then, we started getting requests from all over the country (and world, actually) along the lines of “hey, when will you be in Houston?”
So we just asked ourselves, “can we do a Bunko Breakfast without Dan actually having to be there?”
The answer: a big YES! We now have 25 people around the world (US/Canada, Romania, Japan, Australia, Costa Rica, Phillippines) who are finding venues, promoting to their friends, and hosting events….all for free.
Steve: What are the steps in a “Community Generated Marketing” campaign?
Jeremy: Well, isn’t that what I get paid to do? 
First off, you’ve got to identify your ‘raving fans.’ These are your core. The people who will do things for you because they believe in you and want you to succeed.
Next, you’ve got to try a lot of little things…fast, to see what works. It’s not a one size fits all and every community is different. You need to work with them to figure out what type of marketing activity fits best.
Lastly, with all due respect, it’s not a campaign. It’s a conversation. Yes, that’s cliché, but it’s true. Talk with the ‘raving fans’ to find out what gets them excited. Then, iterate around that.
Steve: For many sales and marketing departments looking at this approach, how do they relate this to sales and demonstrate ROI that helps them get budget support for a program like this?
Jeremy: The flip answer is: “how do you tie ROI to your current ‘brand awareness’ activities?”
The real answer is that you can’t…and you can.
It’s hard to say that a given blog post or community-generated activity creates a scale, so we look at proxy metrics, like RSS subscriber growth, members of our fan page and look for correlation to sales figures.
On a deeper level though, there’s the fact that it’s becoming easier and easier for people to block out unwanted marketing messages from corporate entities.
Think about Facebook. If I don’t want to hear from you, I can ‘de-friend you’ and that’s it. Pretty soon (and it’s already happening with otherinbox.com, for example), I’ll have that same power vis a vis everyone.
As a result, you won’t be able to get ANY message to a prospect without an endorsement from his network.
Steve: The economy looks to be a very rough road ahead for the next 12-18 months. This is going to be especially true for small businesses. How does a program like yours help them in an environment like this?
Jeremy: I’m biased, since my livelihood and passion are tied up into this, of course, but ultimately, having your most passionate fans do your marketing for you is going to increase ROI and lower expenditures.
Since most of what we do is via social media, the cost of experimentation and iteration is far less. Plus, tracking (at least in some respects) is far better, so you’ll be making smarter investments as you get more familiar with your community.
Not only that, you’re building up a marketing asset that, if nurtured properly, grows with you and serves as a ‘force multiplier’ not just now, but well into the future.
Your community can give you both short-term and long-term ROI.
Steve: If people want to dive deeper into learning more about “Community Generated Marketing”, what would you recommend they do?
Jeremy: There are a few things they can do:
1. Subscribe (RSS/by email) to the Igniting the Revolution blog (hey, it’s free!)
2. Read my Whitepaper “On Building a WOM/Social Media Strategy” (blog posts here or PDF download)
3. Invite me to lead a discussion with your team to learn the “Marketing Survival Strategies for the Attention Economy.” (These folks were glad they did.)
4. Connect with me on the social network of their choice: LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo, Twitter, FriendFeed
5. And, I suppose they could hire me, right?
Brought to you by Network Solutions®
