Its been no secret that over the last few months, I’ve been teaching myself about marketing, from a range of sources. It appears that Xojo actually follows the guidelines in many areas, except one.
Excited, Enthusiastic & Grateful customers.
Cultivating relationships between these customers and the company is considered to be a marketing advantage, because not only do these customers help spread the word, they contribute to your product out of their free time. They create resources, training materials and help other customers to enjoy your product more. Some become influencers and can make or break your company.
There’s two types of influencer.
Fanatical; these are customers who’ll talk up your product no matter what, they’ll overlook problems and vehemently defend your brand.
Reasonable; these are customers who’re willing to communicate problems and fairly compare your product with competition.
While it seems that #1 is the most desirable, it’s actually #2 you want on your side. Fanatical influencers lose credibility over time, especially in the face of glaring problems. They also don’t contribute to the growth of the product. Where as #2 not only help steer you to creating a better product, they retain their reputation for longer as they’re perceived as being non-biased.
I find it very interesting to understand this, especially given what we’ve seen in the last 5 years.
I have knowledge of companies who exclusively camp on number 1. The downside is that 1. attacks 2. each time they voice concerns and ultimately 1. will drive 2. away…
I don’t sorry… However I have seen a couple of YouTubers go from praising everything, to downright criticizing everything and then recently, some of them suddenly switched back to praising everything. At that point, I stopped watching a handful of 'em.
One of 'em went from praising a competitors product, to actually telling people NOT to buy it in a matter of months, not because there were any faults with it, but because “nobody actually wants competitors product, instead what people want is the iPhone 14+”. At that point, I unsubscribed from his channel. He even did a follow up video complaining about the number of people unsubscribing from his channel…
Honestly, it’s not a rabbit hole worth going down. I did a quick google search and it was a lot longer ago than I thought. Mid-2000’s it turns out. Where does the time go? Many links have died, in particular his blog. Here’s one that has survived the ravages of time.
I guess I’m not the only one that’s asked this question:
