johan horak’s energy flow

You had this dream!

You cannot stop because the energy is high. You design the dream stuff (calling it products or services sounds so boring). Then you create the promotional material and you buy expensive advertising. And you hope, in vain, that the ad will not be a waste again. Then, for some or other reason, your newly designed stuff fails and you cannot define the reason....  why did the people not queue up for your magic stuff? Have you ever walked up to a beautiful guy and asked him for a kiss? The fact that you want to maybe do it is another story. This is no different from your exciting, failed and out dated marketing approach.  

Here I am trying to show the link between e-word of mouth (in the electronic word-of-mouth sense. Seth Godin calls it called viral marketing) and social networks.  When you setup online social networks to allow e-word-of-mouth you have an amplification ability. This is critical for any small business marketer to understand, what is meant by "amplification ability." By The Way: As you know; you also get off line social networks that will give you word-of-mouth ability. Off line word of mouth is the traditional way of spreading a story and but it has a decaying function rather than an amplification function). 

That's why I am asking and begging business people to start using social media to create their own social networks. (I call these social groups or places cultivation pools). 

 

When you start creating cultivation pools, filled with eager and willing fans (obviously fans are people in your cultivation pools), you will find that they will.... gladly.... assist you in designing your new stuff. If you start discussing a new idea, you'll find that your fans will be asking you for more. This must be a confidence booster. 

Now you have no risk or you'll have very reduced risk bring your idea to the market. You have people or fans from your cultivation pools co-creating your stuff ....or is it their stuff ......with you. And the same people will then spend money buying your stuff. Because you have made them an integral part of your feedback and product or service design system.

 

Let me summarise:

 

1. Advertising is an expensive and easy way to make you feel good because you are doing something ..... even though it may in vain. 
2. Advertising can be seen as intrusive and that it creates separation between you and your potential clients
3. Creating products and services without a fan base is an wasteful activity
4. Creating a online fan base (cultivation pools) help you create friendship and long term trusting relationships.
5. Creating an cultivation pools takes time but it's not expensive. It's effective if you do it well.... meaning the correct intention. 
6. Creating an online fan base is not a choice. You either do it or your business will drag along until it's eventual death.
7. Start designing and improving what you do by asking feedback from your fans.
8. Your clients are not interested in what you want, they are interested in co-creation...allow them. Give them the tools to talk to you.
9. Most advertising does not make you more money, and creating cultivation pools takes to long. Both are right. You have only one choice; the easy road or the long road.
10. Start creating a foundation for your cultivation pools and invite your potential clients and clients to become fans. 

 

Johan Horak

P.S. Leave your baggage in 3D - you won't need it where we're going. 

All my business and marketing coaching ideas are always published here.