Building a loyal fan-base for your brand | David Scott | Engati CX

David Meerman Scott, the author of ‘Fanocracy’, joined us on Engati CX to talk about building brands and creating a loyal fan-base.

David Meerman Scott is an online marketing strategist and author of several books on marketing, including The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

David’s ideas have captured the attention of respected firms and organizations all over the world — having spoken in over 40 countries and on all seven continents.

His groundbreaking strategies don’t just slap new tools onto dusty old strategies — they reinvent the way to engage the marketplace.

David has also written the newest Wall Street Journal bestselling book “Fanocracy: Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans”. Fanocracy is rocket fuel used by forward-thinking companies and organizations of all sorts — including those from the most unlikely industries — to inspire and nurture true fans.

Loyalty, fan-base, and brand-building- A video with David Meerman Scott

Building a loyal fan-base for your brand

This section will contain a summary of our interview with David Meerman Scott. But, if you’d rather listen to the entire interview, our Spotify Podcast is embedded below the summary.

Tell us about your mantra, “The Power of Making Business Personal — Passion, Connection and Intensity”?

While David was studying the marketplace for his book, Fanocracy, he learned that it’s all about human relationships.

When we become passionate about something, we become part of a tribe. Organizations that can build a passionate tribe of people are the ones that are going to win.

The most powerful marketing force in the world is “Passionate Fans”, can you shed some more light on this and how businesses can leverage this force?

The idea of Fandom is incredibly powerful. Any type of organization can build fans.

David and his daughter even found an insurance company that has over a million fans. Hagerty Auto Insurance does classic car insurance. They go to events and meet with people who love classic cars and have conversations with them. They have a YouTube channel where they provide valuable information which has over a million subscribers. Hargerty even has an online drivers club with 6,50,000 members.

This proves that they’re not just focused on their product (auto insurance). They’re focused on building fans. That made them the world’s best classic car insurance company.

If you’re only focusing on your products and services, people will switch as soon as they find a better product or service.

But, if you focus on building a fan-base, churn will be substantially less, because fans don’t switch their loyalties that easily.

How can technology and automation aid in making the customer journey seamless, thus making fans out of the customers?

There has to be a human approach to technology.

Algorithms and bots need to be built from the perspective of how they’re working to make a true human connection.

When you deploy technology, you need to make sure that its in service of the humans.

What are the new mediums that businesses should try to engage with their fans/ audiences? Can you tell us something about Newsjacking?

Right now, in the middle of the pandemic, we can’t go out and meet people. So, it can seem hard to interact and engage with your audience.

But, video can be a powerful way to connect with your fans.

Neuroscience talks about mirror neurons. They fire when we see someone doing something as if we’re doing it ourselves. If you see someone taking a bite of a lemon, you can almost sense it yourself.

We can be thousands of miles away from each other, but our mirror neurons tell us that we’re in the same room. This is the same reason why we feel like we know the star of a movie that we’re watching.

Newsjacking is a concept that David invented 10 years ago.

It revolves around following breaking news, creating content around it and putting it out in the marketplace. That can get you noticed by the media and get you quoted in stories.

Are there any thoughts that you’d like to share with our audience?

One of the things that David and his daughter learned when they researched the idea of fandom is that people are attracted to other people who have passion.

When you’re passionate about something, it shows that you’re an interesting person. Passion is infectious.

The more you and your team are passionate about what you do, the easier it will be for you to gain fans.

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Building a loyal fan base- A Spotify Podcast with David Meerman Scott

Engati CX

We hope David’s insights help you with building a large and loyal fan-base. Engati CX will be back with a new expert in a new episode soon. Stay tuned.

Find David Meerman Scott

David has a lot of great insights that you could certainly benefit from. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter to learn more from him.

More from Engati CX

Now that you’ve learned about building a loyal fan-base, check out our interview with Raul Amigo on the 4 building blocks of CX.

Originally published at https://blog.engati.com on June 16, 2020.