Your Company Needs Fanboys — Lots of ‘em

Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at 12:48pm by David Askaripour in Marketing

Ever suggest a new product or service to someone and try and convince them to give it a shot? Sure you have, we all do that. But, did you ever try and share a product with someone and they automatically said something like: “no way! I use fill in the blank and I would never use that!”

Well, that person was probably a fanboy. A fanboy is someone who loyally uses your service and protects it at all costs. If someone tries to convince them to switch to another service, a fanboy will immediately disregard their suggestion and continue using his own brand.

Fanboys are the people who not only protect your brand, but also push it. They won’t just tell a few people about your service, they’ll tell the world. It’s almost like an obsession for them and anyone who tries to take away that obsession in regarded as the enemy. They’ll never let go of your brand.

Many of us are familiar with the term “connectors” — people who connect other people with your product or service. Some marketing books will refer to these people as “mega hubs” — a person ( mega hub) who makes it his job to connect to other people (hubs) and share your business with them.

Though a fanboy embodies the characteristics from both connectors and mega hubs, they take things a step further — they “protect and guard” your brand. These people will not only throw a brick in your face when you try and get them to switch to another product, they’ll do everything in their power to convince “you” to switch to their brand — to become a part of their club.

The fanboy is the guardian of your brand and will forever fight to preserve it. It would be safe to say that Apple, Inc has an army of fanboys protecting their brand. Mac users are very loyal and consider themselves a “family.” They love their Macs, love their iPods, and love everything about Apple. In fact, these Apple fanboys will be among the people who first purchase the iPhone as soon as it drops.

And guess what… they don’t give a $hit about how much it costs — price won’t be a factor for them. They’ll continue to support the brand no matter what, barriers don’t exist for them.

We’re all fanboys in some capacity or another. Think about… did you ever begin to use a brand and absolutely fall in love with it? Did you purchase their products no matter what price they were because you trusted the brand? Did you hold firm when someone tried to convince you to switch? If so, you’re a fanboy.

Now that you are familiar with a fanboy, how do you build your brand so that it’ll, in effect, build an army of fanboys for you — to protect, guard, and aggressively promote your product?

Think about your brand and how it affects the live of your customers. Think about how your brand can leave an everlasting positive impression in the minds of your loyal customers. Find out what makes your customers happy from using your service. When you do — when you have locked in on that information — do everything in your power to sustain that positioning. Never stop adding value to your brand, even when you “think” that your brand is successful. Making a brand successful never ends, it’s something done every single day that you run your company.

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