Margeting Guru Seth Godin’s Tips For Getting And Keeping Fans

Marketing guru Seth Godin has long pushed a customer centered marketing approach that translates well to the music industry. (Think country music stars standing in the rain at the State fair taking a picture with every single fan that wants one.) But his newest approach "Flipping The Funnel" which relies heavily on the viral marketing opportunities provided by the web should resonate particularly strongly to anyone concerned with gathering, keeping, and mobilizing fans.

The elevator pitch on "Flipping The Funnel" goes something like this:

• Turn strangers into friends
  • Turn friends into customers. (FANS)
    • Then do the most important job and …
      • Turn your customers (FANS) into sales people (INFORMAL AND FORMAL FAN CLUBS AND STREET TEAMS)

The title "Flipping The Funnel" comes from Godin’s belief that many of us spend too much time trying to shove more customers into the wide end of the funnel and not enough time nurturing relationships with the fewer but most loyal and lucrative customers at the narrow end of the "funnel".

To accomplish this Godin suggests utilizing a bevy of mostly free net tools and communities including book marking site Del.icio.us, blogging, photo sharing tool Flickr and other community sites to build and communicate with your fans base. For the music industry we’d add community sites like MySpace, Friendster, Tagworld, free downloads at PureVolume and elsewhere, and indie music sites like CD Baby and Garageband.

Thanks to the folks at FanMail you can download a free PDF of Godin’s article.

TOMORROW: SETH GODIN ON HOW THE BEATLES BECAME SO FAMOUS AND WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU.