What marketing team wouldn’t want 15,000 people in their target demographic to see a post praising their company for being customer-centric?
Of course you can pay for ads that do it. But they’re ads. People don’t like them. And ads that brag about your company don’t hit people the right way.
You know what’s a lot better? When real people praise your company with no campaign or ad spend.
Like this:
This didn’t just happen out of the blue.
There are some pretty amazing lessons in everything that led to this little post.
It started with a partnership
Airmeet and PartnerHacker partnered up to deliver the PL[X] Summit, a five-day remote experience about partner-led growth.
Airmeet employed two of the most important principles of partnerships.
Build trust.
They were easy and enjoyable to work with. Reasonable. Timely in communication and action. And offered great service. They built total trust with our team at PartnerHacker.
Make them famous.
After the event, Airmeet invited us on to a year-end celebration they were hosting where they recognized PartnerHacker as one of their “Airmeet All Stars” for the year due to the success of the PL[X] Summit.
Who doesn’t like receiving a Major Award?
I joined their event to accept and say thanks. It was during this event that, in a casual convo between the CMO and CEO, this little nugget came out that the CEO spends three hours a day on customer calls.
I was blown away by it and shared it on LinkedIn.
I shared it because it was interesting.
But I also shared it because I was at an event where I had a chance to hear it.
I was at that event because Airmeet was making us famous with an award.
They were doing so because they had built trust with us as a partner.
See the causal chain?
You can’t plan this like a campaign.
A LinkedIn post with15k impressions from a partner, customer, and fan isn’t earth-shattering. But it is damn good marketing. A lot better than an ad or a cold email.
Since it can’t really be planned and plotted and executed and measured like a science project, this kind of thing rarely gets focus from marketing departments.
The point isn’t to craft a formula to repeat this or generate more similar posts. That kind of kills the very authenticity that makes it valuable.
The point is, when you come across stuff like this, to ask yourself a few questions about what led to it. A confluence of events and behaviors preceded it. A series of principles like partnering, building trust with those partners, and making them famous.
Uncover those. Re-enforce them in your culture. You’ll start to see more of the best kind of marketing imaginable.