Your greatest marketing and sales tool is customer advocacy. Having others talk about your product is important. And getting them selling the virtues of how your solution will benefit like-minded customers with the same need as themselves is everything!

This approach will drive the strongest growth. If you get it right, you’ll also create a strong bond between you and your customer base going forward. I have never found a greater marketing and sales machine than ‘bought into’ customers: where you have a great relationship and they love the brand and solutions you deliver.

The first and the greatest voice of those customers you want on board are the customers that everyone is looking towards to guide the market. These are your innovators.

If you are entering into an existing market with a new product, gather those innovators together that you know already.

If it is a new market, you are going to have to do some work on segmentation. Start building personas as to what an innovator looks like in this new market, and then start to build relationships. You could offer them an incentive to take a look at your new product before anyone else, get them on the pilot providing feedback, or offer them a years free subscription.

Ultimately if you can get the innovators to understand and start talking about the value of the product you are launching into a market, you will move from the innovator to early adopter phase of the maturity model very quickly. Remember, innovators are generally happy to take a risk on a new solution if they feel it gives them a competitive advantage.