5 Tips from Ammo Marketing's Gary Stein

Some messages work best when they are spread through to small, highly connected groups of people. Business-to-business products, deep-techie systems or high-end sports equipment are all examples of this. Because these "cliques" have defined themselves to you in a very specific way, "You need to understand and respect that definition," says Gary Stein, Director of Strategy for Ammo Marketing. He calls this WOM technique clique-through.

Here are Gary's five tips on achieving clique-through:

Tip #1. Tightly define your "clique"
There are critical differences between track runners and trail runners, M&A attorneys and tax attorneys. If your customer has classified him or herself in a specific way, respect that.

Tip #2. Don't fear your features
Every copywriter knows: focus on benefits, not features. However, some groups understand details, and can find their own way to the benefits. Bike racers read "monocoque carbon" and immediately know what that is and why it's cool. A clique that discovers benefits on its own is more likely to talk about it.

Tip #3. The influencer ratio is higher
Traditional thinking is that one in ten is an influencer. But cliques are gatherings of influencers.

Imagine a discussion group focused on high-end cell phones. Each person gathers information, forms opinions, then returns to their community and tells everyone what plan to use. This realization may have an effect on things like budgeting and measuring.

Tip #4. Support the community
Cliques tend to have grassroots; often you'll find that a community has been formed by a small group of model airplane enthusiasts or Civil War historians. As such, they tend to lack resources. You can go far simply by giving these groups meeting rooms or administrative support. Send pizzas to their meetings. Offer to manage their newsletter. Find a way to make it easier for them to simply be.

Tip #5. Clone the tactic
The good thing about the clique-through approach is that it's usually clone-able. That is, maybe you can identify a dozen cliques that are relevant to your product. Figure it out once, then use the same tactics on multiple groups. Suddenly, rather than one big campaign, you have several, all adding up to one mass, high-relevant marketing program.

More about Gary:

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Read a summary of Gary's WOMBAT 2 presentation