360-Degree Community Marketing: How It’s Served

Take a close look at the graphic on today’s 360-Degree Marketing post and you’ll see an overlay to the MailPoet art we’ve been using in this series that’s … childish. Or at least child-like. Think that sounds preachy, or judgmental?

Only the latter, and only in the best way; Kim Gjerstad’s approach to marketing MailPoet is simple, and his explanation about community and sponsorship underscores this.

In the pull marketing world, where your job is to create an environment where your content can be found but then you largely leave it up to your targets to find it, community is everything. Kim Gjerstad and the MailPoet team have a couple of natural communities. But unless you’re Ashton Kutcher your team is almost certainly not large enough to create a sustainable market.

The solution is simple, right? You need to grow your community. French WordPress developers? French WordPress users? Not good enough; MailPoet needed to expand its minimum viable audience, and Gjerstad says something very simple; sponsorships matter:

But sponsorships at a WordCamp event won’t sell you more plug-ins or even necessarily create more downloads — at least not directly. Unlike traditional I-have-a-product-to-sell trade shows, doing a sponsorship at a WordPress/WordCamp event serves only to get a talkative, curious community talkative, curious, and comfortable with your name and your product. MailPoet’s WordCamp sponshorships don’t pay back, but boy are they important.

Complicated? Sure, but only until you remember that this is a discussion of 360-degree marketing; you’re looking to cover everything, and although community-targeted sponsorships are primarily a public relations activity, you aren’t looking at the full 360 degrees until you include them.

Pretty great business process from a handful of young Frenchmen, oui?

Parlez vous 360-degree marketing? Voulez-vous commencer?