A guide to connecting with the customers who share your niche fascinations—and earning their wholehearted patronage
We want to help you find better ways to connect with your customers. There is SO much noise out there. Especially on the internet. Standing out is exasperating, and keeping people’s attention is even harder.
This is not about reaching the most people, it’s about connecting with the right people, your future fans and champions.
This collection was developed and curated from September to December, 2020 by the friendly weirdos at &yet. In spring 2021, we asked you to meet our weirdos.
As we draw Find Your Weirdos to a close, we invite you to reflect on the power in taking a seasonal approach, the clarity in focus, and the freedom in adaptation.
When we want our customers’ attention, often our first instinct is to start talking, pitching, and explaining. What if instead, you invited them to have an experience, and make up their own minds?
It may seem counter-intuitive to narrow your focus to a very specific group of people, but when it comes to building customer loyalty, predictable revenue, and truly great products, nothing beats a weirdos-first strategy.
Finding your weirdos is a generous endeavor, but you can’t give everything away for free. Is it possible to be a generous for-profit company?
When it first launched in 2010, Pinterest had five hundred users, and the founders knew every one of them personally. The path from there to their first million users was record-breakingly fast, and stemmed from the company’s investment in an already tight-knit community — one that immediately understood the appeal of collecting, curating, and sharing ideas for inspiration.
Amidst the cacophony of commercialism, every now and then we see someone who stands out from the crowd — quieter, perhaps, and intently focused on a pursuit that draws us in. It’s the purity of this single-minded devotion, guest contributor Guan Un writes, that inspires us to want to be in their orbit.
The text-message based game Textcapades served many purposes for &yetConf, not the least of which was providing an exciting and weird shared experience that gave attendees an immediate source of bonding once the conference started.
Weirdos come in all shapes and sizes. How can we help ensure they feel like they are accepted and empowered, just as they are?
When inspiration strikes, just about any writing (or drawing) surface will do — and yet the Moleskine notebook still has a devoted following. Why? We think it’s because they understand what creative people are really reaching for when they pull out their notebooks.
It’s easy to create a “customer persona” or a “user journey” to inform your product, marketing, and sales decisions. It’s much more challenging to actually understand the person you’re doing all of this for. There are two ways that focusing on weirdos makes this much easier.
While not all feedback is created equal, some business decisions rely on gathering clear, focused input. How do you find the right people to listen to, and ensure you hear from them at the right moments? There are two key factors.
When the Impossible Burger launched, it was an instant hit among top chefs, foodies, and eco-conscious millennials. But they weren’t just trend-hopping; there were sound business reasons behind their decision to make these folks their priority.
Where do loyalty and devotion come from? To begin with, we go deep.
While we love weirdos for their own sake, we’ve also discovered that there are business benefits to embracing your weird — and embracing your weirdos. Here are just a few.
In 2003, LEGO was in trouble — to the tune of an $800 million debt. What saved the beloved toy company? A weirdos-first strategy.
Heroku wanted to create a gift for their fans that would make them feel truly seen. To do that, they had to make visible the invisible qualities that tied them together.
