Something Shared

"Word of mouth is, was, and always will be the most powerful form of marketing" - Christopher Lochhead ????????????

Subscribe Now

In the fall of 1982, Bob Metcalfe and his team at 3Com released the EtherLink, a network interface card that remotely connected personal computers. The problem was that there weren’t many personal computers in use at the time. IBM had only released its first PC the previous year.

So 3Com decided to give their early customers a trial offer: a three-node network that allowed three computers to connect and share things like software and a printer. It sounds simple now, but at the time, it was cutting-edge.

They offered the product for $3,000 and sold a lot of it. But shortly after, their customers came back to them and said, “It works just the way you promised it would. It’s just not useful.” They didn’t really understand why they should keep investing in this new technology.

In response, Bob Metcalfe invented what would become known as Metcalfe’s Law, which states that the power of a network goes up with the square of the number of people using it.

On the power of this idea, 3Com’s sales exploded, ushering in the beginning of networking.

The best ideas become more valuable when they’re shared.

Does yours?

Think about it - what did the first fax machine owner do with his fax machine? He shared it, of course.

And as a result, the piece of equipment he had in his office became exponentially more valuable.

Many companies in agriculture have a hard time with this. They ask the question, “How do we get the word out?”

• “How do we sell more seed?”
• “How do we find more buyers for our tech?”
• “How are we going to grow enough so that we get our next round of funding?”
• “How do I get my new project approved?”

So they lean on the “growth marketer” to blast more disruptive ads across social media. They hire the SEO expert to make sure they’re top of the list when someone hits search. They enlist the PR consultant, who promises feature stories and visibility (or, if needed, a few fabricated industry awards). And they bring in creative agencies to craft glossy, high-production ads.

All focused on getting the word out. To scream “look at me” louder than the next guy. They’re betting on more clicks, more eyeballs, more “engagement”—because they mistakenly believe that the game we call “marketing” is about shouting louder, not saying something worth hearing.

The reality is that most people in the world of agriculture believe that marketing is something you do to people, but the best marketers know that great marketing only happens when you do it with your customers.

The lie is the idea that you can control the narrative, that owning the budget or having a product to sell means that you get to decide what people think about it. But it doesn’t.

The right question to ask before you start marketing is, “does our customer win if they talk about what we do?”

Everything else is just noise.

Make something different. Make people care. Make fans, not followers.

Share