How to Grow an Ecosystem

There are some other things you need to be thinking about beyond the fundamentals of brand value. Is your message clear? Are you offering the real value your customers need? Are you providing increased value in each touch point with them? Are you giving them enough value through your conversation that they perceive this relationship to be a benefit to them?

Here’s a concrete example of giving value. When you send out an email blast, are you just hawking your latest offer or are you respecting the customers who opted into your email list by providing real value to them? Respecting your audience means you hold up your end of the relationship. You don’t just target someone. You get to know what their role is and what’s important to them, then you provide them with something that will be of particular interest to them.

Talk of the decline of loyalty has a lot to do with annoying or irrelevant push-based marketing tactics. The essence of pull-based marketing is natural attraction – which is exactly what we’re talking about here with the Honey Pot. You create brand value and people seek it out. Ultimately, this approach requires much less of a financial investment than the old tactics and results in better retention.

Think about it this way… instead of having an advertising machine that needs to be fed more and fed more often, you’re in a situation where your initial investment is compounded. The value you create actually helps create more value; there’s a snowball effect. In the end, the value you add to your ecosystem adds value to your brand.