Do all early adopters turn into advocates?
Okay. Okay. I admit I kind of cheated today. I used ChatGPT when creating this post. Not to write it. But in my idea generation.
I’m busy this week. And it’s a short week here in Canada. Isn’t that when we should use it. lol. You know this is me writing by the lol.
I asked it the question: Are early adopters advocates of your company?
It’s first response was that it’s not a company. It didn’t understand I meant one’s company. Again, Lol. Was it trying to be funny?
It said it would consider the general case of are early adopters advocates of a company.
To which it said no, they are not the same. Hmmm. And it gave me some good reasons.
First some background on why I asked it this question. Recently, I came up with a list of jobs-to-be-done for the customer journey phase of Advocacy. Programs really.
Yes, I considered things like referral programs and loyalty programs.
I also thought of beta programs and feedback because advocates are willing and open to help co-create your products. They are enthusiastic enough to commit to these programs. And committing to these programs gives them an experience that re-enforces their advocacy.
I thought, isn’t a beta program sort of an early adopter program?
Can we take the leap that if you are a startup with early adopters as first users, aren’t you already on the road to creating advocacy programs? A leap too far for logical ChatGPT, it seems.
Yet, ChatGPT’s no was really a maybe. And really, it was answering the question on the first line of this post. Not the question I asked it. It said no, not all early adopters turn into advocates. So early adopters and advocates aren’t the same.
It said typically early adopters are people who like to embrace innovative and early to market products or services. And depending on the experience they have with it they may or may not become advocates of the company.
Give them a poor experience and they won’t turn into advocates. As well, some may just like the novelty of new things and move on after your product becomes more mainstream.
And yes, some of them might become enthusiastic fans of your product, tell everyone they know about it and bring other people to your company. Yes, they might advocate for the product.
It wrapped up by saying: “Overall, early adopters can play a significant role in the success of a company by championing its offerings, but it ultimately depends on the quality of the product or service and the individual experiences of the early adopters themselves.“
Hmmm. Good points ChatGPT.
Now for a next question. How to turn early adopters into advocates? lol.
