Marketing campaigns are never-ever going to be fully effective. That is why many marketers constantly look to that which can optimize their campaign. There are also any number of methods and techniques and areas to focus on.
The customer comes first! Many a department store have adopted this slogan. Are they really helping themselves by telling the customer that they are the most important aspect of the selling and buying process? I think not! The customer already knows that they are in your store to buy something, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. However, a huge population have adopted the online shopping experience as their primary buying medium. My former boss and I were talking about Christmas and birthday shopping for our families. He came right out and said that he does all of his shopping online. One reason he said was so that he didn’t have to deal with the shopping environment, i.e. weather and other shoppers. The next reason was that he could get all the gifts by surfing to different websites rather than going store to store trying to find the perfect gift. Is he lazy? Maybe. Or is he being a smart shopper just like millions of other consumers? 
image courtesy of Timeinc.net
If we, as marketers, are to focus on customers as primary in our campaigns we would see an unpredictable rise and fall in our numbers because of the diversity of customers. Why don’t we let the customers help us out? Focus on those that talk. The Ravers. George Silverman hits the nail right on the head in identifying that primary group, ravers, which will spread our message like wildfire among their friends. And we all know that friends value the opinions of their friends over anything a fully knowledgeable company will say about itself. The ravers are able to liven up our sales.
Next type of person, the Expert. Those who are experts in a given genre. The car-guy, the handbag-girl, the computer guru. These people will be the first to buy up your products and give them a whirl. If you treat these people with the utmost respect and maybe even go out on a limb for them, you could expect huge ROI. Their friends know they are the knowledgeable one and will value the experts opinion. Because, well, they are the EXPERT.
So, ravers– experts– and finally those that are Connectors. A person who has their nose in many, many, many circles of friends. These people KNOW people. A connector may have hundreds, thousands in their network. The connector crosses platforms and spans oceans of types of people. I guess they are similar to the raver. But, I would argue that a raver sticks to their circle while a connector breeches circles, squares, and octagons of people. Finding these people are key to making a brand global in the sense that all types of people would enjoy it depending on their situation.
This 3-person method is explored in depth within Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point