4 Ways to Create Passionate Fans for Your Business

Wondering how to turn customers into loyal fans who stick with your business even when a cheaper competitor comes along? Want fan-building marketing tactics that work?

​In this article, you’ll discover four ways to create passionate fans for your business using in-person experiences, behind-the-scenes content, gamification, and your personal passions.

Why Fans Are More Valuable Than Customers

According to David Meerman Scott, fans are the best thing a business can have. They stay loyal when a lower-cost competitor comes along, and they stick around when the business makes a misstep. They recommend it to friends, colleagues, and family, and they talk about it on social media. Any organization can build them, from big companies to independent professional service providers.

​Most businesses try to create fans by talking about their products and services. Apart from outliers like Apple, product-first marketing rarely turns anyone into a fan. The starting point is the audience: what they care about and what they want.

​David’s favorite example of this in action is Hagerty, which sells classic car insurance. Nobody loves auto insurance. Paying for it feels like throwing money away, and using it means a collision.

​Hagerty has attracted millions of fans anyway, because it focuses on what classic car owners care about. It shows up at the events where they gather. It also shares the valuation data it already has from insuring cars, giving owners free access to what they most want to know: what their cars are worth. Today, Hagerty’s YouTube channel has more than 1 million followers, and it has become the largest classic car insurer in the world.

​After 20 years of studying fandom, David traces it back to neuroscience. Humans are hardwired to want to belong to a tribe of like-minded people. For tens of thousands of generations, the tribe around the campfire meant safety. Wandering off alone meant exposure to animals and other people.​

That instinct is why attendees at Social Media Marketing World will start a conversation with a stranger wearing the same conference badge, whether at a restaurant down the street, in the elevator, or in line at Starbucks. It’s also why David can talk with anyone in the merchandise or beer line at a Grateful Dead concert, asking whether they’ve seen other shows on the tour or which song they’re hoping to hear.

​Fans feel safe and comfortable because they’re part of a tribe and part of a movement.

​Each of the four tactics below creates that feeling in a different way.

#1: Build Fans Through In-Person Events and Shared Experiences

Being physically close to like-minded people triggers a strong emotional connection. David draws on research by Edward T. Hall, who identified four levels of distance between people. The closer two people get, the stronger the reaction, for better or worse.

​At 12 feet or more, which Hall called public space, people register that someone is there and feel little else, like noticing a stranger across the street. Between about 4 and 12 feet, the social space of a party or a supermarket, some emotion kicks in. Being near a friend or a fellow member of the tribe feels good. Being near a stranger can feel uncomfortable.

​Personal space, from about 1 to 4 feet, produces the strongest reaction. That’s the distance of a conversation, a small restaurant table, a line, or an elevator. Among friends at a cocktail party, it feels great. In a crowded elevator full of strangers, it can feel unsafe, which explains why elevators sometimes leave people a little queasy.

​The goal, then, is to bring people together with others who share their interest. When everyone in the room belongs to the same tribe, closeness fosters connection instead of discomfort.

​Hagerty goes where its audience already gathers: classic car shows around the country. These outdoor events draw enthusiasts who come to show off their cars, and some include auctions or competitions.

​At each show, Hagerty sets up a tent, serves coffee, and often hands out swag, such as a ball cap. The company calls it cars and coffee. Owners stop by, meet the Hagerty team, and talk with other enthusiasts over a cup of coffee. Under that tent, they’re among their tribe.

#2: Give Customers a Behind-the-Scenes Look at How the Business Works

Letting customers see what happens in the back room gives them a closer connection to the business and the people behind it. David believes every organization has some part of its process that it can open up to the public, in person or on social media.

How to Offer Behind-the-Scenes Access in Person

Open Up the Workspace: At Black-Eyed Susans on Nantucket Island, diners can sit at a counter and watch their meal being made on the other side. The kitchen isn’t tucked away in another room. It’s part of the dining room. David says Chef Todd works like an artist, and he now follows him on Instagram.

​Replace a Wall With Glass: At the dealership where David has his Mercedes-Benz camper van serviced, a glass wall separates the waiting room from the service bay. It’s the only dealership where he’s seen this. David hates getting a vehicle serviced because it costs him a day, but he’s more willing to bring the van in because he can watch the mechanics work.

​The glass changes employee behavior, too. Staff who know they’re always on stage take extra care to act in line with the brand.

​Teach Customers the Process: Grain Surfboards in York, Maine, builds wooden surfboards with a boat-building technique: wood laid over a frame of ribs. Each board has a plug about the size of a quarter that lets air in but keeps water out, so a pressure difference between the inside and outside doesn’t burst the board. Grain invented both the technique and the plug. Most companies would patent them and guard them as trade secrets, but Grain invites people into the factory instead.

​David bought a four-day surfboard building package, built his own board alongside the factory workers, and got to know them well. Customers who can’t make the trip can buy the plans, with or without the materials.

​Give Tours, Even in a One-Person Business: David’s business runs out of a home video studio, a converted spare bedroom with four cameras and professional lights. When visitors come over, he takes them in and fires up the equipment so they can see how it works and what they look like on camera. For people who aren’t content creators, it’s a memorable behind-the-scenes glimpse.

How to Create Behind-the-Scenes Content for Social Media

Show How the Product Is Made: Video lets businesses without a physical location open up, too. David suggests restaurants show their food being prepared on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram and share a few of their secrets. Toyota released an 18-minute video that follows the 2025 Land Cruiser through its factory in Japan. David owns that model. He never watches 18-minute videos, and he watched the whole thing.

Teach Fans to Take Part: K-pop band Stray Kids releases music videos for everyone and how-to videos for its most devoted fans. The how-to videos show the members working out choreography at dance practice, in sweatpants instead of stage costumes, and they teach fans the steps. Fans then post videos of themselves performing the dances or routines at concerts.

​David’s daughter, Reiko, follows the band around the country, most recently to Orlando, Florida. David sees this kind of content as one reason K-pop has become a worldwide phenomenon.

#3: Use Gamification to Turn One-Time Customers Into Repeat Customers

Humans naturally love games. Build one into a product or service, and customers get a reason to come back and something to talk about. Games appeal to what David calls the collector gene: the urge to complete a list, earn recognition, or feel special. Each urge leads to a different kind of game.

How to Create a Challenge That Brings Customers Back

Steve Broadbelt, owner of the full-service dive resort Ocean Frontiers in Grand Cayman, had a puzzle on his hands. Guests stayed in his hotel rooms, ate in his restaurant, dove from his boats, and left five-star reviews. Then they never came back. It took him years to figure out why. Scuba divers always want to dive a new reef, and a reef they’ve already seen loses its excitement. So even guests who loved the resort ended up booking somewhere else next time.

​Steve took his boats out and mapped 55 individual dive sites. Then he created the Green Shorts Challenge. Anyone who dives all 55 sites with Ocean Frontiers earns a pair of green shorts with the resort’s logo, which can’t be acquired any other way. The 55th dive ends with a party featuring cake and champagne, a medal, and a brass plaque in the diver’s honor screwed into the dock.​

Every party ends up on social media. Ocean Frontiers posts the photos, and so do the divers, many of whom would never otherwise have posted about a resort. They announce that they’ve completed all 55 sites and show off the cake, the champagne, and the plaque.

​Finishing takes commitment. Guests usually stay three days to a week and dive two to four times a day. At David’s pace of two dives a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, all 55 sites add up to about 27 days at the resort, spread over five to eight trips. Ocean Frontiers now gets plenty of repeat visitors. A diver who hasn’t seen site 49 yet wants to know whether it holds the coolest thing in the world.

How to Reward Customers With Visible Recognition

HubSpot Academy offers free video courses on marketing, sales, customer service, social media, and HubSpot’s own products. Courses run from about an hour to five hours or more. Students who pass the final test earn a certification that includes a LinkedIn virtual badge or a CV, plus a physical pin.

​At HubSpot’s INBOUND conference in September, David saw attendees wearing those pins on their badge lanyards. One attendee, Stephanie, had about 20 running down hers. Collecting certifications and showing them off on LinkedIn and in person has become a game in its own right.

How to Make Customers Feel Special With Exclusive Access

Give Regulars a Private Line: La Bodega, an owner-operated restaurant in Boston, is hard to get into and doesn’t take reservations through any app. Most diners call the main number and hope to get lucky. Regulars who visit a couple of times and get to know the owner may earn her text number. When David texted a week ahead asking about a Friday table, she knew exactly who he was and offered him a 5:30 reservation. Getting into her phone becomes the game.

​Run a Lottery for Access to Big Names: At INBOUND, attendees can enter a lottery for backstage meet-and-greets with celebrity keynote speakers like Tom Brady, and winners are drawn at random. David suggests a conference could do the same with a dinner: the winner, or a group of about a dozen people, eats with a well-known speaker on the organization’s tab.

#4: Share Personal Passions on Social Media to Stand Out From Competitors

People are drawn to someone who’s passionate about something, and that passion is infectious. Yet most professionals keep a brick wall between their personal and professional lives. Fun with friends goes on Facebook or Instagram. Serious, business-only posts go on LinkedIn. David recommends tearing down that wall, which is why he talks openly about his own passions, like the Grateful Dead and surfing.

​Showing a passion can put people at ease even in the most serious settings. Reiko is an emergency physician. At the peak of the pandemic, she and her colleagues worked in head-to-toe protective gear with little more than their eyes showing. To very sick patients, they looked like aliens.

​Then the doctors started wearing Boston sports gear on the outside: a Red Sox T-shirt, a Patriots pin, a logo cap. Patients stopped being scared. They lit up and started conversations, sometimes joking that they were Yankees fans who hated the Red Sox. A small sign of personal passion made the doctors human again.

How to Share a Personal Passion to Attract Customers

At a Tony Robbins Business Mastery event where David spoke, Dr. John Marashi, a dentist in Southern California, told him the passion idea sounded great, but couldn’t work for a dentist. People hate their dentist. David asked what gave him joy. The answer was skateboarding, something Dr. Marashi had never mentioned at his practice. David suggested he start sharing it on social media and anywhere else he could.

​Dr. Marashi started as soon as he left the conference. He hung skateboards on the walls of his practice and added photos of himself skateboarding to his website. He also launched an Instagram account that mixes some dental content with frequent skateboarding posts. It now has 60,000 followers.

​Instead of being one of 10,000 dentists in Southern California, he became the only skateboarding dentist. His new patients aren’t skateboarders, either. They’re people who would rather see a dentist with an interesting passion outside the office than a cookie-cutter one.

​The passion doesn’t have to be skateboarding. Not everyone can pull that off, and the right interest will differ from person to person. David does advise steering clear of inappropriate topics such as politics or religion.

How to Measure the Impact of Sharing a Personal Passion

Dr. Marashi can measure the payoff because his new patient intake forms ask how each patient heard about him and what they know about him. Patients write that he’s the skateboarding dentist, that a friend told them about him, or that they found him on social media.

​By the time he shared his numbers with David, his new patient count had grown by more than 100% and his practice revenue by almost 50%.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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