Chris Brogan on How to Make Your Customer a Hero Most marketers put the focus on their product. Try flipping that around and showing your customers how they can be successful.

Marketers often look at their product as the raison d'etre of a company. "How can I get more people to fall in love with this amazing product?" they ask. Of course, that's the opposite of how buyers see the scenario. A buyer is asking, "How can I be even more amazing?" The challenge, then, is to position your product as the element your hero requires to be successful.

But when you look at how companies market online, they still make the product out to be the hero. The e-mail you receive talks about all the amazing features. The Twitter stream is a raft of offers and quips about how great the products are, with zero engagement with their potential heroes.

Marketers need to use digital marketing tools to make heroes of their customers, not of their products. Here are a few ways to do that: