Every market is a specialty market. As a result, theprinciples behind the success of phenomena like ThePurpose-Driven Life, the best-selling hardcover bookin history, and The Passion of the Christ, the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, are available to you.

The best way to understand marketing, the way itsmessages are sent, received, acted upon and spread, isto think of it as fire.

Every fire needs fuel, oxygen, heat and the heat fromthe combustion reaction itself. Heat excites the fuel.At its ignition temperature the molecular bonds breakand electrons leave the fuel to join with oxygen in thesurrounding air. Ignition temperatures vary widelyfrom one fuel to the next. The reaction gives offloads of additional heat that excites neighboring fueland causes the fire to spread.

In PyroMarketing consumers are the fuel. There ismoney stored in their wallets, but there is a verystrong bond between consumers and their money.Marketing provides the heat that excites them and,if it can heat them beyond their ignitiontemperature, it will cause them to exchange theirmoney for your product or service. Products are tomarketing what oxygen is to fire. A remarkableproduct has Oh!2 and encourages a fire, anunremarkable product lacks Oh!2 and without it thefire will die.

The consumer's reaction to the product or service---expressed through word-of-mouth---is the energyoutput and causes the fire to grow or die dependingon whether their experience was good or bad.

Every marketer is lost in the frozen wilderness (the marketplace), must start a fire tosurvive (sell his or her products or services), and has only one match (finite resources).

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Advertising reaches only the driest tinder.

Experience can reach the mildly interested

Personal influence reaches the masses

There are four steps to a PyroMarketing fire.

Gather the driest tinder: These people have the lowestignition temperature relative to your product. Theslightest heat from your marketing causes them to lightand burn hot. This is the only group whose ignitiontemperature is within reach of traditional advertising.

Touch them with the match: Let people experience yourproduct or service. If you want prospects to laugh, don't tellthem you're funny; tell them a joke. Experience is hotterthan advertising and can ignite even the mildly interested.

Fan the flames: This means equipping your customers tospread your message more effectively through word-of-mouth. Personal influence is hotter than advertising orexperience and the only way to convert the apatheticmasses. Reach them by leveraging the power ofpassionate customer evangelists.

Save the coals: Keep a record of the people you find withyour marketing so that each new campaign builds equityyou can tap in the future.

PyroMarketing: The Four Step Strategy to IgniteCustomer Evangelists and Keep them for Life by GregStielstra (HarperBusiness) arrives in stores thisSeptember 27. To learn more visitwww.pyromarketing.com. Spread the fire. Greg Stielstra