What Is an Early Adopter? A 3-Minute Rundown

在2011年，有150 marketing technology companiesscrambling to convince the business world that digital was the future of marketing. Today, that number has exploded to nearly7,000家公司。他们都在互相斗争，以在世界上几乎所有业务的技术堆栈中赢得一席之地。

By now,数字营销不需要分类. It’s just marketing. But what happened in the last seven years that took digital from fun, little side projects to most companies’ main form of marketing?

显然，互联网，社交媒体和智能手机的普及在占据数字营销主流方面发挥了重要作用。但是，还有一群关键的公司，他们推动了势头：营销技术的早期采用者。

Acquiring early adopters is a crucial step in the development and potential of an early-stage product or technology. Early adopters can provide a lot of helpful feedback about a product’s or technology’s pros and cons.他们还注入了这些公司的收入，这些收入为提高产品或技术所需的研究和开发提供了足够的资金，以获得广泛的采用。

早期采用者在新产品或技术的认可方面的经验对于确定大多数人口是否会接受至关重要。Their support and word-of-mouth marketing for a new product or technology can bolster its reputation and help the company acquire more customers.

But early adopters aren’t helping out ambitious start-ups for altruistic reasons -- this partnership is mutually beneficial and produces synergy.例如，通过为公司提供可以完善其产品或技术并将其主流的重要反馈和收入提供，早期采用者可以独特地访问潜在有利的新产品或技术。

Early adopters also receive first-class customer support, like a dedicated employee to help implement and run the product or technology, or generous discounts and terms and conditions, in exchange for dealing with the bugs that most early-stage products and technology have.

这种互惠关系并不能抵消早期采用者采用新产品或技术面临的风险。客户可能能够获得慷慨的折扣，但是新发布的产品或技术通常仍然很昂贵。它也可能与早期采用者的产品不兼容，或者技术试图利用的趋势可能消失。

For example, early adopters of内容营销软件bob电竞官方下载打赌内容将是营销的未来。幸运的是，他们赢得了赌注。但是，人工智能和虚拟现实的早期采用者可能会浪费大量的时间和资源，而这些技术和资源可能只是炒作。bob体育苹果系统下载安装

Technology Adoption Curve

The term “early adopters” comes from the technology adoption curve, which was popularized by the 1962 bookDiffusion of Innovations, written by Everett Rogers, a professor of communications at Ohio State University.

The technology adoption curve shows the acceptance process of a new product or technology, according to the demographics and psychographics of each group in a population. The curve has a normal distribution.

Image Credit:On Digital Marketing

As you can see from the graphic, early adopters are the second group to adopt a new technology or product. The first group is called innovators, and the ones who adopt the technology after the early adopters are the early majority, late majority, and laggards, respectively.

每个小组都有独特的特征，这会影响他们在成为主流之前或之后采用新技术的决定。这是每个组的一般描述：

Innovators

• 最年轻的消费者或公司群体
• Most prosperous
• 最连接到外部来源和创新者
• Most risk-taking
• 受过更多教育
• Respected in the community

Early Adopters

• 年轻的消费者或公司群体
• 更繁荣
• 与社区有很好的联系
• 更加进步
• Most educated
• Thought leaders of the community -- opinions are held in high regard

早期多数

• 年长的消费者或公司
• Above-average to average prosperity
• 与早期采用者有关
• More conservative but open to new ideas
• Above average to average education
• 超过平均水平到社区中的平均活动和影响力

多数晚期

• 年长的消费者或公司
• Average to below average prosperity
• Connected with the early majority
• 坚定的保守派 - 对许多怀疑主义进行创新，只有在经过证明的情况下才能采用技术，并且大多数社区都采用了该技术
• 平均至低于平均教育
• Average to below average influence in the community

落后

• Oldest group of consumers or companies
• Least prosperous
• Virtually no connection with the community
• Extremely conservative and traditional -- will adopt technology when its the only remaining option to complete a task
• Least educated
• 在社区中几乎没有影响

From Hype to Reality

早期采用者在将数字营销技术从炒作带到现实中发挥了关键作用。而且，如果您刚刚开发了一种新产品或技术，那么无论您要穿透什么行业，招募忠实的早期采用者都可以为您做同样的事情。