Ben and Jackie are two of my favorite marketers. They’ve built a business around advocating referrals to generate new business by pleasing your customers to a point where they become “evangelists.” People who will shout your company’s name from the rooftops and do your most important marketing for you.

Today, Seth posted about “Faith, hope and love: the three marketing levers.” Here’s what he says about love:

And love? Love gets you to support a candidate even when he screws up or changes his mind on a position or disagrees with you on another one. Love incites you to protest when they change the formula for Coke, or to cry out in delight when you see someone at the market wearing a Google t-shirt.

The customer evangelists and the “lovers” are on fire with passion for your brand! In the spirit of the Giants winning the Super Bowl, here’s another analogy I’ve been thinking about lately that defines your ideal customer: the sports fan.

Die-hard fans…

• Berate their competition.
• Buy and proudly wear their team’s logo.
• Forgive their team’s flaws.
• Look ahead (or behind) to a better day.

Their burning loyalty often comes from pretty personal experiences. To give you an example, these are my teams and why I’m a fan:

• College Football: Penn State (PA raised baby!)
• Pro Football: Baltimore Ravens (Born in Baltimore)
• Major League Baseball: Baltimore Orioles (Ditto)
• Pro Basketball: Philadelphia 76ers (Closest NBA team to home)
• College Basketball: UCLA (Mom was born in LA)
• European Soccer: Real Madrid (I lived in Spain for a year)

If you’ll notice, I’m not a fan of the team with the prettiest logo or the best record. God forbid I be called a bandwagoner!

I am a fan of the hometown teams, the ones whose baseball cards I had when I was nine, whose games I listened to laying in bed during the summertime. The bond I have with my teams is more than just a passing fancy, it’s really an emotional connection.

And my non-hometown teams are personal too: trusted and knowledgeable family members have “recommended” them to me, because they have had a personal connection with that team. I become a fan because I trust my family members’ judgment.

That personal, emotional connection can turn into something greater though. Fan comes from fanatic, and fanatics are extremely loyal. They personally feel their teams defeats and successes: they’re crushed when their team fails and overjoyed when they succeed.

What more could you ask for in a customer?