Here are 100 marketing and communications tips, techniques, and thoughts to help you create Consumer Electronics Evangelists.

Please note that in response to reader requests, I have categorized this list here.

1. The product must be excellent. But most technology on the mainstream market is.
2. On the other hand, almost across the board, high-tech marketing and communications is pretty terrible. What you’re doing now can certainly be improved.
3. Pricing must fall within consumers’ expectations, or you’ll needlessly create hurdles in an already difficult market.
4. It’s possible to shift people’s pricing expectations (that is, raise how much they think a certain product, like a laptop, should cost), but it’s very difficult.
5. To shift pricing expectations, you need excellent marketing (which most tech makers don’t have) and consumer evangelists (which most tech makers don’t have).
6. Apple has excellent marketing and consumer evangelists. Which is why Apple has successfully shifted consumer’s pricing expectations.
7. Your device must be widely available at retail. Online and offline.
8. ABS: Always Be Simple. When in doubt about your marketing, simplify.
9. Create language that excites grandma. If she groks your value, everyone else will get it too.
10. Get away from communicating the technical aspects of your device. Very few people in your consumer audience care about high-tech specs.
11. Rather, focus your communication on how your device will improve people’s lives.
12. The consumer is asking herself: If I buy this product, how will it improve my current situation? Answer this question preemptively.
13. What do consumers want from your product category? If you don’t know the answer, you can’t begin to formulate a successful marketing plan.
14. Do you know how consumers use your kind of device? You must. (Who uses it? What do they do with it? How? Why?)
15. You must have insight about how consumers think about your product.
16. Know the words consumers use to talk about your products. This is the language you should use in your marketing.
17. Most manufacturers don’t have insight on Numbers 13-16 above. If you do, you’re ahead of 90 percent of the market.
18. Repeat nothing your engineers say about your products. Ever.
19. Why do so many companies simply push out the engineering department’s language? It has zero chance of connecting with consumers.
20. Take what your engineers say, and go talk to consumers about it. That’s right, real people.
21. Your company’s leadership entire staff should spend 15 minutes daily talking with customers. If Barack Obama can read 10 letters daily from his customers, you can talk to yours.
22. Ask your consumers who uses your products in their home, and how do they use them?
23. Ask them how this product improves their life?
24. Ask them to describe your product in just one sentence. “Capture everything you like and dislike about it in a single sentence.”
25. You should require your engineers to at least read consumer reviews of your products online. But it’d be better if they also talked to consumers regularly. They need to see how consumers talk and think about your devices.
26. Don’t be afraid to use colorful descriptive language such as “incredible, wonderful, unbelievable, etc.” Know why I say this? Because it’s how Steve Jobs talks about his products. Talk about your products like Steve Jobs talks about his.
27. Simplify your product names. These are generally horrific.
28. I argue that never-ending, ridiculously complex product names are hugely responsible for consumer electronics marketing shortcomings.
29. If a product name is impossible to remember, you’re forcing consumers to forget about your product. Think about that.
30. And think about the products that have caught fire across consumer electronics history: The Mac. The iPhone. The Walkman. The TiVo. More recently, The Flip, The Droid.
31. I guarantee that the Toshiba Satellite L505-GS5037 TruBrite 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black), or the Panasonic VIERA X1 Series TC-L26X1 26-Inch 720p LCD HDTV will never, ever catch fire.
32. Develop three powerful points of education about each of your products. The Top 3. Every product needs a Top 3.
33. Communicate your Top 3 in all of your marketing about the product.
34. Don’t send press releases. Journalists get too many of them, and they’re generally horrible-terrible-embarrassing.
35. Instead, build relationships with writers, producers, even broadcasters.
36. Sent media personalized emails instead of generic press releases.
37. Bad press releases can kill good technology. Sorry, it’s true.
38. If you must send press releases, for the love of God, make them interesting. And proof read them.
39. When you allow the success or failure of your product and/or company to be determined in large part by young, inexperienced public relations professionals with little knowledge of your device, you deserve what you get.
40. The public relations department should get involved much earlier in your company’s strategy formulation process.
41. PR is too far removed in the corporate structure from where messaging is created. Ironically, it’s farther from communication strategy than engineering.
42. Your social media strategy is fine, but what’s your mainstream media strategy?
43. Mainstream consumers are not on Twitter. Sorry, it’s true. Twitter is filled with celebrities, social media experts, and other marketers, all talking to each other.
44. I’m not down on Twitter for business-to-business use. But I don’t think it should be centerpiece of your consumer marketing strategy.
45. Along the same lines, don’t depend on consumers to click on your Facebook ads.
46. What if most of the people who will be on social media are already there?
47. For reaching mainstream consumers, social media should take up no more than 20 percent of your total media mix.
48. Speaking of social media, most consumer electronics executives are misusing their Twitter account. Instead of telling people what flight you’re getting on, or where you’re dining tonight, help them imagine how wonderful it would be to own your devices. Teach people about your products on Twitter.
49. For reaching the mainstream quickly and relatively affordably, broadcast media is still the most effective tool.
50. Broadcast is more effective than print because print is dying.
51. “But people are fast-forwarding through commercials,” I can hear you saying. You don’t want TV commercials.
52. But you do want to get your product on the morning news.
53. You also want to be on talk radio commercials.
54. And if you can get it, broadcast editorial endorsements are still among the most powerful way to reach mainstream consumers.
55. Despite the problems in the media industry, I believe broadcast editorial endorsements (BEEs), will remain the best way to alert consumers and gain their trust for the next 10 years.
56. Numbers 52 to 55 are far more effective than sending out press releases. Even good ones!
57. Don’t focus on early adopters.
58. Even if you successfully penetrate the early adopter market by being active on message boards, blogs and social media, it won’t help you much with mainstream consumers. What gets you there won’t take you here.
59. Not only are the two groups (early adopters and mainstream consumers) fundamentally different in thinking, but they consumer different media, not to mention language.
60. In fact, I’d argue that if you’re successful with early adopters the chances you’ll fail with the mainstream are fairly high.
61. That’s why it’d be more effective to aim at the mainstream from the get-go.
62. Don’t forget your packaging as a marketing platform. Most big-box retail associates are still reading boxes to answer consumers’ questions.
63. Also, most product manuals are startlingly bad. Many mainstream consumers actually read the manual. Help them get excited about your product. Teach them in the manual how great your device can be.
64. Try to attain “Favorite Author Status.” People will buy any book their favorite author writes just because he or she wrote it. This can be attained in technology too. Look at Apple. Many of their evangelists are buying an iPad just because Apple makes it.
65. Licensing your strengths to companies which have wide consumers reach can be a powerful marketing technique.
66. For example, what if Palm licensed its Web OS to Sony to create the Sony Palm smartphone?
67. List which companies with major consumer reach make products that would benefit from something you do well. Contact them to discuss ideas.
68. The best messaging is simple and powerful: that’s the communication that creates consumer evangelists.
69. What you say about your product has more to do with its success than how good the product actually is.
70. Consumers perceive electronics in three categories: commodities, special, and singular.
71. Commodities are 90 percent of all consumer electronics.
72. Special products break away from the pack. Blackberries are perceived as Special. Nokias are not. The Nintendo Wii is perceived as special. The Xbox 360 is not.
73. Singular products are cultural phenomenons. These products have evangelists. The iPhone is Singular. So is the iPod.
74. Your job is to move your products towards Singular status.
75. You know what will automatically move your product out of the commodity category, into the special category? Passionate, loyal consumers. Evangelists are commodity killers.
76. How do you develop these consumers? With powerful language that teaches people how your device will improve their lives. And the right platforms for that message.
77. You have about 20 seconds to win or lose a consumer who doesn’t know about your product. That’s how powerful and effective your language must be.
78. You know how Web sites often run contests and give away a hot gadget? Today it’s the iPad. Before that it was the iPhone. And before that, the iPod. Aim to be that prize. Apple doesn’t pay for that powerful marketing.
79. Nor does Apple pay for much of its outreach. Because consumer evangelists do a lot of the work for them.
80. If you have evangelists you have consumers will spread your message for you!
81. In our business, there is nothing more powerful than a passionate, intensely loyal consumer.
82. Evangelists will tell everybody they know about your products, and forgive you for your drawbacks and mistakes. The latter is hugely valuable.
83. Even if you’re very successful right now, you must keep innovating to maintain your position.
84. Gravity pushes us away from success, towards failure. If you’re not creating any movement, gravity is.
85. Never, ever, stop talking to consumers. Always maintain communications (on macro and micro levels).
86. If your outgoing communication and education comes to standstill, it is nearly impossible to start up again. Look at Palm.
87. Consumers naturally wonder about your competition’s devices even when they own yours.
88. For example, iPhone users wonder about Android phones, and Blackberry users wonder about iPhones. The grass is always greener.
89. Which means your job is to create the greenest grass! Make your product, through updates, education and energy, the most attractive to consumers, even when they already own it.
90. One consumer evangelist is more powerful than a month of paid advertising on television. Much more affordable too.
91. Solve problems consumers don’t know they have. Help people in ways they haven’t even imagined. That markets itself.
92. Don’t hesitate to use consumer stories in your marketing. One of the most powerful tools we have in marketing is satisfied consumer’s story.
93. If the best marketing is powerful language, the most powerful language is low-to-no tech.
94. You earn your customers’ trust by making excellent products.
95. If your devices are consistently excellent, it becomes habit for consumers to use them. See Apple. And Google.
96. But if you stop creating, stop pushing the envelope, stop being aggressive, habits break and trust is loss.
97. Some of the most successful companies in our business were not the original manufacturer of their style of product.
98. Apple didn’t make the first MP3 player, it just perfected the MP3 player. Similarly, Google wasn’t the first search engine. It just became the best one.
99. You really don’t have to invent anything at all. You only need to perfect — product and marketing.
100. Finally, and again, the simpler the better. Market simply. Communicate simply. Easy is missing in consumer electronics. If you want to be successful in consumer electronics, aim for easy, and you’ll have a rare commodity.

Please note that in response to reader requests, I have categorized this list here.