Network effects provide a powerful way to build a bridge between your initial fan base and the general public.

Unless marketing a super specialized product that could only appeal to a niche audience, you’ll probably eventually want to move beyond your initial fan base and reach the general public, where a much larger market awaits.

To cross the gap between that fan base and the public, you’ll need to perform the final step of effective marketing: building a bridge that will allow your product to spread.

But first, you need to know the nature of the gap you’re trying to span. It boils down to the difference between the two groups in question.

Your fan base consists of adopters, while the general public is primarily composed of adapters. As a result, you become popular with your fan base for the same reason you’re unpopular with the public: you disrupted the old way of doing things.

For example, imagine you’re a pioneer of online video streaming back in 2010. Tech mavens are eager to embrace your service – but the general public wants to cling to their DVDs.

How do you convince them to let go? How do you build a bridge to them?

A very powerful answer lies in a phenomenon called the network effect. It happens when a product or service becomes more valuable as more people use it. This sets the stage for a positive feedback loop: as more people use the product or service, it becomes more useful; that leads to even more people using it, which makes it even more useful, and so forth and so on.

Consider the case of Slack, an online collaboration platform for coworkers. Initially, it was embraced by a small fan base of people who were willing to learn the ropes of a new program that nobody else was using.

Once they had learned it, they worked on converting their coworkers into Slack users. Why? Because the more coworkers using the platform, the more useful it became.

So the platform started spreading – and before long, even if someone was a change-resistant adapter, they felt like they had to, well, adapt to the new Slack-ified reality of their workplace.

Why? Because they didn’t want to miss out on the conversations and collaborations everyone else was having on the platform.

In sum, network effects can help your product go mainstream, and your initial fan base can lead the way.