Lauren Teague Goes Unplugged at Digital Summit Chicago: How to Turn Customers Into Fans

Editor’s Note
This article is part of a Digital Summit Collective series where we’re turning standout live sessions from recent Digital Summit events into actionable, on-demand insights for our community. Each piece is adapted from a real stage presentation—capturing the ideas, examples, and strategic thinking that resonated most with attendees.

Lasting loyalty grows through experiences that make people feel understood, build trust, and give them a reason to return.

Lauren Teague’s love of golf began on her grandparents’ couch. Watching tournaments beside her grandfather, she adopted his favorite players, learned to hold a club, and eventually started competing herself. Years later, he was among the first people she called when the PGA Tour offered her its first social media manager role.

That connection shaped her career, but it started with someone she loved sharing something he cared about.

During her session at Digital Summit Chicago, Teague used that experience to explore how fandom develops and what marketers can do to encourage it. With a flip chart and worksheets instead of slides, she asked attendees to consider the people who already care about their organizations and how to make those relationships stronger.

Her approach centers on affinity: the trust, emotional connection, and sense of belonging that give people a reason to keep showing up.

Pay Attention to What Happens After Attention

Marketers have plenty of ways to measure whether someone notices a brand. Impressions, clicks, follower growth, and open rates help teams understand whether their messages are reaching people.

Teague encouraged attendees to examine what happens after that first interaction. Does someone return? Recommend the experience? Offer feedback? Introduce a friend or colleague?

Those behaviors reveal how a relationship is developing. They also deserve a place in conversations about performance, alongside the metrics teams already track.

She brought the exercise down to one person: Who is your favorite fan?

It might be the customer who responds to every webinar, the person who consistently shares your posts, or the employee who enthusiastically recommends your workplace. Naming that person makes it easier to think about what they value and design an experience that serves them.

Employees belong in this conversation, too. Their willingness to advocate for an organization grows from their experience of working there.

Help People Take the Next Step

Teague described the progression toward fandom through four stages: try, do, trust, and “I am.” Someone accepts an invitation, repeats an experience, develops a relationship, and may eventually see the brand as part of their identity.

At the PGA Tour, her goal was to help fans become more connected, wherever they started.

Someone who watched only the Masters might tune into another tournament. A viewer who followed Tiger Woods might discover a second favorite player, giving them another reason to watch. Each experience created an opportunity to deepen their interest.

That progression offers a useful way to think about customer relationships. A repeat purchase, a recommendation, or a willingness to participate can represent meaningful progress.

Teague also cautioned against expecting everyone to become a superfan. People have limited time and emotional energy. A loyal repeat customer can be valuable without making your company part of their identity.

The task is to understand where people are today and identify a realistic next step.

F: Put the Fan First

The first part of Teague’s FANS framework focuses on reducing friction.

An organization may promise a great experience while making people struggle through registration, onboarding, support, or purchasing. Over time, teams can become accustomed to problems their customers encounter every day.

Teague pointed to the Savannah Bananas as an example of designing around fans’ needs. Alongside the entertainment, she highlighted efforts to simplify the ticket experience and address frustrations around resale.

For other organizations, the opportunity may be much smaller: a confusing sign-up process, a broken link, or a question that customers repeatedly have to ask.

The starting point is to experience your business as a customer would. Walk through the process, listen to recurring feedback, and choose one obstacle you can remove.

A: Make Affinity Actionable

Understanding a customer’s journey requires looking at what they are thinking and feeling as well as what they are doing.

Teague encouraged teams to map those experiences across the stages of a relationship. What is someone trying to accomplish? Are they excited, apprehensive, or frustrated? What questions are they asking, and whose advice do they trust?

Those answers help determine what the person needs next. Someone who is uncertain may need reassurance or an explanation. Someone who already trusts the company may be ready to offer feedback or introduce others.

Teague described working through this exercise with people across an organization. When the team cannot answer a question, that gap becomes a reason to talk with customers, fans, or customer service colleagues.

The resulting map should reflect the customer’s experience closely enough to guide decisions about communication, support, and the next interaction.

N: Learn Your Community’s Native Language

Communities develop their own phrases, rituals, and ways of recognizing one another. Paying attention to that language helps marketers understand what people value.

Teague used Taylor Swift fans’ friendship bracelets as an example. A lyric inspired a practice that fans made their own, exchanging bracelets and creating connections around a shared experience.

For brands, the lesson is to notice what customers are already saying and doing. Their descriptions of a product may be clearer than the language on its landing page. Their habits may reveal an opportunity to improve the experience or develop something new.

Surveys, community conversations, and customer feedback all provide places to listen. The question is whether the language fits your brand’s participation in that community and helps people feel understood.

The same applies internally. Shared expressions and traditions can tell a team a great deal about its culture.

S: Create Space for Shared Identity

Shared identity develops when people recognize values and experiences they have in common.

Teague encouraged marketers to look at how community members interact when the brand is no longer directing the conversation. Do they help one another? Make introductions? Share advice? Those relationships show that the community has value beyond its interactions with the organization.

Her own Cubs fandom illustrated how that connection can exist outside the behaviors a company typically tracks. Friends introduced her to spring training during college, and she wore a Cubs jersey to the Chicago session years later. She was not a season ticket holder, but the team still held meaning for her.

A purchase history or engagement report captures only part of that relationship. Understanding affinity also requires listening to the stories people tell about why they care.

What To Do Right Now

1. Name a fan. Choose a customer, community member, or employee whose experience you want to understand more deeply.
2. Identify the next step. Determine whether you want to encourage a first experience, repeat participation, greater trust, or advocacy.
3. Remove one point of friction. Walk through a customer process and fix something that makes it unnecessarily difficult.
4. Map thoughts and feelings. Ask what people need, what concerns them, and who influences their decisions at each stage.
5. Listen for shared language. Notice how people describe your brand and the traditions they create around it.
6. Write a fan activation statement. Complete this sentence: “We will help our customers move from ___ to ___ by ___.”

The Bottom Line: Give People a Reason to Stay

Teague’s approach makes affinity something teams can work on deliberately. A clearer process, a thoughtful response, or an experience worth sharing can help a relationship develop over time.

The opportunity is to choose one meaningful improvement and put it into practice. Help someone feel more comfortable, more understood, or more connected than they did before.

Those experiences give customers, employees, and community members reasons to return and stories they want to share with someone else.

Watch the Full Session

This article was adapted from Actionable Affinity, Unplugged: Turning Customers, Communities & Employees Into Loyal Fans, presented by Lauren Teague at Digital Summit Chicago.

Watch the full video here