Marketing

Just sharing one of the slides from a Web 2.0 Technology & Marketing course I (created for and) used to teach at the University of Texas (UT) Informal Classes program. This particular slide shows a simple model for understanding some of the basics of social networking sites. Comments?

Facebook just reached this past May '07 more than 26.6M unique visits and 15.8B content pages impressions, each visitor spending an average of 3 hours on the site. Amazing. The 26.6M visitors number is comparable with Malaysia's, Uzbekistan, Peru and Venezuela's population.

This (and more data) was made public by comScore as the result of one of their studies done through their Media Matrix product. Read the press release at Yahoo Finance.

comScore is a very interesting company all by itself. Their recent IPO went pretty well too. I own some shares of the now publicly traded company, as I believe they have a good business model, a great potential growth opportunity, good products and, in general, a bright future if they run their business well. What do you think?

A few months ago, I subscribed to the HitTail.com service. I then integrated it to this site with the purpose of testing it and learning more about it, as well as optimizing my site.

I must admit, their system is pretty interesting. Described in few words, it is a very clever arbitrage for the PPC and SEO market. The idea is based on The Long Tail book by Chris Anderson.

Once integrated to your site, the system analyzes the web searches brining traffic and calculates the frequencies of the different keywords and their combinations. It then presents you with your tail shape, showing you the most popular (top ten) keywords and also the long tail (keywords coming after your top ten), which are not so popular, but that (they claim) are responsible for a much bigger ammount of your traffic resulting from web searches.

For example, for this site, some the most popular keywords / combinations are: e1705, linux, warren buffet, dell inspiron e1705, ubuntu, kubuntu, etc. My top-ten keywords are responsible for brining 20% of my total search-result-induced traffic, while my long-tail keywords are responsible for the other 80%. This probes their point, suggesting that working on the long tail keywords to induce natural searches can dramatically improve your overall SEO strategy. Also, working on your long-tail keywords can help you reduce your advertising expenses, since by getting more natural search results induced traffic, you wont necessarily need to force PPC-generated traffic as much (altough, of course, you still want to analyze your overall stratege, maximizing your margin and leveraging from your liquid assets as much as you can).

After presenting you with this summary (and also with a live-view of the keywords referring traffic to your site), the system can give you suggestions. Again, as an example, for this site, that's something like: family guy stories, schlumberger work blog, guy sebastians address, emoticons da family guy, software engineer gemalto austin, dell inspiron e1705, sebastian com, las ruinas circulares de borges, etc). As you can see, the suggestions are related to my previous articles. [note: using their suggestions turned out to be pretty easy, right? ... actually, you should use them in your titles, in bold and big fonts, etc].

Some of the suggestions (as you can notice above) are not really interesting (remember this is computer-generated), so you also have a way to move the interesting ones to your to-do list and check them once you have used them on your site.

If you would like to use this system for your site but don't really know how to set it up, I would be more than glad to do that work for you for a reasonable fee. Please contact me.

Also, there is a youtube video that explains the idea in a better media:

Marketing gurus have been talking about why and how you should tell a story (wow! look at all those trackbacks) to your customers. Having a single, simple and solid small message that you repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat is so ‘90s (I wonder... Did you remember more the word "repeat" or the word "message"? please comment!)

Instead, if you have the big bucks to spend on a massive advertisement campaign or, even better, if you are clever enough to figure out how to do it on a shoestring (hint: web, e-mails, blogs, rss, …), you should definitively be telling a much more complex story.

Your story should have different chapters and also a common kernel to them. That surely will be the bold message and style, but it can also be something as simple as sharing the same actors (think Geico advertisements --that is, including the caveman).

It is not enough anymore to just get your customers to just remember your message. You surely want them to remember it, but you also want them to talk about it with their friends, to e-mail the link to your ad video on your web to the friends, to upload your ad to youtube, to subscribe to an rss-feed for your ads and new products, to post comments, to interact with you, to chat with your specialist, to design your next ad… and all this simply because it is funny, because they can, because you have shown them respect, because its worth talking about it and because they use and love your products.



What…? Family-Guy-Marketing?

Ever watched Family Guy? I love it. I know maybe some people find it offensive, and I am not recommending that you use that same exact style to market your business. However, I think you should understand and use their techniques and methodology.

Each episode (your chapters) gets a different blend of their favorite techniques, but also shares a common skeleton (intro, develop several stories, link them, wrap them up, be funny and leave you wanting some more) and a sense of belonging to the same core story.

They play with time, develop multiple stories, play with reality and dreams, with nature, with roles and with so many other techniques and ideas that you can reuse. Think pricesless.com. Now Think BMW. Shaken, not stirred... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaken,_not_stirred.

They have figured out a format that is both funny and efficient in keeping their fans coming back. And so have many other series, cartoons, movies, books and succesful ad agencies.

I say you can leverage on all that knowledge and experience they have. For example, maybe hire a creative writer from a tv series, instead of one from the old-style advertising agency.

I'm not a pricing expert, but the $9.99 (or $19.99 for that matter) pricing strategy is looking old to me. This guys say it works well. I say change the rules. If you are selling to a “smart” market, the $9.99 might even sound insulting. This can also be true in general for some cultures. So stop insulting your customers. Start respecting them, show them you know better. They are smart and they will appreciate that. Develop trust. Differentiate yourself.

How does a "Simply $10" sound instead of "Only $9.99"? Doesn't the first one sound more honest, fresher, uncluttered and more stylish? Aren't you tired of reading $9.99? If you were the customer, which one would you prefer? Do you really care about that penny? Are you really tricked into thinking it is less than $10 with the first one? I bet nowadays even your unconscious mind ain't buying. Change your strategy, give it a try, see what happens. Don't forget to measure and compare conversion rates.

Oh ... and also, with all those extra pennies, you could implement something else. For example, you could add a simple “win a free gift :-)” big, green and fun button with a fancy sound and display at the check out and give away a little something (personalized with your brand?) every 10 or 100 customers. Now that's something your customers will remember and may talk about.

P.S.: Here is a short review of the different marketing pricing strategies and concepts.