internet womm

8/3/2019 Internet Womm

1/64

2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]

Traditional Vehicle, New Channel:

Internet Word-of-Mouth Marketing


2/64

CONFIDENTIAL 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]

Its Time to Think Different

Interruption marketing just doesnt work anymore

Unanticipated, impersonal, and irrelevant ads wont break

through the data smog

Stop marketing atpeople. Get out of the way and letpeople market your products to each other.


3/64


What is viral marketing?

Word of mouth marketing augmented by digitalcommunication, a.k.a. word of mouse

Facilitate the process of people referring their friendsand colleagues

to purchase your products, visit your site, sign up for a free

trial, subscribe to your newsletter, etc.


4/64


Word-of-Mouth on Steroids

Traditional WOM Travels slowly

Dies off E.g. recommend a book to

some friends

Digitally augmented WOM Spreads fast

Travels far Exponential growth

(amplification)

E.g. Hotmail


5/64


Some new jargon

Sneezer, ideavirus, vector, hive, tipping point,connector, maven, promiscuous, powerful, smooth,

amplifier, persistence, word-of-mouse, network effect,Law of the Few, Zipfs Law, Metcalfs Law,

compounding effect, etc.

Gotta love buzzwords!


6/64


First, you need an ideavirus

Is your idea virusworthy?

Ideaviruses love a vacuum


7/64


Whos going to spread your message?

Seth Godin calls them sneezers

Promiscuous sneezers - have their price Powerful sneezers - cant be bought; difficult to predict what

will motivate them

Malcolm Gladwell breaks them out differently

Connectors - masters of the loose tie, seem to knoweverybody

Mavens - genuinely helpful

Salespeople - born to sell


8/64


Divide and conquer

Go after a demographic or psychographic group whereyour ideavirus can dominate

Like people hang out together (e.g. the affluent mix inthe same circles)

Target those sympathetic to your cause

Got a BMW dealership? Target BMW owners, not Fordowners.

Go after bloggers. They are sneezers!


9/64


Observe whos sneezing!

Identify your top sneezers by tracking unique opens 0 = didnt open

1 = recipient opened but didnt forward 2+ = recipient probably forwarded (unless they check mail

from multiple PCs)

Reward and incentivize these sneezers! Theyre worth

their weight in gold.


10/64


Reward your sneezers

Dont insist that a referrers friend become a customer to earn the

incentive. Thats outside his/her control.

Make sure the incentive is relevant to the recipient. It doesnt have to be expensive.

e.g. golf balls with the recipients name printed on them

DONT change the rules mid-campaign


11/64


Gotta give to get

Dont just give a speech and leave Fly in your customers to tell their stories

Sponsor a cocktail party afterward

Dont just tell them how your product is safe and secure; give them a first aidkit for their car

3M Post-It Notes: Secretary of 3Ms chairman sent a free case to secretaries of chairmen of the

Fortune 500

MCI Mail: Blew it - built friction into the system by charging instead of giving it away to build

critical mass


12/64


Network Effect

Metcalfs Law - the value of a network increases withthe square of the number of people using it

A world with 1000 fax machines is 250,000 times betterthan one with only 2


13/64


Power of bestseller lists

Zipfs Law - #1 is MUCH more popular than #2

Stanford study: artificially boosting bestseller status ofdownloaded files

Self fulfilling prophecy

If you cant dominate one, create your own


14/64


Make it easy for people topass it on Ask recipients to forward your e-newsletter, email,

website URL, RSS item, etc. to friends

Include on your site Email this page to a friend buttons

to refer your articles, products, etc.

Make it a fill-in form that allows the visitor to pass it on

to a number of people at once e.g. Ideavirus.coms Send It page


15/64


The consumer is in control

Of the content

Of the frequency

Of the relationship


16/64


Where consumers gather andmessages propagate Email

Discussion forums / chat rooms / listservs

Blogs

RSS

Podcasts

Wikis

Search engines


17/64


Join their conversations

Start blogging

Individual blog or group blog? Moblogging? Podcasting?

Influence other bloggers to blog about you

Solar powered backpack example

Start offering RSS feeds

Create a community Forums? Email listservs? Chat rooms? Wikis?


18/64


Precepts for joining the conversation

Say something worth talking about - Nick Usborne

Be remarkable.The opposite of remarkable is verygood. Very good is boring. - Seth Godin

Start fires.Markets are conversations; andconversations are fire. Therefore, marketing is arson. -

Doc Searls Share the love.Share your knowledge. Share your

network. Share your compassion. - Tim Sanders


19/64


Blogs

Online journal, organized in reverse chronological order

165 million Google search results for blog

3 types, according to Seth Godin

News blogs, Writers blogs, Our blogs

The community of bloggers = blogosphere

Blogosphere is rich with interlinkages Bloggers always cite (and link to) their sources in their posts

Links also appear in blogrolls, trackbacks, comments,

RSS


20/64



21/64



22/64



23/64



24/64


RSS

Better than the Inbox

Unspammable content delivery channel to individuals

Viable replacement for enewsletters

Web-wide Syndication

Propagate deep links that drive traffic and search engine

juice You should be fired if you do a marketing site without

an RSS feed. - Robert Scoble, Microsoft


25/64


Slashdotheadlinessyndicatedon

Nanodot.org


26/64


How subscribers follow RSS

Web-based aggregator

Bloglines (now owned by Ask Jeeves), My Yahoo!, MyMSN,

MyFeedster, etc.

Installed application

NewsGator (Outlook plug-in), Sage (Firefox plug-in), Pluck(IE plug-in), FeedReader, etc.


27/64



28/64



29/64



30/64



31/64


RSS

What will help subscribers keep their finger on the pulseof your business/industry and compel webmasters to

disseminate to their visitors? News alerts, latest specials, clearance items, upcoming

events, new arrivals, new articles, new tools & resources,search results, a books revision history, top 10 best sellers,project management activities, forum/listserv posts, recentlyadded downloads,

For blogs: latest posts, latest posts by category, latestcomments per post,


32/64


Subscribe tosearch resultson MSN Search


33/64


Subscribe tosearch resultson Yahoo! News


34/64


Subscribe todeals with onlineretailers


35/64


Subscribe toarticles


36/64


Subscribetopodcasts


37/64


Make It Easy to Subscribe

1-click add to your favorite aggregator

Add to ____ buttons

Link tags e.g.


38/64


Subscribe toa feedpersonalizedto you


39/64


Wikis

A website that visitors can add to / edit easily

Without knowledge of HTML

All previous versions are kept

Can easily back out to a previous version if needed


40/64



41/64



42/64


Discussion Forums

Web-based message board

Can be email-based too. Called a listserv or a

discussion list.

Very unlike blogs

Everyone is equal

Threaded Anyone can start new threads

Also unlike chat rooms, which are ephemeral


43/64



44/64



45/64


Case studies

President Carters blog

Numa numa

Somerville Gates Voltaic backpack

A9

HOTorNOT.com

Unleashing the Ideavirus

SETI@home

Budweiser parody


46/64


President Carters blog

8 days of blogging during a trip to West Africa

138,000 results for carter west africa blog in Google

Blog was marketed via press releases, through partnerorganization Web sites, and via the Google AdWords program

garnered significant increases in visits to our site, resulting in an

average quadruple our normal daily average. We have sustained

a significant increase in Web traffic since February 2004 - CarterCenter


47/64


Numa Numa

A student with a web camand too much time on his

hands Spreads through the

blogosphere quickly asA-list bloggers likeSeth Godin and Rick Bruner blogged about it

Made it onto Good Morning America


48/64


Somerville Gates

a micro sendup of the saffron

extravaganza in New York's Central

Park $3.50 in art supplies

Received over 4 million hits

Invitation from Tufts University forjuried art show


49/64


Voltaic Backpack

Solar-powered backpack from a small start-up

Blogging friend Treehugger blogged about it

Then got picked up by CoolHunting

Then got picked up by Gizmodo

A flurry of orders ensued.


50/64


A9

When Amazon.coms search engine company (called

A9) launched, bloggers got the scoop, not traditional

media A9s beta launch rocketed through the blogosphere


51/64


HOTorNOT.com

Formerly AmIHotorNot.com

View photos of strangers and rate their looks from 1 to 10 or post your ownphoto

Launched by 2 unemployed Californians on a whim and with no funding

A MediaMetrix Top 50 most visited site

Peaked at 14.8 million page views in a single day


52/64


53/64


Unleashing the Ideavirus

Book by Seth Godin - in paperback, hardcover, and e-bookformat

Free to download from the web at www.ideavirus.com

Web site also allows you to easily email it to all your friends

Most downloaded e-book in history

An Amazon.com best seller


54/64


SETI@home

Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence

Analyzing noise from space

Over 2 million PCs crunchingnumbers in their spare time, forno compensation

Propagated by powerful sneezers

Persistent


55/64


Budweiser Parody

Wassup Superfriends

Budweiser, wisely, didnt interfere

Further burned Budweisers brandand ad campaign into oursubconscious


56/64


Ready, Aim, Misfire.

Negative WOM spreads like wildfire

Raging Cow

Kryptonite Dan Rather (Rathergate)

What went wrong?

Be transparent. Be truthful.Communicate.


57/64



58/64



59/64



60/64


Search engines

Rankings can be manipulated

Implied endorsement

Combination of on-page and off-page factors

On-page

Body copy, title tags, headings, etc.

Off-page Links act like votes. Votes weighted. Favors A-list bloggers.

Link text very important (Google bombing)


61/64


In Summary

Viral marketing dwarfs traditional WOM

Identify your best sneezers

Make a compelling offering and exploit the sneezers

motivations

Make it easy to spread (smooth)

Join the conversation, through blogs, RSS, wikis, etc. You can influence, but not control


62/64


Further Reading / Resources The Tipping Pointby Malcolm Gladwell

Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin

The Anatomy of Buzzby Emanuel Rosen Creating Customer Evangelists by Ben McConnell & Jackie

Huba

The Cluetrain Manifesto by Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger

Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders

The Purple Cowby Seth Godin

Word of Mouth Marketing Association (www.womma.com)

MarketingProfs thought leaders summit on buzz marketing


63/64



64/64

Q&A

Email [email protected] for the audio fromthe MarketingProfs thought leaders summit on business

blogging that I led earlier this year Questions after the conference? Email me at

[email protected]

internet womm

Documents