Saturday, November 3rd, 2007
Yesterday I came across an article on CNN dot com about God Tube, and got to thinking about the various websites, television programs, video games and other mass “entertainment” venues which emulating one another.
We’ll just take a quick look at a few websites that emulate others. I doubt I’ll have to get into much detail about who and what is being emulated.
I can’t help but wonder:
- How are these sites able to operate without being sued?
- I can’t help but wonder how those sites manage to operate without getting sued? Don’t get me wrong I like a few of those sites, but from a legal standpoint how can a site like His Holy Space exist without raising a bunch of hackles in the legal department over at Myspace? The only conclusion I can reach is that these sites are left alone because they somehow help Myspace’s bottom line.
- How long will this social networking craze sustain itself?
- A few days ago I quickly addressed the fact that there are literally hundreds of social networking sites out there. How long can this possibly continue as a successful business model? Just today I joined three more for research purposes. I can’t count how many I’ve joined just long enough to use the interface and have never gone back (You’d be amazed by how many people call me to work on their computers which translates to - “Please help me sign up for (insert social networking flavor of the day here)”
A few months ago I wrote about reaching critical mass with Myspace friends, but I didn’t give much thought to reaching critical mass with social networks in general. I blame it on the fact that all I had, all I needed to have before starting this blog was a Facebook and a Myspace account. Either way the more I research this social networking phenomenon the more I realize it can’t possibly continue on as it has been. Or can it?
- How about the social bookmarking sites?
- Not to be outdone by social networking the social bookmarking sites are just as out of control. There are over 200 of these as well. From Stumbleupon to Sphinn to Reddit and hundreds of others. I could spend hours upon hours each day submitting my articles to social bookmarking sites. I don’t know who the original was and I don’t care who the original was, but I do wonder how many of these sites can the internet support?
A few questions for you reader:
- How many social networking/bookmarking sites do you use?
- How often do you make use of them?
- Do you continue to join new ones?
- How much of an impact have they had on your website/blog or life in general?
Posted in Blogging | 7 Comments »
Monday, October 29th, 2007
Blitz Marketing: From zero to infinity in a matter of hours
Before the advent of mass media formats such as television and radio blitz marketing was virtually impossible. Even then it was limited, but now with the internet it is not only possible but more often than not used even if the person doing it doesn’t realize they are doing it.
- What is blitz marketing?
- Simply defined blitz marketing is a strategy that takes a virtually unknown product, or brand and puts it out in front of as many targeted people as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.
- How does it work?
- Despite what it may seem this is not strictly a numbers game. Spamming will get you virtually zero return on your investment and efforts. The key to a successful blitz marketing campaign lies in the targeting of your audience. In fact that is the single most important piece of the puzzle, because no matter how many people see your product if they aren’t in the market for it you won’t sell it.
- How do I know who to market it too?
- First figure out why you’ve made the product. That alone will tell you a great deal about who you should be targeting. For example if you’ve made a new sports energy drink your primary market would be high school athletes and their parents. You wouldn’t be trying to market it in a nursing home. There are some basic questions you should be able to answer about your product:
- What age range will this appeal too?
- What gender is most likely to use this product?
- Who are my peers and contemporaries?
- What will this product do that no others does?
- How original is my product?
- How available am I willing to make my product?
- How can I find people to market it too?
- Rarely is the concern that no one wants a product. More often than not the problem is finding the right people to introduce your product too. A few years ago Heinz Ketchup released a variety of different colored ketchup some purple, some green, and if my memory serves there was blue and another color or two. I’ll get to the point right away and say it was a dismal marketing failure. Why? Because they didn’t target it at anyone in particular. Kids and pre-teens would have been the perfect market for this colored ketchup, but Heinz didn’t do that. And let’s just be honest with one another there’s something very wrong about dipping your fries (or chips for some of you folks) into a blob of purple ketchup. It tastes the same, it smells the same, it is exactly the same except the food dye added to it.
The moral to the story is don’t be a “heinz” spend some time finding out where you are going to market your product. In fact that should be the single biggest piece of the project. The key is knowing where to market not how hard you market or how much you spend. Leveraging available avenues like Google Adwords, Myspace, Facebook, and a product related blog you should be able to do a huge marketing campaign at a very minimal cost.
- How much money should I spend?
- The short answer is no more than you have too. The longer answer is no more than you have too. Unless you’re a huge corporate giant with deep, deep, deep pockets you no doubt have a very puny marketing budget. In fact you may very well not have one at all. If that is the case you can eliminate the Adwords marketing I mentioned above and still have three very powerful, viable, and free marketing tools at your disposal.
Myspace and Facebook are both free to signup and post content. You can build networks of hundreds of thousands of people using those two sites alone. You can get a free blog at Blogger (by Google), or Wordpress. A word of caution for whatever reason many people are distrustful of freely hosted blog services. If you have a website already (which you certainly should) consider hosting your blog with the site. If you don’t have a website go spend the $10.00 to register the domain name and the 4.95 per month for Host Gator and use a blog instead of a website.
- What about email marketing?
- By all means use it. Strictly as an opt-in method of marketing. Opt-in marketing is also known as permission based marketing. No doubt you’ve seen websites which have something that says “For the latest news and information on our widgets enter your email address here!” By entering your email address you are opting to have those widgets marketed too you. So if you’d like to use email marketing do so with an opt-in list. First and foremost it is bad business practice to spam people, and secondly it is illegal in many nations.
- What if I try these methods and nothing works?
- That’s an easy question to answer.
- Your product is garbage, or
- You didn’t target your market, or
- You got in at the wrong time
Those are really the only three reasons for a well defined blitz marketing campaign to fail. All of which can be fixed with some focused effort.
If you have a product you wanted to blitz market how would you go about it?
Posted in Making Money | No Comments »
