bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Having my monthly coffee with Rich of GetFrank we were talking about all the learnings you get from running an online business.

It really is all about the groundswell – creating the word of mouth.

It’s less about sinking money into something and more pulling your sleeves up and getting your hands dirty.

These are the fundamentals offline as well, yet you forget the basics to be honest.

If you can take these basic principles back offline into a traditional market you can really dominate.

Imagine applying Internet Marketing 101 to staplers? fruit juice? car tyres?

Your marketing cost would be a fraction of the competition and I daresay magnitudes times more effective.

Basic concept of innovation – take a successful framework into a new context.  You could have some real fun with it – so why not give it a shot?

Brand experiences tend to be post event. 

However now we have the technology for live experiences. 

Social networks with live engagement are such an example.

Local energy drink provider has taken advantage of this with their V Bebo Community.

Another great example is Vaughan Rowsell.

Now Vaughan is cycling the length of New Zealand Uphill (bottom to top) for charity.  He is just about half way now.

You can send him messages on twitter, see his blog, watch his videos.  I have included his first one below:

You can experience it as he does.  With the right software and cell coverage he could even stream live from his cycle trip.

Imagine watching the Tour De France from Lance Armstrongs bike with his commentary as he rides.  Motor racing does this with in car cams – but there is a ways to go.

You could be sponsoring such an experience as Vaughans, some great fits would be:

• Hotel Chain (where to rest after a long day of travel)
• Energy / Sports Drinks (providing the fuel for the journey)
• Clearly the bike / clothing
• Technology (we are where you want to be)

This isn’t for everyone, yes it is less controlled, you don’t know what will happen.  Maybe it will be boring? Or maybe you will be there when something remarkable happens.  It is reality tv meets real world.  We all know reality tv isn’t that real anyway so why not deliver an authentic experience.  (Hell if you even track Vaughan down you can partake).

Twitter, Blogging, Video all allow people to engage with your brand real time which creates an extremely loyal customer base.  Neat huh?

(Vaughan is raising money for a good cause TASC The Agency for Spinal Concerns, check his blog out for more details).

A brand experience is magnitudes times more valuable than observing a brand.

You experience the Apple lifestyle, you experience the Gary Vaynerchuk brand through his video blog, you experience my brand through this very blog.

Seeing an advertisement at a bus stop just doesn’t compare – however pairing that up with an experience completely changes the game.  A great example is a free ringtone which you can grab via bluetooth from the advertisement which then gives you something to walk away with and experience.

Living a brand is so much more fun, engaging and most of all attractive to others as they want to be a part of it.

Sure it’s not for everyone but those that can master it will reap the outrageous rewards….

Viral activities are a dime a dozen.  Everyone giving it a go.  And that is great because they longer they keep at it the better they will get.

Often you will see a somewhat lame initiative go viral, or at least succeed in your perspective, you think hey i had a better idea.

But guess what?

They have much more momentum.  When Nike or Skittles does something cool, it is more likely to spread due to their momentum.

If I announce a project it has a higher chance of spreading than a blogger just starting out even if it is the same initiative.

Viral success = Momentum + Remarkability

If you don’t have momentum you need to really push the remarkability side.  You need to be doubly, triply, quadruply remarkable.

So don’t be disheartened if you haven’t had success the first time, keep giving it a go and remember the formula.

Twitter is a great platform for conversation. 

However how could you run a marketing campaign on it?

Criteria would be:

• Remarkable content
• Idea worth spreading
• Of actual benefit to those who consume it

If you were to fulfill these, how could you spread the word?

Same as any strategy, plan, line up your chess pieces and execute.

My strategy would be around:

• Have a series of tweets, to provide background information or arouse curiousity
• A follow up tweet with the actual subject
• Stimulate discussion tweets.

Then target 5 users in your niche to engage in it, with slightly different variations of the tweets.

An example would be:

1. bwagy: checking out this cool video @bwagy sent me
2. bwagy: hilarious, check out this video from @bwagy http://blog.local
3. bwagy: what did you think? watch it here http://blog.local retweets appreciated

Of course this only works for the criteria above and with people you have solid relationships with.

It’s more of an initiative to maximise coverage of your first and second tier networks of your offering.

The next step would be to do multiple timezones within a 24 hour period to ensure global coverage.

You can then directly measure through tracking webpage visits and tweets (using search.twitter.com).

That’s what I would do if I was to try and get a message out over twitter.

This information is worth thousands to the right person so help spread it for me as its free 🙂

Update: Tweet this to share:

Running a campaign on Twitter http://tr.im/2j8k by @bwagy [make sure to add your comments when you tweet]

I was after parking on Sunday in the city.

Upon entry I was presented with:

Then as we turned to go up a floor,

On the wall there was also:

And so then with a smile on my face, I went off on my business.

Returning an hour or so later, I noticed this on the lift doors:

This is so well executed, once one person in the car had seen it, everyone else checked out the next one.

Finally upon exit there was another one on the barrier arm.

Great concept, it was interesting enough to make me smile and tell others.

Now that its been done once though, it’s become disposable…. 

(but still neat huh?)

How can you take what worked here for your own campaign? can you make that into a business? maybe.

What made this work?

• Located in high traffic area
• No dilution or prior ads in this space
• Target market, everyone that sees it is in a car (which is insurable)
• Stress situation, slight stress as you drive in a parking building to not hit anyone or anything
• Reinforcement: at the lift, upon exit
• Funny, interesting, remarkable, worth commenting about

The bus driver can’t hear you. He has already driven away.  

He couldn’t care less, you should have been on time,

You should have been there when he cared, when he had time to give you attention.

Dam.

Oh well the next bus is 10 mins away?  Wrong.  It could be 5 mins away or 25 mins away.

You don’t know.

You know it is coming, but when?

The point is, in the meantime you’ve missed out.

Communications is rapidly changing and has been doing so for years, the bus has come and gone many times, each time it does, you miss out!

So when are you going to be on time jump on board, and give it a shot.  As hey one day its going to be lonely at that bus stop.

I was reflecting on an opportunity that is coming up, a big budget with a big client…

What would I do? and the common thread was to

Invoke action. Why?

Well new initiatives are now transparent (and you should stimulate this) which communicates a message.

For example::

• CEO on Twitter -> We are listening.
• Customer Helplines with real people (no computers…) -> We value you
• Product Development stemming from customer feedback -> We’re here to help you succeed

Are you planning ahead? or trying to build / create something new?

Quite often during this process.  I will say stop.

Take a step back.

Take an overview.

What happens next? What are the next steps?

Are we doing the best thing to make that happen? yes / no?

How can we make sure Step 1, sets up Step 2 and 3 (all in light of the bigger picture).

For example, I am doing a joint venture to do a series of workshops.

We wanted our selling point, so I took a step back and said, What is the conversation that’s going on in our target’s mind?

What are they going to say to their boss that makes them say yes I will pay for that.

Stop. Take a step back.  Think two steps forward.

I have discussed somewhat about building a community to enhance customer engagement (amongst many other benefits).

Given recent conversations I’ve had there appears to be a bit of a stigma around the labour investment in building a community.

So I wanted to highlight a recent example from Vodafone New Zealand.

They launched an online forum at forum.vodafone.co.nz August 1st 2008.

Investment was:

• $150 for forum license
• 3 people engaged over a month, checking in every now and again to keep an eye on it
• Link under Help on Vodafone website and a mention on Geekzone

Results:

• 250,000 visits with an average time of just under 4 minutes.
• That’s a whooping 1 million minutes/ month.  Or the equivalent of 697 days (back to back) of attention.
• 356 registered members and ~3000 posts (till Sept 17th)

From other forum’s Vodafone has run, they have found only 1 out of 5 questions requires an official response.

Over time the forum will build a repository of information that will provide answers to users without ANY extra work by Vodafone.

Isn’t this brilliant? What a fantastic way to help your customers.  I hope this makes others stand up and give it another look.

Oh and….

If your trying to figure the ROI on that.  Compare the attention time on the forum vs the equivalent cost of having them dealing with front line staff OR cost of getting that amount of attention OR measure impact on brand loyalty OR measure the value of the feedback you receive.

You can see your return comes in many forms.  Measure what is important.

Great to see Vodafone trying new methods to help their customers, keep up the good work!

Everyone likes a good story

That’s why we tell them / share them / grow them

Now look at all your actions, what story does this create? How can i make it a better story…

When giving a gift, what story can they (the recipients) tell themselves and others?

When dealing with customers, ie red bull gives me wings…….

Go on tell a remarkable story you know you want to

Philanthropy in the past has been limited to individuals of mass wealh or huge companies.

However every one does do their bit helping one another out and their local causes.

We view Philanthropy as out of our reach…. for now… maybe later in life.

Causes such as Kiva unlock this and unleash the long tail.  So we can all engage in helping others out (in $25 usd increments).

Kiva provides a platform for people like you and me to provide funds to micro finance companies in developing and third world countries.  On this platform you invest in their project or business and in return they provide blog updates and knowing you’ve had a direct hand in helping someone else out.

Your investment doesn’t end there.  Once its repaid you get the money back and can reinvest it in others.  Yup you get every cent back.

As a bit of a hobby economist this concept is awesome, using the multiplier effect (looking at how additional investment will flow in an economy) you can find how many times your investment will flow through the economy.  Simply 1/percentage of savings ie in Peru the savings levels are 17% so 1/.17 = 5.9.  Meaning your investment will add ~ $125 to the gdp of Peru.

Thats only on a basic level, there are further flow on effects.

So my idea to you is:

• Create a philanthropy focus in your company, commit some money to invest in projects like kiva.
• Let your employees pick the companies to invest in and follow their progress.
• Take it a step further and match the lend that your employees place in Kiva.
• Get your family together and place a loan in a business.
• Get your workmates together and all join in to support 1 business.
• Your local group such as Rotary / Lions or your church could support causes on this and get your members to keep up to date with what is happening.
• Help Kiva out with their operation costs by sending them a donation.

You can check out Kiva at www.kiva.org (my lender loan page is here).  Facebook group is here.

So jump on, lend some money, help make a direct difference and see what happens.

Your marketing decision can help others too.

Him get it. (Band)

417,000 friends on Myspace

214 videos on Youtube, millions of views

Fan Club that fans actually want to join (and pay for)

Extended dvd’s and limited artwork for die hard fans

Limited dvd releases that are actually limited

I can see why Him are so successful. Can’t you?

Marketing is more than advertising.

In fact advertising takes up the smallest component of my marketing strategies…

Wake up! I am busy. You are busy. We are even busy when we sleep. Face it everyone is busy.

Surely you realise by now that you are marketing for [peoples] time, time to try your product, time to enjoy it.

Time is becoming more and more valuable. Your product should be too.

Make your product fun, enjoyable, make us really long for the day to pass till we can enjoy it.

That’s a magic position to be in right there.