Tag Archives: viral



Psst! Pass it on!

June 15th, 2009

Included in my standard ordering of 100 minicards from moo there is a card at the end which says:

Psst! Pass it on!
I’m a MiniCard from moo.com
MOO prints things with photos
or designs – like StickerBooks,
Postcards and Greeting Cards.

On the flipside is a coupon code for 15% off your first order.

(Mine is 2RB2CK feel free to use it, first in first served).

Not only are the cards themselves a talking point – but they have given me something to give to someone who also thinks they are pretty cool.  Neat huh?

So sit down, map out the customer interaction process, ensure you are leveraging each of those interactions, then implement.

All the small things add up! (You can see Moo is doing a fine job of it.)


Early Stage Marketing

April 16th, 2009

Some guidelines for internet entrepreneurs developing their early stage marketing strategy:

  • SEO is about branding, it takes time, it does pay off, but don’t expect overnight success.  Expect months of hard work to recreate the apparent look of overnight success.
  • PPC is great if you can sustain it.  Often you are developing or creating a segment of which it is hard to get a return on this initially.  If you are in the rare stance of breaking even or making a profit (whilst in startup mode) go horizontal, invest in MSN, in Yahoo.  Get their lower competition marketplaces to help you drive profit.
  • Viral tactics are just as the term describes, tactics.  They help provide a short term boost, or add the icing to the cake.  Realise this and use it to your advantage.  Solid business growth still comes from delivering insane value to your customers and looking after them.
  • Marketing results always take double the amount of time that you predicted, it takes time to refine your strategy, make the technological changes, talk to all developed parties.  However picking up the phone and calling your existing clients can be done today.
  • Focus on building brand name searches, measure the numbers of visit by your brand, focus on pushing that.  No one can compete when people are motivated to look for you.
  • Do not skimp on metrics, use Google Analytics, capture all that you can (helps for future analysis) but focus on the key metrics that drive your business today.  Match them to business objectives and real dollars in the hand. 
  • Blogging will be your #1 Marketing Tool if you use it wisely, so only blog if you’re going to do a good job of it.
  • Communities are fantastic but like blogging require a lot of work, if you are time poor this may not be your best approach.  It is better to not do it at all than do it miserably.
  • The best people you can hire (if you need hire at all) come from referrals, they don’t need splashy websites to sell themselves, their clients sell them.
  • Free is good, creating a product that people marvel you charge so low for it is better.  Case in point Basecamp.
  • Stick to your strategy, it will naturally evolve over time but if you quit because you don’t get instant results you are following the path to mediocrity.
  • ALWAYS (and I mean ALWAYS) question those that provide marketing advice, it helps you understand their thinking and helps them learn about you.
  • Once you have your strategy get onto it, there are a thousand ways to skin a cat, focus on yours.  Marketing fads come and go.

And finally….Stop procrastinating and start now!  Many entrepreneurs know what they need to do, they just don’t do it, like this blog I just do it, not spend all my time talking ….


Running a Twitter Campaign

December 21st, 2008

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]



Spread a smile

November 24th, 2008

Aristotle said the goal of all human activity should be happiness (including business).

Smile at someone and they smile back.

Same with yawning.

You spread the word, fast, easy and simple.

This is like joy, bring your customers joy, happiness, excitement.

The best forms of word of mouth.

If you bring someone happiness they will spread it and/or others will notice.

iPods are sold on enjoyment, videos go viral because they make you laugh or cry, business referrals come from those that are happy with your service.

Does your product genuinely make your customers happy?

If not, it should. Spread a smile 🙂

(you know you want to)


Remember the Big Red Button?

September 11th, 2008

You click it. What does it do?

Who knows? wow

The intrigue, the curiousity, the excitement

Then it did nothing

But it could do something right?

Maybe next time

Yet we would still spread the story, hey have you searched for the big red button? have you pressed it? You should to see what it does.

I remember being 14 or so and searching yahoo / lycos for the big red button.

What was interesting is, this spread before social bookmarking, digg, networking, just with plain old emails or moreso (actual) word of mouth, person to person.

Simple idea online, spread virally. Just to reminisce with the rest of us.

Wonder if we will see it come back as a Facebook app?

For those of you who missed out, revisit what was (not really) cool in 1999 introducing the big red button.

Ten Years on it still spreads!



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