No-Bullshit Marketing
MJ Kim, Raj Prasad, Al Chang and Jason Hilton talked about marketing.
Kim is the marketing person for PhotoBucket. Hilton and Prasad are from WDFA Marketing, an ad agency. Kim says, “Marketing, evangelizing is the same whether it’s for your company or you’re on your first date.”
How do we do no-bullshit marketing, both traditional and non-traditional?
Kim: “Our market is young, non tech-savvy, using MySpace. When we understood our market, we changed the product from a widget to a slideshow, and our usage base doubled. Trigger point was messaging, reminding ourselves that our user base is used to a certain kind of language.” That is, they don’t want a bunch of buzzwords.
Marketing is any time you’re talking to a user, from giving out t-shirts on the street to customer service.”
Question: What about the social media folks who say, “If you have to market, you’re doing something wrong.”
There is a shitload of clusterfuckery that happens in web 2.0.
Al Chang: A lot of people make the mistake that you need mass. But it’s hard to do that really well. What VCs are talking about is, when you start out ,you only need some people to like you. You need proof that someone likes you. If you can’t find 5,000 people to show up and use your product, maybe you should rethink your product. I think that’s the expectation.
Prasad: You can make a lot of money off a little group of people, or lots of money by charging less to a lot of people.
Audience comment: I wanted to find out how to embed a video in my blog, and I found a post telling how to do it on YouTube. I think that’s how they got so much attention.
Chang: A lot of the web 2.0 companies success has more to do with anthropology than computer science. YouTube made it really easy to upload videos, and then it has these things to get attention and promote your video.
Kim: The jobs of marketing are getting them to your site, keeping them there and retaining them.
Comment: Good content gets you there, usability and tools will keep you there.
Prasad: It’s needs recognition, filling the need, identifying the people who need it. Then the viral process can begin.
Chang: It’s easier to know people now. You can find the person with the well-read blog and email them. But you do have to spend the time to make it really personal. Still not easy but easier than before.
Q: We get competing advice as a startup. Some people say, get out there right away. The other say, it’s all about the experience.
Chang: Go out with half a product, but not a half-assed product.
Kim: Some companies’ philosophy is, “Every day, we try to suck a little less.”
Comment from SimplyHired: If you have something no one else has, it can be pretty alpha. We had a couple competitors so we wanted to get out there. We did something slightly different by adding social networking component with LinkedIn. You have to understand your audience’s tolerance for crappiness.
Kim: Don’t trust a marketer who won’t be held accountable for the value they’re adding to your company.
Prasad: Eventually all marketing efforts run themselves out, and consumers start responding. One non-traditional campaign for Budweiser, they hired people to stand in upscale bars holding a bottle of beer.
Hilton: The basic stuff is identifying who you’re going to talk to and how you’ll talk to them. Messaging and frequency is important.
Chang: Barat (the movie) did a promotion with MySpace. You had to add Barat to one of your top eight friends. Then, you printed out your list and you could get into the movie. Now your face is sitting next to this thing, declaring it’s your friend. This is not just passive. Every screening got 2,000 or 3,000 people, over 100,00 people added it as a friend. Ideas are cheap, and they keep working for you. If you need millions of people, this won’t work. But if you can get 500,000, that’s pretty good in the web 2.0 world.
–Susan Kuchinskas
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