Good. I see you’ve all dressed for the occasion. Get those hands and fingers loosened up because we’ve got some heavy manual labor coming up. Before I put you to work we’ve got to have a little chat about what’s about to happen and why it’s not what you think it is even though it really is, after a fashion. Clear enough? Good.
This has to do with how I am going to find all those people with a dollar that’s just burning a hole in their PayPal accounts and how I’m going to convince them to give it to me. This will be my Marketing Plan. Now, to market something you first have to have something to sell – I realize I’m not quite there yet. Then, you have to figure out a way to tell people about what you’re selling. Finally, you have to convince them – through clever advertising or something like that – to buy it.
These days “clever advertising or something” boils down to one concept: Viral Marketing. The basis of Viral Marketing is to come up with a funny video featuring your product that looks like some kids in the neighborhood made it. Then you put it on YouTube and get a zillion hits. The people who watch YouTube – whom the marketers figure can’t really think much for themselves – all want to be just like the people in the video and rush out to buy your product. It’s basically the same idea behind TV ads but because it’s on a computer it has to have a much cooler recombinant-bio-gen-psycho-tech name like “Viral”. Welcome to the 21st Century.
The trick is to get that initial “buzz” started so that your video can “go viral” and your product can fly off the shelves. To this end some marketing companies have reinvented themselves as “viral” marketing specialists. What they do for you is hire some out-of-work Political Science PhDs in various places to rush around and proclaim the coolness of your YouTube video and tell everybody how wonderful your product is. That is, they lie. This strategy never works because if you have to hire somebody to extol your coolness then your product probably wasn’t very cool to start with. This underlying coolness disconnect shows up as soon as the first person you didn’t pay tries your stuff. That’s when the “buzz” turns into buzz which is the sound you hear when you are being attacked by hornets.
This strategy was tried, and failed, a while ago but somehow the marketers have convinced everybody that’s “going viral” is the way to succeed in internet advertising. The failed attempt that should have warned everybody off the concept was the viral marketing effort for a movie called “Snakes on a Plane”. For the unfamiliar “Snakes on a Plane” took the highly-believable premise of an airliner transporting both people and an absurdly large number of belligerent legless reptiles. The snakes are set free, the plane can’t land and the hero has to save the day. It starred Samuel L. Jackson who alone would make the movie worth watching. Had they stopped there the movie would have done OK. Instead the producers decided to hire a bunch of people, show them the movie, pay them, and let them loose to tell everybody how cool the movie was. It worked brilliantly up until the movie was released. People queued up for the opening and found out how badly they’d been deceived. Can you say buzz?
The other reason that Viral Marketing doesn’t work is that customers – the very people the marketers are trying to reach – subconsciously translate “viral” as “relating to a highly infectious, possibly deadly, disease causing micro-organism.” Personally, being a person who prefers to travel by air wearing a Level Four biohazard suit, I know I don’t want to be associated with anything viral in nature. I’m sure you wouldn’t either.
“Viral” marketing is an offshoot of yet another cutting edge strategy known as “Word of Mouth”. This marketing concept goes back to the very dawn of civilization. In fact, evidence for the roots of this strategy have been recently uncovered in western Iraq at an ancient Sumerian dig known as U-Tab. The archaeologists involved uncovered a large pile of clay blocks impressed with geometric symbols which translated into things like “En-men-gal-ana really likes Melem-Kish Dried Dates. You should try a bag.” The site was dated at 2900 BC. The reason Word of Mouth enjoyed such a long run as a successful strategy – some 5000 years – is that it is based on personal recommendation. The flow of information was:
“Hey, would you like a dried date?” Said En-men-gal-ana.
“OK. Yum, these sure are tasty!” Replied Enmebaragesi.
Enmebaragesi would rush out and buy himself a bag or two, pass the buzz along to his high-hatted, strange-bearded friends and the Melem-Kish Date Co., Inc. thrived.
For my marketing effort I want to turn the clock back to that simpler time but use tools from the current age rather than some clay encrusted styli to pass the word along. That’s where you come in. I can’t do it without you so I need your help but I don’t want this to turn into a “marketing at all costs” effort on either of our parts. I want to create a buzzable, entertaining experience for you and I want you to like it enough to tell your friends. I want the experience – for all of us – to be personal.
To that end I’d like to give a big Thank You! for those of you who have been reading from the beginning. You first five or so readers will always have a special place in my thoughts. There are more of you now and I can finally dispense with the whole “reader(s?)” thing. Its time has passed. In fact, there are now so many of you that there are readers among you whom I do not know. This will not stand because I really want to get to know all of you. You fifty or so early adopters will always have a special place in my thoughts. It this core group that I need to address because I want to meet all of you, even if only online. From you, all else will follow.
First, if I don’t know you, send me an email just to say Hi. If you’re on Facebook or Twitter – ohmigod like there’s Facebook and Twitter links right over there – send me a Friend or Follow request. I’d send you one but I don’t know who you are – yet. Then, if you find something here that makes you smile, click on that “Like” button in the Facebook section or Tweet all about it. Maybe one or two of your friends will read it and agree and together we’ll start down that path to the next level. Just as an annoying drip of water will eventually fill up the sink and spill over onto the floor you and I will move forward as a larger and larger group causing an ever spreading mess. Not that we’re drips or anything like that.
That’s the work I need you to do. Click away.
Eventually we’ll reach the stage where we can have some real fun. The first five hundred or so of you will always have a special place in my thoughts and I’ve got some really nifty ideas for what we can do down the road. However, my target is five thousand. I decided on this number because that’s the maximum number of friends that Facebook will let you have. After that number is reached you can only be a fan. Not that there’s anything wrong with having you as a fan but it would be so much better to be your friend. After all, as you could well imagine, my five thousand Facebook friends will always have a special place in my thoughts.
Here’s the deal. You keep reading. If you read my stuff once and leave disgusted, well, thanks for coming. If you come back then there’s hope. If you come back yet again you’re obviously enjoying what I’m doing and here’s what I want you to do. Tell your friends – however you see fit. Most importantly though – even if you keep reading and never admit it to anyone – let me know who you are. Here’s why.
The first five thousand of you I know about will be in a special group – The Insiders. While everybody else will have to make do with just what’s out there, you, my special friends, will have access to all sorts of extras that they will not. This will include things like stories which I wouldn’t want anyone else to read. Want to read early drafts and offer your ideas? Then you want to be an Insider. There will be promotional tours in the near future and you can be an active participant through great specials like “Let a soon-to-be-famous writer sleep on your sofa” and “Take a soon-to-be-famous writer out for dinner and drinks”. I’m sure there will be many, many more. Plus, you’ll get access to Insider-only crap to buy once I figure out how to get my web store working. What more could you want?
Something to read?
Of course and that brings us to an ending point. Introductions are done. No more “this is what I’m gonna do” nonsense. You now know where I’m heading and I want all of you along for the ride. From here on out it’s nothing but Writing, Rants, and Starting Over. I think we’ll get to the magic five thousand pretty quickly. I’ll work on holding up my end of the deal and I hope you’ll keep reading and clicking.
If you’re late to the party, no worries. You might not get to be an Insider – although there will be some attrition as I offend, or bore, certain groups – but, hey, there’s nothing wrong with being a fan. Just remember, whether friend or fan, the first fifty thousand or so of you will always have a special place in my thoughts.