PyroMarketing
How does a product go from the cutting room floor to millions of households around the world? Have you ever considered how a book, a film, a new car model, an industrial product or organizational service reaches your door? Considering, the concept is rather simple. Greg Stielstra, a former marketing guru at Zondervan and Thomas Nelson publishers, captured this idea in his book PyroMarketing. Stielstra states, “the era of mass marketing is ending and being replaced by customer evangelists.” Now, the concept is simple. In a world that is saturated with advertising we simply get numb. The advertisement on the billboard, car, street corner, newspaper, magazine, radio, Internet, television, and bathroom wall is simply is too much for us to process. How many of those advertisements do you really remember? The key is not placing more signs, lights, and noise in our lives-but-actually decreasing them. Instead, replace the noise with quality advertising and that comes from these customer evangelists or word of mouth practitioners.
Think about the way fire is created and spread. First, you need something to start the fire-a match. Then you need something for the fire to consume-wood, etc. Then you need to keep the fire going-fuel. Now, take those principles and apply them to marketing. You need something to start the fire-an idea, product or service-and make it relevant to the consumer. Then you need something for it to consume. This is where your consumer comes in. However, do not just target everyone but target those whom your product is most relevant to. Then keep the fire going. Find out who is your audience is, keep record of who they are, and start targeting them again and again. A fire will die with something to keep it alive or something to consume. Without consumers and without relevance a product or service with die. Many good ideas were lost because of this principle. So consider the basic ideas behind a flame turning into a fire the next time you think about marketing. If you want to know more and know how these ideas are more applicable, pick up a copy of PyroMarketing and be ignited by these simple but genius ideas.
Food, Inc.
Have you ever considered where you the food you consume comes from? Have you thought about how animals, industrial food service employees, and the environment are treated to provide you with your hamburger and fries? I urge everyone to consider the generation of your food, from the moment of its birth to the moment it finds itself on your plate. Magnolia Home Entertainment and River Road Entertainment recently produced the film Food, Inc. This shocking film examines and reveals how our food is produced. I encourage everyone to view this film and consider what exactly you are consuming. Think about chemicals, pesticides, growth hormones, and the conditions of some of our most basic building blocks of life. How does this change the way we eat, the way our bodies react, and the way we live? Consider the alternatives. Consider buying locally grown food, consider buying certified organic products, consider going to your local farmers market, consider buying the apple over the bag of candy. Think about the way you eat, think about the way you consumer and think about the way these industries and corporations market themselves to you. Consider the cost!
Referral Marketing
Word of mouth (WOM) marketing or “referral marketing” is an essential marketing strategy for growing any small business or aspiring corporation. Businesses spend millions of revenue of traditional forms of advertising each year, however, many underestimate the strategic advantage of personal referrals. This primarily takes the form of word of mouth characteristics. One type takes the form of incentivized word of mouth marketing. This type seeks to stimulate exposure through incentives. An example of this is seen in a “refer a friend program” which allows students, employees, colleagues or customers to refer a prospective or potential interested individual to participate in a service or buy a product. However, the catch is that in doing so the referee is provided some type of incentive or reward for those referrals. The other type is inspired word of mouth marketing. Participants in this strategy generally are thoroughly pleased with a product or service that they want to share their experience with others. This type normally does not need incentatives, as the customer voluntarily recommends a product or service.
However, it is important to note that word of mouth marketing can be a company’s biggest strength and weakness. Unfortunately those faulty products and poor services will spread like a raging fire through the consumer community. With the presence of online news articles, blogs, consumer reports and watchdogs an organizations image can be affected in an instant. This is where the industry’s communication sages and public relations gurus jump to the media and develop tactics for countering a those negative images. So what does this all mean, simply that average customers can through conversations or online postings change the course of a company’s product or service.
Viral Marketing
Viral marketing strategies and tactics have been widely debated and researched. However, a successful viral campaign can help sell your products, services, and ideas in a creative way. The whole ideas behind viral marketing stems behind the idea of how diseases spread. How does the flu spread? It takes one person to infect another who in turn infects another. So before long that one person and spread the flu to 30 people. The same principle applies to viral marketing. You need a creative idea that others will pass along to their friends, family and colleagues. This might be labeled self-perpetuating advertising. Corporations of any size or individuals with valuable ideas and services will and can benefit from viral marketing campaigns. However, the first thing you need is a good product or service. The second, is a creative message to spread it! A great to way spread ideas and products is through a free ebook! E-books can be effective ways to spread your ideas without writing a paperbound 200-page memoir! David Meerman Scott in his ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing explains how these techniques can help generate and garner awareness at a vast pace. He points out the value of ebooks and his idea of “word of mouse advertising.” I encourage everyone to review his ideas, as they will prove helpful to prospective viral marketers. Included below are some simple ways to generate viral campaigns, but keep in mind that they need to be on target with your organizational goals and messages.
-ebooks, word of mouth referrals, freebies, YouTube campaigns, articles, evites, eZines, and discounts-
The Tipping Point
How do brands or ideas grow and expand? It takes that little push known as the Tipping Point. Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point explains how little things can make a big difference. He compares ideas and the growth of brands to epidemics. It takes a combination of environmental attributes, key individuals, and geography to take a rather small idea and develop it into an infection. A key point in this spread are people known as connectors. Gladwell points out that these individuals are those that know everyone. These are the individuals that have a whole closet full of acquaintances, friends, and colleagues who make things happen. These individuals help the spread of ideas. Brands need that extra push to develop them into household names. This is what the advertising and public relations industry is all about; we are in the business of making products, ideas, and services household names. Our goal is to develop that tipping point.
Knowing your target market
In order for effective advertising and marketing strategies, you have to know your target audience and know them well. One of the worst mistakes is to develop blanket messages with no specific audience in mind. So what does that mean? You need to know your niche market. Effective advertisers will extensively research their intended audience by identifying marketing goals, completing exhaustive demographical and psychographical analyses, and researching decision-making profiles for each market. Once you have identified who you want to reach the concern them becomes how to reach them and with what message. Different advertising strategies and tactics can be utilized in this endeavor, however, not all media channels will be appropriate for your message. As a result, an attractive and creative message highlighting the benefits of your product or service will advance awareness and publicity to your identified target audience. Many agencies and companies have written articles on this subject but for a quick and easy view of ways to target your market or develop your niche AllBusiness has easy to read articles on the subject.
Did you know?
The digital revolution has begun. Technologies do not create revolutions only changed behaviors. Due to this, the digital revolution has drastically changed the way information is conveyed and in what channels it becomes processed. This short video developed by Jeff Brenman, Karl Finch, and Scott McLeod reveals the impacts of digital media. Television, print,and traditional advertising will slowly be infused into the digital powerhouse. I encourage everyone to watch this video and consider the implications of technology.
The Benefit of Affiliations
Simply being employed is no longer the norm. Now we have careers, freelance projects, side projects, clubs, organizations, professional clubs, boards, non-profits, etc which we affiliate ourselves with. However, these affiliations serve as a benefit to our brand and our self-worth. Serving and volunteering in a number of organizations allows you to utilize and share your professional skills and talents. In the public relations and advertising world this serves as a great benefit to the community. A number of non-profit and social organizations cannot afford to pay a full-time employees or an agency to develop witty public relations campaigns and creative advertising. Therefore, they turn to those individuals or organizations that willingly offer their expertise and advice to improve existing brands and publicity for those that need it.
I personally see the benefit from this in my role as president of the Communication Organization for Graduate Students (COGS) at Western Kentucky University. This organization is devoted to providing academic achievement, advice, networking, and mentoring to current students in the communication department. In addition to helping students, COGS takes on service projects in the community. Our main responsibility is to provide public relations, publicity, awareness, fundraising, and rhetorical assistance. We serve in a number of capacities such as contacting and placing individuals and small businesses in media vehicles, contacting key individuals, developing effective communication tactics and strategies, and marketing consulting.
Recently, our organization has adopted a public relations and fundraising project for Caden Butler Modaff. Caden, who is three years old, has recently developed autism. Due to his autism he needs assistance in various forms and a good way to do this is to provide Caden with a service dog. COGS is in the process of assisting the Modaff’s in promoting awareness of autism and for Caden to be provided this service dog. Here the benefit of being affiliated with various organizations is a prime example. We have the knowledge that through our efforts we can provide the most resources as possible for Caden to have a fulfilling life, while providing free publicity and marketing.
Guerilla Marketing: The secrets of the trade
Due to the rapid evolution of information, traditional advertising and marketing is no longer the most effective vehicle to reach target audiences. Since mass media has saturated our world with information our minds experience a numbing phenomena. This phenomena we are experiencing now could be labeled as “information overload.” As a result of millions of data bits that we are constantly exposed to, new tactics have to be utilized. This is where guerilla marketing makes an appearance. Guerilla marketing first appeared in the industry in 1984 when Jay Conrad Levinson published his book titled Guerilla Marketing. The idea behind guerilla marketing was poised from unique military tactics to surprise the enemy on the battlefield.
Taken from a tactical viewpoint advertising and public relations practitioners now have to develop unique, witty, creative, and innovative ways to “surprise” their target audiences. The traditional billboard, television commercial, and radio spot are becoming extinct in this new shift. We have to capture the audience’s attention, retain their attention, and change their attitudes. One of the best ways for audiences to remember advertising is to make it memorable. Ad’s placed in unexpected places in unexpected ways register our minds to take notice. A creative design placed on nontraditional space brings what I call “the second look.” So what does that mean for inspiring public relations professionals and advertising gurus, it means we no longer need to think like a citizen but a solider.
