This is a video of a Churchill Club panel (9/20/06) that I moderated called Next Generation Insights. It featured six Silicon Valley young adults whose ages ranged from fifteen to twenty four.
These are some factoids that I found interesting:
They send as many as 4,000 text messages per month from their phones.
They watch one to two hours of TV per week. And they use Tivo or a recording device to fast-forward through commercials during that short timeframe!
They all have iPods, and they are very loyal to Apple.
They buy approximately forty songs a month on iTunes.
Helio is the hot phone (though none of them had one). I had never heard of it before!
Here’s a good analysis of the panel. The bottom line message is that before you waste your marketing dollars, you should watch what the panelists had to say about these topics:
Their fascination with MySpace and FaceBook.
How they use their cell phones—and seldom use a landline.
How they use computers—and Microsoft Office!
The surprisingly high degree to which they resent being “marketed to.”
The even more surprising degree to which “old media’ like magazines (specifically Wired for the males and US for the females) are effective.
Their dislike of online advertising whether banner, pop-up, or an ad running before or after a free video clip.
When I asked how advertisers can get to them, there wasn’t a lot of good news. Product placement may work if it’s subtle (specifically in The OC, Tivo be damned), but it sure appears that most forms of digital/online advertising are dead in the water for reaching young people. This is a whole new world...
If Coming Market Is Above, Analyze This:
Sales Response to Advertising:
Too often, entrepreneurs thinks the solution to no, low, or lagging sales is to spend more on "advertising." Few, if any customers really know what their Sales Response to Advertising relationship is, let alone where "the are" in this relationship.
It can be conjectured that a firms Sales Response to Advertising function is of the form of a Logistic or Sigmoid function which has the shape of the figure to the right.
Assume the "Y" axis is Sales, and the "X" axis is Advertising, both in dollars. Typically there would be some small level of sales without any expenditure on advertising. The questions to ask are (1) Where am I on the curve, and (2) At what point should I cease to spend more money on advertising? The response to (2) is you should spend until your are spending more on advertising than the expenditure is returning in sales. This is somewhat simplified, but for ENTR200 is meant to illustrate a point. Up until the Inflection Point (that point at which the second derivative is equal to zero), for every dollar spent on advertising greater than one dollar is returned. This is the zero point on the X axis. Above the inflection point, you are spending more on advertising than you are recouping in sales. Think about it.
Defining your Customer
Marketers usually define their customers by their physical characteristics such as age, gender, occupation, income, etc. These are important because they represent the natural categories of customers. Some of the more common customer characteristics include:
Gender - Men and women exhibit different habits when it comes to purchasing.
Age - Second only to gender as most important characteristic to measure.
Income - A good indicator because it often shows whether the customer can buy.
Occupation - Relates closely with age, income, and education.
Location - Can be designated in any of several different ways.
Family status - Couples differ significantly from singles.
Children - Households with children can exhibit very different buying habits.
Education - An indicator of advertising comprehension, reasoning power, etc.
Ethnic origin - People from different cultures have different values and needs.
As you begin to study your market, keep these characteristics in mind. They will guide you in learning to attract your specific customers.
80/20 Principle
When you are analyzing your market, the 80/20 Principle is a good one to keep in mind. It states that 20% of your customers will consume 80% of your business's products or services. Conversely, 80% of your customers will use only 20% of your products or services. So why is this important to a small business owner? Because it is key for you to focus your advertising and marketing dollars on the group of customers who will be consuming 80% of your product. Let's look at the beer industry in America as an example.
First of all, think of a beer ad you've seen on television, such as the one below. Now, can you describe the person this ad is aimed at? What is this person's age, gender and interests? The beer industry advertises to basically one group of individuals, right? And the reason is, that group consumes 80% of the beer in America! The beer companies are getting "the most bang for their buck" by targeting this group of people - 20% of its customer base. The other 80% of beer drinkers will likely continue to drink beer whether or not beer ads appeal to them. These are the people who will drink watching a game, with dinner, or maybe at a special event. Their drinking habits are more of a sure thing, albeit in smaller quantities.
When thinking of this example, it is your job as an entrepreneur to identify your "20%" and market toward them. This group can be identified by techniques in the Market Research Section of this Wiki.
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7 Rules for Legal Advertising here:
Bell Curves & Chasms
The following section was adapted from Act Your Age:
Most geeks and creative people in general tend to shy away from marketing, citing their lack of creativity and graphic design skills. But these are typically not the differentiators which determine whether marketing is competent or not. Marketing efforts tend to succeed or fail on their strategy and tactics, not on their artwork. Before you start designing logos or wordsmithing your ad copy, you need to do three things:
Pick a market segment and make sure you will be facing competition of the right kind. (see: Choose Your Competition)
Understand the four stages in the life of your product's market.
The first two steps are explained in the two links. In both, you have the luxury of choices. You get to choose your market segment. You get to define your product's position. But step three is something that happens to your product whether you like it or not. Not unlike the natural aging process we experience as human beings, our products go through various stages of life. In both cases, the only way to avoid the next stage is death, so we might as well learn to handle these stages with a measure of grace.
Four Groups
The people in your market segment are divided into four groups:
Early Adopters are risk takers who actually like to try new things.
Pragmatistsmight be willing to use new technology, if it's the only way to get their problem solved.
Conservatives dislike new technology and try to avoid it.
Laggards pride themselves on the fact that they are the last to try anything new.
Marketing textbooks usually draw these groups using a bell curve, something like this:
The bell curve highlights two important things:
1. The middle two groups account for most of your potential customers (the 80%).
2. You can only get these customers in order, moving from left to right.
Each of the four groups has its own behavior which determines when they will buy your product:
The Early Adopters don't need much convincing. Some of them will try your product just because it's new. They don't wait for anybody else's endorsement. They are leaders who prefer to be on the bleeding edge of technology.
The Pragmatists will only buy your product when they see other Pragmatists doing it. If this sounds like a chicken-and-egg paradox, it is. We'll talk more about this problem below.
The Conservatives will buy your product only after they see that the Pragmatists are happy with it.
There is no way to predict the behavior of the Laggards. They may never buy your product. You can safely ignore them. If your product gets to the point where you are selling to the Laggards, you will no longer be in charge of marketing at your company. Your company has become quite successful. You are semi-retired. You have hired a marketing VP and assigned him ridiculous and unattainable goals just so you can watch him squirm.
The Chasm (Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm)
To be successful, you eventually have to sell your product to the Pragmatists and Conservatives, but these two groups behave very differently from the groups on the ends of the bell curve. Specifically, the middle two groups function with a "herd mentality". They are followers. They only buy when they see somebody else doing it.
The Conservatives are actually not all that difficult. They watch the Pragmatists very closely. They'll start buying after most of the Pragmatists are happy with your product. You don't have to do any special gymnastics to attract the Conservatives. Once the Pragmatists like you, then the Conservatives will follow.
The Pragmatists are the real problem group. They are followers, but the only people they're willing to follow are each other. It's tempting to think they will simply wait for the group ahead of them to like your product, but it's not true. The endorsement of the Early Adopters is not enough. Like a junior high dance, the Pragmatists are watching each other, waiting for somebody else to make the first move.
This dynamic is very well explained by Geoffrey Moore in his outstanding book Crossing the Chasm. Moore argues that the classic marketing bell curve is wrong, and should actually be rendered more like this:
This drawing reflects the fact that there is no smooth or logical transition between the Early Adopters and the Pragmatists. In between the Early Adopters and the Pragmatists there is a chasm. To successfully sell your product to the Pragmatists, you must "cross the chasm".
But if the Pragmatists won't buy until they see each other doing it, how we get across?
The key is to find a Pragmatist who is desperate, or as Moore says, a "Pragmatist in Pain". They have a problem, and they need it solved very badly. In fact, they are so desperate for a solution that they are willing to break ranks with their Pragmatist peers and be the first of their kind to try your product.
You need to have a very special relationship with your Pragmatist in Pain. They don't like working with small ISVs. They prefer to buy from larger vendors with established reputations. By choosing to buy your product, they are sponsoring you across the chasm. You don't really deserve to be on the other side, and they know that.
So you have to treat them like they are very special. Give them everything they want, almost as if they were ordering a custom application. You may have to implement special features just for them. You may have to give them substantial discounts. You should visit their site and meet them in person. You may have to install your product for them. Financially, this one customer will probably be a net loss. That's okay. Don't stop until they're happy. And then keep them happy, as your corporate lips are going to be more or less permanently sewn to their corporate rear end.
Since crossing the chasm is so difficult, you might be tempted to think you can just stay on the left side. Maybe the Early Adopters represent a market which is big enough for your product? Sorry, but this won't work. The Early Adopters like new things, and your product is getting older every day. If you try to build your product's entire life on the Early Adopters, you take the risk that they will abandon you for somebody else who proclaims to have the latest cool thing. In the long run, it's not safe to remain on the left side of the chasm.
A Few Examples
SourceOffSite has crossed the chasm. Life is very good over here. Most of the Fortune 500 is on our customer list. The product is extremely profitable.
But SourceGear Vault is still pre-chasm. We've shipped our 1.0 release and the Early Adopters love it. We're now finishing up a 1.1 release which contains a number of improvements, but this release won't get us across. Luckily, the SourceSafe world is filled with many Pragmatists in Pain. We're talking to several of them as we work on our 2.0 release.
Microsoft Windows has obviously moved way beyond the chasm.
But Microsoft CRM is definitely still over in the land of the Early Adopters. The Redmond giant can cross the chasm more easily than you or I, but they still have to do it. And just like everybody else's stuff, most new Microsoft products don't cross over until version 3.0.
Some of my fellow .NET fans will disagree with me, but I consider .NET to be pre-chasm. Will .NET 2.0 arrive on the other side of the chasm, one version number earlier than usual? Maybe.
Java is definitely post-chasm.
DVD players are post-chasm. In fact, my parents recently got a DVD player, so this market is evidently starting to attract the Laggards. :-)
What about Weblogs? Pre or post chasm? Despite the dramatic rise in popularity over the last couple years, I'd have to say weblogs are still pre-chasm, with most of their potential yet to be realized.
Digital cameras have crossed the chasm, just in the last couple of years or so.
PDAs crossed the chasm, and then somehow lost their balance and fell back into the abyss. :-)
Act Your Age
Don't get yourself in a big hurry. The timeframe spanned by this bell curve is usually measured in years, not weeks or months. These four groups and the transitions between them represent distinct stages in the life of your product. Each of those stages is very different, and things will go much better if you behave appropriately at each stage of your product's life.
Nine year old girls don't wear heavy makeup. Sixty-five year olds don't start bachelor's degrees. Thirty-two year olds don't stay up all night like they did ten years before. (And yes, there are exceptions to each of these rules. :-) )
Similarly, products need to act their age. Choosing features is a part of marketing. When you decide what features to include in each release, you need to keep your product's current life stage in mind. Here are a few examples of what this might mean:
To attract the Early Adopters, your product needs to be cool and new. To attract the Conservatives it needs to be boring and well-established.
When pursuing the Early Adopters, don't spend time putting in features that only the Conservatives care about.
As described above, to keep your sponsoring Pragmatist happy, you will have to do basically everything they want. But you probably can't give that kind of treatment to everyone on the other side of the chasm. There are too many Pragmatists and Conservatives to meet their needs one at a time.
In the Early Adopters stage, listen. Many of these folks are technologists like you. They're smart, they're interested in your product, they speak your language, and they have good ideas. Get in a dialogue with them, and pay attention.
In the Pragmatists and Conservatives stage, listen even more carefully. These people are nothing like you. You're a geek and you enjoy technology for its own sake. They just want their problems solved, and they don't care in the slightest about the religious wars we fight amongst ourselves. Don't assume you know anything about the problems they're facing. Oh and by the way, we're the ones who are abnormal, not them.
Remember, Pragmatists are practical. They want no-nonsense solutions to their problems. If you throw in a feature just because one of your developers thinks it was cool, the Pragmatists will not be impressed.
If you're selling to the Conservatives, don't start making gratuitous changes. Conservatives are like cats -- if you move too fast, you'll scare them. :-)
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Introduction to Advanced Topics:
After many months of hard work, I have my new startup running, but I don't have much money to spend on marketing, don't know where to spend what I do have, but need customers in the worst way. What can I do with very limited resources to make my order phone (phones are so seventies) start ringing?
Those new to marketing per se should read the basics about the 4-Ps in Marketing 101 above (actually, you should have a basic understanding of everything in the reference). This section will delve into the latest techniques for doing lots with nothing, kinda the nuclear power plant of marketing, lots of power from very small funds.
Working Definition of Entrepreneurial Marketing
Buskirk and Lavik suggest, as a working definition, "The process by which brave souls initiate the buying and selling of products and/or services directed at launching a new business venture or developing an extension of an existing enterprise." (p. XV). Not to much new here. But they continue with "One must be a risk taker of sorts to engage in entrepreneurial marketing because the processes required to successfully market a new venture or extension of an existing enterprise are always disruptive to the status quo. Entrepreneurial marketers are change agents of the highest caliber. They take existing marketing processes and disrupt them before ultimately transforming them into new ways of doing business." (Emphasis provided)
The term disruptive (first applied to technology) was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and described in his 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma. In his sequel, The Innovator's Solution, Christensen replaced the term with the term disruptive innovation suggesting it is strategy that creates the disruptive impact. (Wikiopedia) We are looking for new ways to employ existing technologies and/or communication tools often in ways not originally intended, exploiting The Law of Unintended Consequences.
As a working definition, we suggest Entrepreneurial Marketing as the successful use of disruptive and/or innovative approaches to marketing that achieve desired results inexpensively. These approaches are often "sleepers" which are not recognized by entrenched firms or are ignored. Examples follow:
Example 0:
This photo provided by Todd Vanderlin shows an electronic device hanging beneath an overpass in Boston, Monday Jan. 15, 2007. The device consists of light emitting diodes on a circuit board forming the shape of a gesturing character which is part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball, according to Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network. Other similar devices, planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday Jan. 31, 2007 in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for the late-night cable cartoon. Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless. (AP Photo/Todd Vanderlin)
Feb 9, 2007, 21:15 GMT
NEW YORK, NY, United States (UPI) -- The president of Cartoon Network resigned Friday after a misguided 'guerrilla' ad campaign caused a widespread bomb scare in Boston.
Jim Samples will leave his management position immediately, said the network, a unit of Time Warner Inc.`s Turner Broadcasting.
'I feel compelled to step down, effectively immediately, in recognition of the gravity of the situation that occurred under my watch,' Samples said in an e-mail to Cartoon Network employees, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Example 0 above raises interesting questions concerning the ethical implications of viral marketing campaigns and the importance as future business leaders of making sure that you think through the ethical implications of what you are doing. You have to consider the laws, regulations and value judgements that could come into play (and that you may overlook as in this incident) when developing such campaigns.
Example 1:
Blogs and video via the internet have been around for years and to a large extent ignored by political parties/aspirants. Then Senator Edwards made use of blogs to pursue his bid for Vice President. On the flip side, bloggers (Swiftboat) railed against Senator John Kerry. Recently Senator Clinton formally announced her bid for the Democratic candidate for president complete with a blog, and live video webcasts. YouTube.com is being used by everyone with a political oar in the water.
Example 2:
During Christmas 2006 buying season, a small remote controlled helicopter began sales priced at $29.95. It is a nifty thing, fun to fly, appealing to boys of all ages. Users began to post videos on "The Tube", and in short order, the Picco Z was flying off retailer's shelves. Recognizing a good thing, Radio Shack raised the price to $49.95. When the dust cleared, the manufacturer could not keep up with demand, and over 150,000 were sold with no "big time" ads, no money spent on advertising per se, and lots of Viral Marketing.
Current Entrepreneurial Marketing Techniques
Viral Marketing
O'Reilly suggests the greatest internet success stories don't advertise their products. Their adoption is driven by "viral marketing"--that is, recommendations propagating directly from one user to another. You can almost make the case that if a site or product relies on advertising to get the word out, it isn't Web 2.0.
Introduction:
Typical college textbooks barely mention “viral marketing.” However, viral marketing is much more important than this might lead the student studying entrepreneurship to believe. Viral marketing is important because the people who like your products and/or services are doing the ‘work’ to market those products and services. Convincing people to purchase your products and services is an arduous endeavor at best – more so in our social networks and information age. And, an entrepreneur should utilize all of the technology, ‘tools’ and knowledge available to effectively market their products and services. Viral marketing isn’t as ‘bad’ as it sounds. This type of ‘virus’ is good for the entrepreneur and customer. Viral marketing techniques use “pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness.” A thorough understanding of new types of marketing techniques, including viral marketing, will help you be a more effective entrepreneur. Therefore, we’ve presented information here to give you a taste of just how central viral marketing is to successful entrepreneurship. While researching and understanding viral marketing, keep in mind how infectious agents might help you sell your products and services. Ask yourself what you might be able to do better when marketing your products/services if you were utilizing viral marketing techniques. Think Different!
Definitions:
Buskirk & Lavik define viral marketing as “the concept of triggering an epidemic in customer purchases of a venture’s products or services driven by enthusiastically shared messages…..the word epidemic refer(s) (to) the widespread occurrence of exponentially multiplying amounts of customer purchases. .. The infectious agents are individual people who are so motivated about the product or service that they tell their friends and family about the wonders of the product. This dialogue by the infectious agents to their circle of acquaintances (the hosts) does not occur because of expensive advertisements and traditional marketing campaign. This occurrence is purely motivated by individuals who are so enamored with a purchase that they feel compelled to share the product or services’ endearing attributes in a word-of-mouth way that translates into their circle of friends making purchases and in turn telling their particular circle of friends about their incredible new acquisition.”
Some Theory:
Joseph Jaffe suggests the internet was the disruptive agent that enabled viral marketing as most often used today. Basing his analysis on Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point, Jaffe provides the following:
“The Tipping Point” focuses on the precise moment when an idea, virus, product, message or campaign “tips”, and in so doing goes from zero to hero. From Paul Revere’s “The British are coming” rallying cry — which almost single handedly helped call an entire coast to arms — to the revival and sales explosion of Hush Puppies, to the almost overnight eradication of crime in New York City, a unique blend of forces and variables all came together at a precise moment to help tip these three “success stories.”
In his book, Malcolm Gladwell isolates three Laws that help to explain and demystify the phenomenon commonly known as word-of-mouth or commercially as viral marketing. They are the Law of the Few, the Law of Stickiness and the Law of Context.
The first Law isolates three groups of people — Mavens, Connectors and Salespeople — who are few and far between but combined, have the persuasion and impact greatly in excess of the masses. To put it simply, Mavens know it all; Connectors know everyone; Salespeople are the Closers.
The second Law is the copywriter’s Rosetta Stone – it is after all the difference between “Where’s the Beef?” and “Yo Quiero Taco Bell!” The point here is that very often the difference between stickiness and non-stickiness is the very slightest of tweaks.
Finally, the Law of Context is interchangeable with environment and if we were to substitute this with “contextual relevancy” we would be forgiven.
In many respects, the Internet is a giant Tipping Point; an idea whose time came in roughly five years (the time it took to amass 50 million users). On another level, the Internet is densely populated with Mavens, Connectors and Salespeople, who have been responsible for the likes of: Mahir the Turk, Whassup?, Welovetheiraqiforeignminister.com, Honda’s Cog Commercial, Spiderman, Queer as Folk, Palm Champions, Napster, Morpheus, The Di Vinci Code, Harry Potter Pre-sales, Blogs, and the list continues…
Many of the examples quoted above are unofficial or underground illustrations of the power of network effects, which just goes to show how difficult it is to unleash the idea virus.
In fact, the truth is that the term “viral marketing” is in itself an oxymoron. In reality, the two have an almost inversely proportional relationship. The more viral marketing is planned, controlled and thus contrived, the less likely it will succeed; the less it is controlled and allowed to do its organic ritual voodoo dance, the more likely it will be to propagate among the so-called innovators and early adopters.
That is not to say this is always the case. It’s just that marketers have a hard time letting go on the reins of control and that’s why we still see “viral marketing” best practice cases limited to “refer-a-friend” e-mails, which for the most part are done rather poorly.
One exception to that rule comes from a company that specializes in the ability to infect inner circles with sticky content.
“We include ’tell-a-friend’ in almost every promotion we run,” says Josh Linkner, CEO of ePrize. “It drives outstanding results when tied to the chance to win.” Linkner cites the ability to reward users with extra game plays (or chances to win) in exchange for viral sends as one way to drive forwards. “The key is providing a specific INCENTIVE around the desired action,” explains Linkner, “in this case — a referral. If you don't offer an incentive to refer, results will suffer.”
He goes on to show some strong support for this best practice tactic: “We are seeing on average a referral rate of 3.5 referrals per user when tied to the chance to win. Of those, we're seeing about one-third of the referees come back to register. In other words, if you have one million original users, the word is then spread to 3.5 million more people. About one million will then come back to register, so you have effectively DOUBLED the registration rates.”
In the online space, the entertainment sector has seemed quickest to capitalize on viral tactics. In the big screen arena, the examples are rampant: From “Spiderman” to “The Matrix,” the big blockbuster movies nowadays utilize a compendium of community-based tools, including IM, distributed content on fan sites and day-parting. On the telly side, “Queer as Folk” continues to lead the way as one of the most heralded examples of leveraging the affinity and connectedness of a highly cohesive community.
Specific Examples:
Brandon coined the term “linkbait,” and provides the following viral marketing examples:
This was originally just a guy named John Freyer who decided to sell literally everything he owned on eBay. Now it's a website, a hardcover book, and a piece of performance art that's on display at multiple museums.
Kyle MacDonald? posted an offer on CraigsList to trade a red paperclip for something "bigger and better". Since then he has traded up 14 times, and just finished a trade to get a house. According to the Sitemeter on his website, he's receiving close to 200,000 visits to his website daily. If you assume that he's earning an average of $1 CPM for those Google Adsense ads he's got running on the site, then he's earning $6k per month just from that advertising. (And that $1 figure is a total wild guess on my part - it would be much more or much less than that.)
Jeremy Enke auctions off his services as a poker player (wearing a pink bunny suit) at the World Series of Poker. He generates much publicity, many backlinks, and a good deal of money from his sponsor, Golden Palace Casino, who bought his eBay auction. (Golden Palace participates in these kinds of viral marketing stunts constantly, by the way.)
You'll notice that all of the linkbait and viral marketing examples mentioned in this Wiki have some things in common:
· There's actually a person with a name involved in the stunt.
· All of the stunts are outrageous and/or quirky enough to warrant attention.
· Most of them involve a combination of some kind of ingenuity with something that is already on the minds of consumers.
More on the last point.
All My Life For Sale took advantge, in part, of the amazing success of eBay. One Red Paperclip borrows some popularity from the incredible success of Craigslist. Jeremy's Pink Bunny idea took advantage of the popularity of online poker, the World Series of Poker, eBay, and Golden Palace. The $39 Experiment is about 100 different companies, almost all of whom are well known.
How To Implement Viral Marketing
How To #1:
Thomas Baekdal in his November 23, 2006 blog offers 7 tricks for viral marketing. He also embedded You_Tube? videos illustrating the concept. Go to the provided link.
How To #2:
MarketingSherpa.com picked 12 examples as being tops. Check the provided link; read especially #2 the beer commercial.
Bottom Line:
As you can see, there are many different approaches to the viral marketing infectious agents discussed above. As an entrepreneur it is important to know various marketing techniques that might assist your major marketing efforts. Viral marketing works because of the potential exponential increases in brand awareness.
"Search engines are the market makers of the Internet. They connect consumers with providers at the very moment of consumer interest and enable all of us to find exactly what we want, when we want it. They bring great efficiency to the Internet and our lives and shall exist as long as the network of servers and computers we call the Web is around.
Positioning, one of the four Ps of marketing, is an absolutely critical component of the marketing mix. If you are not positioned to be where your customer is when your customer is ready to buy, you lose. Your competitor who is in that place at that time wins.
The first purpose of search engine optimization is to be positioned in the places where your customer is. The second purpose is to be positioned better than your competitions in these places. In the world of search engines, better means higher, and higher means a much greater probability that an individual will click on your link. While this figure varies by engine, recent search data has shown that approximately 70% of users, if they click, will click on one the first three listings in a search engine." From intro to: Obtaining a #1 Ranking in the Search Engines by Ryan Allis.
See Wiki here for more detailed information on SEO and additional references.
Bottom line: If you have a web presence that counts on popping up near the top of Google et al searches, you NEED SEO!
Using Prediction Markets for Marketing
Use of Prediction Markets
is just now (2006-2007) starting to become a tool a few firms use as strategic and marketing tools. Examples include Google, HP, and GE. Here is an example of what can be done with Prediction Markets; it is correspondence from the Prediction-Markets@googlegroups.com special interest group's member, Brian Shiau:
Gamer Example Prediction Market Use
As a gamer, I'm always drowning in the amount of upcoming games without the time to learn about them all. I learned about prediction market technology and wanted to apply it as a solution for gamers towards this goal:
The simExchange ( http://www.thesimexchange.com%29/, a virtual video game stock exchange, is a new project to help gamers learn about upcoming video games and predict how well they will sell. Countless new games are on the horizon all the time and it is too time consuming to read up on all of them. The simExchange applies the Wisdom of the Crowds concept to upcoming video games. You can quickly identify the most anticipated upcoming games by simply checking out the most valued game stocks or the most traded game stocks.
Users submit the games they want to trade. Users also submit articles, images, and videos about the games. The community votes through a unique "content bidding system" to measure the value of submitted content to the community. This makes it easier for users to learn about games by quickly seeing the most valuable content about the game available and allows traders to more easily value the game stocks up for trading.
The simExchange is also a great opportunity to learn about the stock market by trading stocks that gamers care about. Unlike many prediction markets, the simExchange follows real market mechanics, such as a double call auction order system. The simExchange allows players to actually short stocks.
Features: - A virtual stock market that follows real stock market mechanics: includes limit orders, shorting, margin & margin calls. - The stock price forecasts the games lifetime worldwide unit sales. 1 DKP corresponds to 10,000 copies sold. - AJAX trading interface: prices and other data auto-update - Users can submit and promote the games they want listed on the simExchange for trading. - All articles, images, and videos are submitted by the community. The simExchange features a Content Bidding system to determine the value of the content to the community. - The news aggregator is part of the overall simExchange game; players earn DKP from submitting valuable content and posting intelligent comments.
The site has been up for a couple months and is in a public beta phase. The feedback of this forum on how the project currently meets these goals and offers these features would be greatly appreciated.
Uploading ....
will delve into the latest techniques for doing lots with nothing, kinda the nuclear power plant of marketing, lots of power from very small funds.
a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball, according to Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network. Other similar devices, planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday Jan. 31, 2007 in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for the late-night cable cartoon. Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless. (AP Photo/Todd Vanderlin)
began sales priced at $29.95. It is a nifty thing, fun to fly, appealing to boys of all ages. Users began to post