The internet is a fast-paced environment. People can come to your website at any hour from a wide range of locations, each of them with different intentions or needs. Unlike physical retail stores, you can’t see who is coming in and browsing around. You don’t know much about the people reading you. How can we develop a rough profile of all these individuals?

You already get a glimpse of them everyday when they interact with your website. Some may register for an account, leave a comment or send you an email. But many are ‘invisible’. They get to your site, see what you put out, click on a outbound link and disappear.

What you currently know about these individuals comes from a combination of visible user actions (e.g comments/emails) and statistics (e.g visit frequency/visit length). Is this knowledge sufficient for most businesses or bloggers? Yes. But I think it would be tremendously helpful to learn even more about your audience.

In marketing and advertising, we proactively define our target audience. We start with our end goals and then structure our website/ads with the right buzz phrases, pitch, style, keywords and angle to appeal to people we want to attract as a consumer/user/reader. Gathering information on visitors to our website makes us more effective marketers.

It is helpful to analyze and construct a general profile of your audience, however shifting it may be, because it provides you with information that will allow you to better improve your content scope, site usability, conversation rate or marketing campaign. Let’s split this process up into two sections: statistical analysis and data collection.

Statistical Analysis: Start Working With What You Already Have

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Depending on the stats tool you’re currently using, you can get a lot of information on how visitors are using your website, where they come from and what they are looking at. There are obviously a lot of different metrics to look at but I’m listing what I think is more relevant to understanding visitors in general:

Take some time to look at these statistics. Instead of only looking at them at each single point in time, it makes more sense to regularly study them to see how they trend over the lifespan of your site or the course of a marketing/ad campaign. On the whole, they will give you a good idea of what users want and what draws their attention.

How to Get More Audience Data: Using Polls, Surveys and Features

Now for the fun part: the active solicitation of user information. Instead of simply monitoring web statistics, you create opportunities for visitors to voluntarily reveal personal data and opinions. These can be achieved in several ways:

While this isn’t an exhaustive list, some of these methods can be applied online and offline simultaneously. For polls and surveys, you should be able to find some plugins or software available for your site platform. Alternatively, you can always use external online services like SurveyMonkey, PollDaddy, 4Q and Wufoo.

After obtaining this data, setup a system which allows you to segment and compare your findings over a period of time. This can be a simple spreadsheet or something more sophisticated. When combined with the visitor statistics you already have, it’s easy to understand your audience, allowing you to to better accommodate their needs or interest.

Can you think of any other ways to get more audience data?

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How to Understand Your Audience: Data Collection & Analysis

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The Winner’s Curse is a term used to describe auctions whereby the winner will overpay because he/she overestimates the item’s actual market value. This tendency to overbid is due to factors like incomplete information or other market participants. Recent research show that people also overbid because of the fear of losing in a social competition. 

A team of NYU neuroscientists and economists conducted brain imaging studies and discovered that the striatum, a part of the brain’s reward circuitry showed an exaggerated response to losses during an auction game. When a group was told that they would lose $15 if they failed to win an auction, they consistently bid higher than others who were told they would win $15.

The difference lies in way the auction was framed. When simply reminded of what they had to lose instead of what they stand to gain, participants responded with higher bids.

While there have been investigations of overbidding which have attributed the phenomenon to either risk aversion or the ‘joy of winning,’ it was the use of imaging data which allowed us to distinguish between these conflicting explanations and actually arrive at a new and different one, the ‘fear of losing.’…We were able to use neuroimaging results to highlight the importance of framing, and specifically the contemplated loss, as an explanation for overbidding during experimental auctions.”

This ‘fear of losing’ seems to be triggered by competition with others and perhaps, attachment to the value of the item. A interesting takeaway point: instead of only highlighting the benefits or promise for a product/service, it would be beneficial to indicate what the buyer might potentially lose by not making a purchase or taking action.

People implicitly understand that they’re  dealing with other consumers because of factors like exclusivity and scarcity. The one who acts swiftly will get to purchase and enjoy the benefits of the product, while others may not. The call-to-action is much intense in an auction, because the actions of others occur in noticeable real-time. Competition is in the forefront of the mind.

This study reminds me of how much competition is almost intrinsic to human society. You see competition between individuals, groups and countries in business or sports. It is perhaps, both an evolutionary necessity and a learned behavior that one develops in order to survive or thrive within a social environment.

We are all familiar with the pleasure of competition. Many of you have bought items from Ebay, an online auction marketplace.  Often, your decision to make or abandon a purchase is rushed along on a subtle but tangible undercurrent of excitement during the process and a feeling of minor elation for having won an item at a favorable price.

Could there be a way to transplant the fear of losing and the pleasure of winning into a non-auction scenario? Perhaps the use of a competition as a backdrop where each consumer’s individual drive can play out against others. Make them interact and challenge one another within a superstructure that helps YOU fulfill specific end goals.

Let the Competitive Instinct Flourish Within a Social Environment

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Businesses or marketers should think about how to create a social environment which encourages the natural competitive instincts of their audience. Interaction within this sphere motivates each individual consumer/participant. This helps to increase the level of audience engagement and automatically enhances the value of the product/service/site.

Social news sites like Mixx.com proudly highlight their top users by displaying them on a leaderboard or giving them specific awards/badges. This symbolic segregation of a group of users from others and the conferring of exclusive emblems of acknowledgment enhances the visibility/reputation of these individuals. This becomes something others can strive towards.

Not everyone will lust after awards or a higher user ranking. In fact, most casual users won’t care or bother to go after greater recognition. But owners of these communities know that there will always be a segment of hardcore users (the more competitive or goal-oriented ones) that will work extra hard so they can improve their score or rank higher on the leaderboard.

This addicted 1% of users enjoy a sense of achievement and are often enough to generate enough activity to make your site grow. This effect is even more prominent when the community itself is the main attraction. Take the example of video games with online features: players will gladly pay for a monthly Xbox Live subscription or WOW account so they virtually cooperate or compete with other individuals. Inter-user competition becomes an value add-on.

Such a social environment is not very difficult to create: there are a few fundamental elements involved. For starters, users should be able to interact freely with one another, through the site’s main features or separately in an standalone environment. Also, bind user profiles and on-site activity to awards, rankings, points, recognition, rewards and achievements.

Allow people to form sub-groups to pursue a diverse level of interests. Facilitate inter-user contact and interaction by organizing open competitions or one-off events that everyone can join. These special events can be plotted on an established calendar of regular activities which involve the community or its sub-groups.

The general theory is simple enough: Think about creating social environments that are conducive for your overall business objectives. Apart from simply marketing your site, we should look at giving our audience the ability to connect (and compete) with each other.

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Fear of Losing: Using Competitive Instincts to Your Advantage

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The decline of newspaper popularity has been attributed to the rise of the internet and the proliferation of web-based content. With an extremely low barrier of entry and variable cost, the web allows anyone with a computer to become an independent publisher: As a result, the amount and variety of content online far exceeds print publications in most fields.

So how can newspapers survive and do well as a business in the future? Perhaps by cutting back and going more niche to provide content that features deeper analysis and investigative reporting. In an article entitled ‘The Elite Newspaper of the Future’, Philip Meyer suggests that the money and audience comes from specialized, not general media.

This particular quote explains in greater detail:

I still believe that a newspaper’s most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.

By news, I don’t mean stenographic coverage of public meetings, channeling press releases or listing unanalyzed collections of facts. The old hunter-gatherer model of journalism is no longer sufficient. Now that information is so plentiful, we don’t need new information so much as help in processing what’s already available.

Just as the development of modern agriculture led to a demand for varieties of processed food, the information age has created a demand for processed information. We need someone to put it into context, give it theoretical framing and suggest ways to act on it.

Scaling back on the all-you-can-eat content buffet in favor of more exclusive material does not just appeal to a hardcore audience.  People get their information from one another, not just through the direct consumption of media. Catering to the leadership audience, the well-educated news junkies and opinion leaders, will help spread your content in the long run.

Will this topical specialization make newspapers profitable? Maybe. If newspapers can’t compete with blogs and online news sites in terms of speed and variety, perhaps they can trump them in terms of depth or trust. After all, feature-length content with solid, investigative reporting is not something you’ll often find on most blogs or personal sites on the web.

Daily newspapers will always be around, although they will be read less as more people come to have persistent access to the internet. A newspaper gives you the opinion of the journalist, but a blog throws in the comments of other readers. The web also gives you instant social interactivity, which is appealing for people who want to connect over what they’ve read.

To be able to share an opinion on what you’ve just read is enormously satisfying. Good content can be one-way but I think its increasingly important to socialize information and make it a facilitator for communal interaction. Print publications of the future would do well to consider developing some form of an online component to complement their offline product.

On the other hand, the problem of information overload is very real. Just think about it. More and more online/print publications are created everyday: to track and read many of them is very time consuming. People will be forced to pick and choose what to read. Some blogs will get dropped from a feed reader, others will remain. It’s easy to predict who survives.

Blogs that just repeat information already published elsewhere are providing value that can be substituted. To put it another way, these sites are completely dispensable. They lose out when a choice has to be made due to time/attention scarcity. These sites are usually the ones that just regurgitate content released on mainstream media or other larger blogs. Their identity is virtually unrecognizable. A great logo and design won’t save them.

Sites that serve as a comprehensive and reliable filter of information on a topic will be read, but they’ll always have to compete with other fast-paced news publishers. To aggregate information is incredibly easy. To process, analyze and situate it within a big picture context while offering an intriguing/unique perspective is considerably more difficult.

Those who can do so will be trusted: they are a valuable knowledge asset for any reader.

Detailed, unique content immediately stands out on its own, even without extensive  marketing efforts. People don’t just want to be informed, they want to better grasp a topic in all its nuances. The joy of consumption lies not only in the skimming of a news story but the processing of new perspectives to enrich a personal worldview or professional need.

Publications that provide such content will always have an audience. In the end, it’s just a natural consequence that results from the consumer’s problem of information overload.

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The Future of Content in the Age of Information Overload

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Search engines are an excellent source of high quality web traffic. They don’t send visitors who ’stumble upon’ your website or accidently clicked on an ad banner. Instead, they send you interested visitors who type in a query while fully expecting to find what they need. They are engaged right from the start and ready to buy, browse or read.

If their desire is well fulfilled by your webpage, you may end up getting a bookmark, customer or repeat reader. Added bonus: search engine traffic is consistent and usually cost-free. Ranking well for several relevant keywords or phrases could get you a steady stream of visitors everyday. That’s why some businesses choose to hire SEO firms/consultants.

There are many factors involved in the actual ranking of a site on a search engine results page, one of them being the use of keywords in the domain name. While the use of a keyword or key phrase does not alone promise a high ranking, it does seem to be a factor to some extent, partially because the domain name is often used as the anchor text for links.

Why do I talk about this? Because one way to get more search engine traffic is to build many of what I call ‘mini-funnel’ websites for specific keyword phrase/search queries. All of these slave websites could be designed as pointers to funnel traffic to your master site. Alternatively, they could be used as a stand-alone site to build exposure/accumulate leads.

Let’s do an example. I recently came across ’Is Barack Obama a Muslim‘ a one-page website created by someone to answer that one specific search query. The domain name and title tag consists of the keyword phrase (isbarackobamaamuslim) and the word ‘No’ links to the U.S democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama’s campaign website. Screenshot:

Just in case the user misspells his/her query there’s also ‘Is Barack Obama Muslin‘, a one-page website created specifically for possible incorrect search terms (the usefulness of this is offset by search engine auto-correction). In any case, this page contains 3 links, one to the Wikipedia page for ‘Muslin’, one to Obama’s campaign site and the other to the site mentioned above.

And then there’s the ‘Is Barack Obama Muslim‘ version of the site with the ‘a’ alphabet dropped. This particular one ranks the highest on both Yahoo and Google for the ‘is barack obama muslim‘ phrase, taking the no. 1 spot and even outranking Obama’s own official website. This appears to be the most established version of the three; Yahoo site explorer shows that it has 10,762 incoming links compared to the hundreds for the two other sites.

These mini-sites were created to provide answers to a specific question, one that is rather popular because rumors of Barack Obama being a Muslim have been circulating through viral emails or blogs. The goal of these two sites is to debunk the rumors by funneling traffic to Obama’s official site, which provides a clear explanation on the topic.

So the strategy is pretty clear-cut here. Create websites to answer specific search queries or deal with specific topics. Then use them to generate leads or send traffic to your home base.

Here are some elements which I think would really make these mini-sites work:

The Obama examples given above use the exact keyword search query as the domain name/title tag, which encourages people to link using the same words. You don’t have to stick to keyphrases; brandable non-keyword domain names are OK too, although I think its best to at least have some keywords in the title tag, since you’re going after visitors from search.

But then again, search engine algorithms can be unpredictable. Such a site might fall out of favor for some reason and lose its rankings. That’s why its important to give it a good push at the start by promoting it on social media channels to make sure that it serves its purpose as a lead generator/traffic funnel. The resulting links might also help your site develop trust.

So, what do you think of these mini-funnel websites?

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How ‘Mini-Funnel’ Websites Can Help You Increase Traffic, Generate Leads and Build Exposure

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Imagine you’re a email spammer. Your strategy is to send out thousands of unsolicited emails everyday hoping that some unassuming individual will purchase your product or inadvertently get infected by your malware/virus, so you can phish for credit card and banking details.

So here’s the situation. You’re dealing with millions of people whom you don’t know. You might not even know their age and gender, the basic demographic yardsticks. You can data mine email archives on a zombie computer to create personalized and convincing email messages but you’re always going to be dealing with a barrier of not-enough-trust.

You don’t know the audience well. So how do you increase the chance that they’ll even open up your email and clickthrough on the links within it? By threading on common ground and leading with the familiar. People might not know who you are but they know Angelina Jolie, who incidentally is the most popular celebrity name used by email spammers.

2.28% of all emails sent in July 2008 contained her name in the subject field. As a personality famous worldwide, she’s an alluring referential point spammers use to breach the walls of unsavvy targets. The familiar is powerful. That’s why you’ll see domain urls that are almost identical to official institutions or receive emails that use the addresses of people you know.

But that’s not all, spammers also love to use current events as bait. Events like political elections, conflicts between nations and major sports events like the Olympics are all fodder used to hook unassuming users into clicking on links or videos loaded with Trojan viruses.

When you want to get someone to do something, you need to arouse their interest first. You might not know every single person who reads your site, but that’s fine. Because you do know what they are generally familiar with. Use those references to bridge the gap and connect.

Every single blog post or salesletter you write can be filled with comparisons, analogies, metaphors, name-drops, references and citations that make your offer/idea more vivid. More familiar. More enticing. So focus on getting your audience interested first, because if they tune out right from the start, they’ll never absorb your pitch or give you a second chance.

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What We Can Learn from E-mail Spammers

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As some of you might know from my Twitter profile, I enjoy following politics and have been an avid spectactor of the on-going 2008 U.S Presidential Elections. It’s very entertaining to see how political parties compete with one another during an election to win votes.

A similar pattern has been repeating itself in the last few months. A candidate makes a statement, his/her opponent absorbs what was said and re-uses it within a campaign ad or a speech, in a manner which weakens the original statement or intent.

The back and forth between the two parties is rapid. A quote from a new interview on TV or print can be integrated into an fresh attack ad in the matter of hours. If someone makes a gaffe or says something politically incorrect, you can expect a rival response condemning it. Everything is fodder to be used in a way which weakens another’s value as a politician.

What’s the end goal of electioneering politics? It’s not just about fighting for a cause and making promises to the people. Sure, most politicians need a strong platform to run on but in the end it all comes down to one thing: being the lesser evil. Or if you’re less cynical, the better choice. It’s all a game of making your opponent look worse than you.

Less qualified, less experienced, less ethical, less intelligent, less patriotic, less in tune with the concerns of the people. If you can do that successfully, you’ll win votes and maybe even an election. Like I’ve mentioned before, political theatre is all about managing perspectives.

The same thing goes for business and marketing. Too often do we believe that we operate in a vacuum. At every single moment, somebody out there is always comparing you to your competitor. Some of them do this out publicly by writing about you in blogs or forums, other do this subconsciously or mentally whenever they are faced with the choice of making a purchase.

To win a customer or reader over, you need to manage their perspectives. You need to win their trust. You need to be the better choice, the lesser evil. To that end, you need an acute understanding and ongoing awareness of your competitors. What are other businesses or sites in your field are doing? What can you do to top their efforts?

Apart from improving the value of your offer, branding or marketing efforts can be created not only to emphasize your promise but the inadequancies of your competitor. Some political theorists advocate the strategy of attacking your opponents strengths instead of their weaknesses, the goal of which is to make people re-question their solidified beliefs.

Of course, these methods do not have to culminate in a overt ‘attack ad’ slamming your competitors. Strong-armed messages will often backfire. Sarcasm, humor and subtle visual references can leech attention from your rival’s strengths and turn consumers onto your offer.

If you’re not doing any ad-based promotions and just want to improve your competitive appeal, try monitoring the web for feedback on your competitor. Understanding how other people feel about them will allow you to revamp yourself accordingly. If they hate a flaw about your rival (e.g poor customer service), advocate your distaste for that particular weakness and take a pro-active stance to promise better-than-others service.

If they love something about your competitor (e.g comprehensive journalism) but crave more meaty or original news, offer content that is more all-encompassing or go in-depth with more feature content on a sub-topic. Turn their strengths or weaknesses into your advantage.

To sum up, this strategy is quite simple: It’s about constantly playing off your competitors actions and their perceived pros/cons. Like political elections, you’ll need to repeatedly adapt swiftly and decisively, in order to position yourself as the better choice than your rivals.

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The Lesser Evil: Being a Better Choice Than Your Competitors

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Emotional engagement is the key to viral marketing success. People share their everyday experiences by communicating them to others in and outside of their network. This social sharing is more rampant when the individuals develop intense feelings like fear, disgust, sadness, joy, anger and surprise.

Of all these emotions, surprise is a necessary ingredient which encourages people to pass on information they come across. Now let’s look at what surprise is and its impact on viral marketing. As partial reference, I’ll use a study from the Journal of Economic Psychology, one that examines surprise and its relationship to word-of-mouth.

What is Surprise and What Causes it?

Many researchers consider surprise a neutral and short-lived emotion that is elicited by unexpected phenomena or what is known as a ??schema discrepancy??. A schema is a theory that each person has about the nature of situations, objects and reality. The disruption of this schema is what leads to the element of surprise:

In order to have a proper representation of reality, individuals continuously check whether their schema matches the inputs coming from the surrounding environment. This check is, however, relatively unconscious As soon as inputs diverge from the schema, surprise is elicited. Schema discrepancy is the one and only cognitive cause of surprise, but the latter may also be elicited by non-cognitive causes

In other words, surprise is an emotion that occurs when something breaks the habitual pattern of thoughts we have. Such a disruption may occur on a physiological level (e.g loud sounds) or it can be deeply mental (e.g. something that challenges your world view).

Surprise’s effects are immediate: An stronger focus of attention on the stimulus, a heightened consciousness, better retention of memory at the expense of other stimuli. All of which eventually result in curiosity and exploratory behavior. This arousal also intensifies subsequent reactions, the excitation from being surprised transfers over to other experiences.

After detecting the schema discrepancy, the individual will evaluate it: the emotion of surprise is often followed by a positive or negative emotion, what we normally call a pleasant surprise or an unpleasant surprise. An interesting point to note about surprise is that most people will assume that what is surprising to them will also be new/useful information for others.

Using Surprise to Generate Word-of-Mouth

Our everyday reactions to our environment is habitual. Going through the same shop in the mall, we select and purchase items with more or less neutral emotions. Buying a pair of shoes does not involve ’disruptive’ or ‘intense’ emotions. Nothing here encourages us to share this experience with others. But this can change if you add the element of surprise.

For example, if you’re offered an unexpected and attractive freebie (e.g. bottle of wine) along with the product, it short-circuits your schema and generates surprise. You’re now much more likely to talk about the pair of shoes you bought or your feelings about the boutique or brand.

The goal here is to think about ways to elicit positive surprise by enhancing the experiences of your audience in unexpected ways. Making them feel privy to an unique situation encourages them to share or recommend your idea/product/service/brand. What does this mean? Only that one needs to invest time on understanding your audience’s schemas.

Its important to note that surprise can be used as a tool in many ways. For instance, it can used in a stand-alone format, in the form of viral ad or online video with a single message or you can integrate it into your sales or fulfillment funnel. Think about each juncture when you interact with your customer and inculcate elements of surprise wherever necessary.

Surprise can be used in large scale million dollar, multi-media/multi-platform viral marketing campaigns (e.g. The Dark Knight) or in smaller, repeating gestures like birthday cards, freebies and other addons you can attach to the product/service. Viral campaigns are short-term and hence easier to sustain surprise, while other repeating initiatives may lose their power after the audience comes to expect specific behavior and hence, develop a new schema.

In the next post on viral marketing, I’ll like to look at various examples of ads and hopefully determine a generic formula that one can you use to elicit immediate word-of-mouth.

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How ‘Surprise’ Helps Word-of-Mouth and Viral Marketing

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Many have made money and built reputations by solving problems. Doctors cure the suffering of illness, psychiatrists help heal the troubled mind, lawyers protect names from being tarnished, consultants offer marketing advice and a dazzling array of products help to remove any inconvenience you might possibly encounter in your daily life.

Many people are solving problems. They’re all offering solutions to people who need them. Some are giving them away for free. Others are selling them for a price. When problem and solution is a perfect fit, a relationship of trust is built between two parties. If this helps me now, it might help me again. If this solves my problem, it might solve my friend’s problem too.

There’s a connection. The problem solver becomes more popular as more problems are solved for more people. Every time you solve a problem in a way that’s better than others, you add undeniable value to the person in need. After performing a search engine query on a topic, what pages do you bookmark? The ones that offer you the best possible solution.

As a business or website owner, you have to face the challenge of getting people to consume what you’re offering, be it free content on your blog, a piece of merchandise or premium service. You’ll have compete with other problem solvers in the market. Other blogs, other companies in the same field, other service providers. All offering different solutions.

For instance, there are many different products to solve the problem of dirty dishes. A plethora of different washing fluids, sponges, machines and racks. In most scenarios, there are more solutions than there are problems. Solutions themselves become problems to be solved.

Most of the time problem-solvers are already engaging your target audience but that doesn’t mean you should stay away. There’s always room for another solution, especially when its one that addresses the problem with more elegance, more force, more precision or more style.

First, identify the problems facing your target audience. Go deep into the user-generated recesses of the web: monitor forums, social networking websites, blogs and places where people interact and talk online. Understand the problem more deeply than your competitor. Go after nuance. Absorb feedback on current solutions. Know what they want but isn’t available.

Then, create a solution that builds on the flaws of other solutions. Or one that completely circumvents the existing paradigm by addressing the problem from a different angle, using different methodology or a combination of existing solutions. Be daring and creative.

Try going wider for broader appeal or swim in narrower channels to reach hardcore fans in order to gain a support base. The same applies to online publications like blogs on specific topics. What problems do your readers have? How are you solving them with your content? If solutions already exist elsewhere,  how can you do better so you’ll be the go-to site?

Nobody is able to constantly solve problems in the best possible way to please every single person. All solutions have flaws because consumers evolve. People are also going to look elsewhere because of boredom. But understanding exactly what problems and solutions are out there, allows you to better score points or gain favor with any audience.

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The Power of Understanding and Solving Problems

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Viral marketing is the process of using peer-to-peer communications in order to rapidly spread information about a brand or message. The term ‘viral’ stems from the concept of a ‘virus’, a self-perpetuating phenomenon which infects whatever it comes in contact with, spreading itself in an expanding outward arc. Your message is the virus. The carriers are your audience.

People encounter specific data or ideas daily and pass it on to their friends and other people in their network. All things equal, one can say that information is shared more rapidly when the recipient has a strong emotional connection with the specific message. They adore it. They despise it. They are deeply puzzled by it. It makes them upset. It makes them happy.

Emotions are inextricably a component of social communication. As humans, we share our emotional experiences as a way to express our individuality and maintain our relationship networks. In a Indiana University study (paywall), researchers pinpointed the six primary emotions with a strong influence on viral referral behavior.

These are surprise, fear, sadness, joy, disgust and anger. In many cases, the more disruptive the message, the sooner it is shared. Surprise, the first emotion, is an essential element of all viral marketing campaigns. It works as a foundation alongside other emotional triggers. Here are the researchers recommendations on each emotion:

The goal to understand the psyche of consumers has always been a goal for marketers who want influence people. Numerous studies have been conducted by academics/experts and they each give us a snapshot of how people within a specific demographic think.

But bear in mind that the few emotions mentioned in the study cannot define the parameters of each individual’s possible actions and hence, should only be taken as rough guidelines.

Human beings are far more likely to communicate ideas and information with others when they are emotionally engaged. Find the key issues that concern your audience and then inculcate them within your marketing plan to get an emotional response. But know that emotions themselves are fleeting and they can be exhausting enough to be abandoned over time.

I think the element of surprise, either pleasant or nasty, is incredibly important. It jolts people out of their habits of perception and can instantly trigger the instinct to share. This is something I’ll like to talk about more in a separate article tomorrow. Stay tuned!

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The Key to Effective Viral Marketing is Emotional Engagement

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Ambush marketing is a strategy used by companies to promote their brands at events without paying any sponsorship fees. An example: “Dutch buyers of Heineken beer were given green hats to wear to the recent Euro 2008 football tournament. Anyone who tried to enter a stadium wearing one, however, as many fans did in 2004, was asked to remove it.

The hats were an ?ambush marketing? campaign… Heineken?s rival, Carlsberg, was an official sponsor of Euro 2008, paying $21m for the privilege. A few TV close-ups of fans wearing Heineken hats would have cost very little by comparison”

China, the host of the 2008 Olympics, is aware of these tactics and has taken precautions to control ‘all prominent advertising sites in the Chinese capital’ in order to prevent other companies from putting up or buying ads to take advantage of the massive increase in human traffic. They don’t want their official sponsors to be upstaged by other competitors.

Ambush marketing is opportunistic. It’s goal is to take advantage of situations which allow brands/products to get extra exposure at minimal cost. Sometimes that involves going right into the lions den and clashing head on with a competitor who dominates the main message dissemination channels. Sometimes it requires stealth and more guerrilla-like tactics.

What marketers and anyone who wants to promote themselves can learn is the strategy of seeking out people-saturated public spaces (online or offline) and seek to populate that area with your message. Buskers, beggars and poster street teams are all familiar with how to promote their agenda or needs in areas where people frequently pass through.

Contextual relevance is also important. Selling is more natural and persuasive when it flows alongside the momentum generated by the immediate environment and current news/trends.

Just the other day, I went to a rock concert and was waiting in the queue when I noticed a guy from a local radio station standing at the side of the road. As people passed by, he gave them each a high-five while saying out the name of his station.

It was innocuous enough, everyone took it in good taste. After the concert finished, I left the venue with my friends. While walking on the path out, we were stopped by three guys who handed us each a flyer for their band. On it was their band logo as well as their myspace and facebook URLs, along with a link to a free download of some tracks from their latest album.

These people anticipated an opportunity: a rock concert would bring out hordes of music fans, many of which are targeted high-value prospects. The right pitch at the right time/place.

Can Ambush Marketing Actually Work Online?

Image Credit: one nation under CCTV

Let’s talk a little about ambush marketing online. Is it even possible?  Maybe. Take the example of sneaky link insertions. Some people carefully monitor the upcoming stories with the most votes on digg.com or other popular social news sites and insert comments with links to their website. When the story hits the frontpage or gradually accumulates visibility, the well placed links can each easily net you upwards of 1,000+ visitors.

This is a tactic that piggybacks on an existing occurrence. To do this effectively, you should constantly push news/events related to your target market and specific keyword-relevant searches on major online communities to a central location, like an RSS reader or dashboard. Monitor this repository of occurrences constantly. Or get someone to keep an eye on it.

After which you need to be prepared to rapidly develop ways to leech the attention from the traffic that’s focused on a specific webpage or occurrence. Sometimes that involves creating specific landing pages that diverge from your website’s original theme/focus.

For instance, to take advantage of the buzz around the iPhone 3G, a website about fitness can create a stand-alone page about iPhone tips/hacks and push it out to not only the popular blogs but every single hobbyist/small-time blogger who has ever expressed an interest in it.

There’s a disconnect between your actual site theme and your specific article/landing page but you are relying on the fact that some of the traffic going over to the specific page will click over to your homepage and end up viewing it. A large amount of non-relevant traffic will eventually allow you to hit a smaller amount of prospects actually interested in your site’s actual focus.

Of course, this isn’t ambush marketing per se, but rather something that builds on the opportunistic mindset which underlies it. The tactical principle is simple: stay in the loop and watch for openings to divert attention towards your brand. A rule of thumb: where people gather online in large numbers, you should be there with a relevant message.

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Ambush Marketing: The Art of Diverting Attention

Social Bookmark

Traveled to my home town of Moline Illinois this weekend. Its only about a 5 hour drive but with 2 little girls under 2 1/2 took us about 8 hours.

Today we went to the Festival Of Trees which I never really have understood. When I was a kid I sang in a choir and always had to sing at this thing. It was kind of cool taking my little girls to it today. Also my sister Andrea came with us.

At the Festival Of Trees they have tons of home made trees for sale that people made. They must have some sort of a contest cause a lot of them had ribbons and stuff.

My favorite one was this Mt. Dew Tree:

It had a BIN of only $150 but the top bid was $20. I bet it cost $200++ to make this thing in pop costs alone.

Fun trip hanging out with the fam. Here is a pic of me and my sister:

And my daughter Juliet and wife Dr J:

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Festival Of Trees

CashHomeBuyers.com is a residential and commercial real estate investment company.  They offer U.S. Customers and Investors a hassle-free way to buy and sell residential and commercial property.  They link interested parties to investors in their member network. 

Thanks for the shirt!

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This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

CashHomeBuyers.com - Free Shirt Friday

Just debuted the new Keyword Rank Tracking Tool in shoemoney tools:

We also hit a pretty big milestone being we sold the 1,000th domain via the domain marketplace.

Here are some peaks at the documentation for the other tools in the set. We are adding a new tool about every 10 days.

• BackLink Analyzer
• BackLinks Finder
• Domain Marketplace
• Keyword Density Tool
• Keyword Generator Tool
• Keyword Grabber Tool
• Most Linked Tool
• PPC Ad Generator
• PPC Local Brand Tool
• PPC Local Keyword Tool
• Text Optimization Tool
• WordPress Related Posts Tool

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

ShoeMoney Tools New Keyword Tracking Tool

it would look like SearchMe.

This week searchme launched their iPhone search application which looks pretty sweet. Check out the vid:

If I had a iPhone I would use it

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

If Apple Had A Search Engine

Every time paid links is brought up Matt Cutts brings up the FTC’s “suggestions” on bloggers disclosing things they have been compensated for. In no where in these “suggestions” does it talk about paid links. But even if it did they are just suggestions.

They are not law and if Google was following the FTC’s suggestions I doubt Google Adsense/adlinks would be engaging in some of the most deceptive advertising methods I have ever seen on the internet.

Also I am curious then why Google is not requiring Firefox to display that they are paying Firefox billions of dollars to be the default search engine each time you search. The funny thing is not even firefox developers know they are getting paid so much by Google as you can see in my posts about it before. Talk about a lack of disclosure.

And what about all the other properties Google has bought their way into? How many times have you seen Adsense ads not labeled as ads?

What about the spyware/virus bearshare I have BEEN SHOWING IN SLIDES FOR PRESENTATIONS FOR 3+ YEARS that is still ruining Google Adsense. Google CLEARLY has knowledge of these things and they choose to participate in deceptive advertising.

Now in regards to Matt you know why he must do this right? He is a smart guy. And I would guess he HATES ADSENSE with a passion. But as we saw before text links are Google’s achilles heel and remain to be.

Now honestly there is absolutely zero way for them to detect inlink ads if it is done properly and Matt (and maybe former Googler Vanessa Fox who chimed in also) knows that.

If its easy to detect why did they have all the calls for help using the paid links form to rat on people who pay for links and employ the hundreds of people to review all those submissions?

Surely if you can “detect” it so easily that would save a few bucks.

Anyway I personally don’t think Google wants to go down this path with the FTC.

If they want to come out and say they will take you out of their search engine index if you don’t follow their rules then fine. But don’t act like its some Government mandate and everyone is going to go to jail who is selling/buying paid links.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Does Google REALLY Want To Go Down This FTC Route

MediaWhiz today launched Inlinks. Its basically Text-Link-Ads 2.0.

On the Advertiser’s - sites looking to pickup links to their product can specify keywords and anchor text they are looking for and the Inlinks magic will go through all its publisher base finding matching and give you EDITORIAL CONTROL over which ones you would like to purchase.

On the blogger?s side when they get a new advertiser they are alerted and have EDITORIAL CONTROL if they want to place the link or not.

So the key here is going to be to not make Google look stupid. If your site is about electronics and your accepting ads for stuff not related to electronics clearly trying to manipulate Google search engine placements then your probably going to get dinged. But if you are only approving relevant websites that add to the user experience as a reference then from what I have seen and heard from Google Engineers you should be OK.

I don’t care what others are saying about this the bottom line is unless InLinks has some sort of fingerprint its going to be completely impossible for Google to detect.

Curious to hear your thoughts on this.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

InLinks From Text Link Ads - Now Google Compliant?

In the book The Dip Seth talks about how superstars lean into the dip.   They almost use the dip as an advantage.  Also when superstars come out of the dip and master their craft they create a giant barrier for any competitors.

So what are some real world examples of this?  Well look at eBay!  How hard is it to overtake eBay in the online auction space?

What about Google?  Not only does Google have the best search engine but they also pay over 1 billion dollars a year to be the default search engine in Firefox, Safari, AOL, and others.  If anyone even thought about competing with Google they need to bring a TON of money to the table.

Think Microsoft created much of a dip for competitors with its Office Suite and Operating Systems?

Many times reporters have asked me who I think is going to be the next big search engine.  I tell them I think it over.  Search as we know it is owned by Google and only the government will be able to stop them.  The dip to overtake Google is just to much for any company to overcome.

If you can overcome the dip your compeditors have put in front of you then you can be #1.  But what will your post dip strategy be to remain #1?

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Post Dip Strategys