Marketing

What the Cool Kids Can Teach Us About Selling Out

My friend John Haydon shared a link with me to a video by Youtube user italktosnakes (Kristina Horner). It’s a video response to another Youtube user, nerimon (Alex Day).

In both the videos, each discuss the merits of being paid to advertise products on their Youtube channels. What’s interesting is their take on how companies are approaching this. Kristina praises Ford for its Fiesta initiative (which she’s part of) while Sanyo’s “insert here” example by Alex shows a company still getting to grips with the new tools.

Each video also acts as a nice rebuff to marketers and advertisers who say that Gen Y aren’t worth dealing with as they don’t have the influence or business savvy of older media users.

How about you? Would the approaches talked about in the videos work on you? How can businesses reach you?

Is This How to Market Your Product?

If you’re a marketer, are you thinking about how to promote your new website or product? And if you’re a consumer, are you getting tired of lazy pitches and ideas?

Take a look at the five images below – each one belongs to a Twitter account that I was notified was now following me.

Every single message is the same, from how old the girl is, where she’s from, what she wants to do this weekend and what video she’s just watched.

Now, either the UK is currently enjoying a great spell of Twitter awareness in provocatively dressed female teens or there’s a little bit of shenanigans going on here. I’m going with the latter.

Looking at the accounts themselves, it would seem that it’s a marketing push for web host Cool Blue Solutions. Each account has a background designed by the web host company, and Cool Blue’s Twitter account mentions designing the background for our teen friend Sandra B. Smith.

But then you look at the URL for each of the five girls. That takes you to RevTwt.com, which used to be known as TwtAd, an advertising model for paid tweets.

They’re in the process of a relaunch of the service and are looking for advertisers. They claim to put your ad in front of more than 23 million Twitter users – pretty impressive considering that’s about the estimated number of all Twitter users at present (including bots and spam accounts).

So what’s the story here? Is it a marketing push to promote the web host services of Cool Blue Solutions? Is it an advertising push by RevTwt on behalf of Cool Blue Solutions? Is it a little of both?

Whatever it is, here’s the thing. Marketing your message properly means targeting your audience properly. It means knowing who would use your services and what would attract them to that service, and why it stands out from the rest.

Does a semi-nude teenage girl create the right message for Cool Blue Solutions if it’s their campaign? Are they looking for business users of their web services or teenage boys hoping to hit it off with a girl just like the one in the above Twitter accounts?

How about RevTwt, if it’s their push? Did they target anyone with these Twitter accounts or is it just a hit and hope approach? I only ask as I had all five accounts follow me in quick succession, and their bio’s just make your BS spider senses tingle.

Whatever the deal is here, I don’t think it succeeds. The majority of people have moved on from booth babe advertising and marketing pushes and are looking for real people behind the products. Teenage girls in bikinis don’t quite shout web host to me.

What do you think – is this kind of marketing still valid? If you’re a consumer, would you be convinced to sign up to Cool Blue Solutions from the recommendations of these Twitter accounts?

What if you’re an advertiser and RevTwt is behind these accounts – do they make you want to run a campaign with them? Or would your approach differ?

Update Monday July 06. Looks like Cool Blue Host may not have been as marketable as they thought. All Twitter accounts mentioned in this post are no longer live and their domain is also available.

Simple

If someone tells you that you want something, do you listen? Or do you ignore and think that only you know what you want?

If someone asks what you want, do you tell them your ideas and wish-lists? More than likely. We all like to be heard.

So why are you telling your customers what they want? Why are you not asking them? Instead of saying, “Hey, this is our new product, it’s just what you’ve wanted”, why not say, “Here’s the product you asked for”?

Or is that too simple?

Simple

If someone tells you that you want something, do you listen? Or do you ignore and think that only you know what you want?

If someone asks what you want, do you tell them your ideas and wish-lists? More than likely. We all like to be heard.

Or is that too simple?

Why Your Numbers Game is BS

I’m from an old-school marketing background. I got my marketing degree back in the early 90’s and it helped educate my views on how to market a message or product, and continues to help me shape strategies today.

But there’s one thing that stands out clearly from these early days – the numbers game is utter bullshit.

My educator and many of my fellow students subscribed to the theory that numbers are the linchpin of any marketing campaign. The more eyeballs your message reaches, the more potential for interest.

But there’s a key word in there that makes all the difference – potential.

Your message could potentially get these eyeballs. Your message could potentially land in 10,000 email inboxes. Your message could potentially make a new sale.

Your message could also potentially piss off the same customers you’re trying to convert.

Think about it. You have two options. You can either send out 10,000 mass emails in the hope that maybe 5% will reply to you or even bother to read it. Or, you can send out 1,000 targeted emails knowing that every single person will at least read your message.

It’s not rocket science. It’s called simple research and knowing your target.

It’s also why the race to amass thousands (millions, even) of followers on Twitter is more a vain ego stroke than a valid exercise. So you have 20,000 people following you on Twitter. Do you think every single one knows who you are and what you say at any given time?

How many are dead accounts, or bots, or people that have no interest in what you’re saying, you just seemed like a good fit at the time?

Numbers mean squat. Unless you’ve built up a core audience that you can message, or employ to share your words or sales pitch, numbers are simply a way to make you feel important.

They make a marketing director’s job a little easier when it comes to budget meetings with the CEO. They make advertiser’s look at you with salivating mouths (until they realize you’re not really as influential as 1,000 bots say you are).

If you really want to show off your numbers, show off the amount of sales you got from your last project. Show off the quality of your list as opposed to the quantity. Show off the numbers that make a real difference.

Otherwise you’re just throwing out empty facts. And no-one ever succeeded from emptiness. Did they?

photo credit: Thomas Hawk