© 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Traditional Vehicle, New Channel: Internet Word-of-Mouth Marketing

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts It’s Time to Think Different  Interruption marketing just doesn’t work anymore –Unanticipated, impersonal, and irrelevant ads won’t break through the data smog  Stop marketing at people. Get out of the way and let people market your products to each other.

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts What is viral marketing?  Word of mouth marketing augmented by digital communication, a.k.a. “word of mouse”  Facilitate the process of people referring their friends and colleagues –to purchase your products, visit your site, sign up for a free trial, subscribe to your newsletter, etc.

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Word-of-Mouth on Steroids  Traditional WOM –Travels slowly –Dies off –E.g. recommend a book to some friends  Digitally augmented WOM –Spreads fast –Travels far –Exponential growth (amplification) –E.g. Hotmail

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Some new jargon  Sneezer, ideavirus, vector, hive, tipping point, connector, maven, promiscuous, powerful, smooth, amplifier, persistence, word-of-mouse, network effect, Law of the Few, Zipf’s Law, Metcalf’s Law, compounding effect, etc.  Gotta love buzzwords!

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts First, you need an “ideavirus”  Is your idea virusworthy?  Ideaviruses love a vacuum

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Who’s going to spread your message?  Seth Godin calls them “sneezers” –“Promiscuous sneezers” - have their price –“Powerful sneezers” - can’t be bought; difficult to predict what will motivate them  Malcolm Gladwell breaks them out differently –“Connectors” - masters of the ‘loose tie,’ seem to know everybody –“Mavens” - genuinely helpful –“Salespeople” - born to sell

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Divide and conquer  Go after a demographic or psychographic group where your ‘ideavirus’ can dominate  Like people hang out together (e.g. the affluent mix in the same circles)  Target those sympathetic to your cause –Got a BMW dealership? Target BMW owners, not Ford owners. –Go after bloggers. They are sneezers!

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Observe who’s sneezing!  Identify your top sneezers by tracking “unique opens” –0 = didn’t open –1 = recipient opened but didn’t forward –2+ = recipient probably forwarded (unless they check mail from multiple PCs)  Reward and incentivize these sneezers! They’re worth their weight in gold.

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Reward your “sneezers”  Don’t insist that a referrer’s friend become a customer to earn the incentive. That’s outside his/her control.  Make sure the incentive is relevant to the recipient.  It doesn’t have to be expensive.  e.g. golf balls with the recipient’s name printed on them  DON’T change the rules mid-campaign

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Gotta give to get  Don’t just give a speech and leave –Fly in your customers to tell their stories –Sponsor a cocktail party afterward  Don’t just tell them how your product is safe and secure; give them a first aid kit for their car  3M Post-It Notes: –Secretary of 3M’s chairman sent a free case to secretaries of chairmen of the Fortune 500  MCI Mail: – Blew it - built friction into the system by charging instead of giving it away to build critical mass

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Network Effect  Metcalf’s Law - the value of a network increases with the square of the number of people using it  A world with 1000 fax machines is 250,000 times better than one with only 2

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Power of bestseller lists  Zipf’s Law - #1 is MUCH more popular than #2  Stanford study: artificially boosting bestseller status of downloaded files  Self fulfilling prophecy  If you can’t dominate one, create your own

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Make it easy for people to “pass it on”  Ask recipients to forward your e-newsletter, , website URL, RSS item, etc. to friends  Include on your site “ this page to a friend” buttons to refer your articles, products, etc.  Make it a fill-in form that allows the visitor to pass it on to a number of people at once –e.g. Ideavirus.com’s “Send It” page

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts The consumer is in control  Of the content  Of the frequency  Of the relationship

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Where consumers gather and messages propagate   Discussion forums / chat rooms / listservs  Blogs  RSS  Podcasts  Wikis  Search engines

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Join their conversations  Start blogging –Individual blog or group blog? Moblogging? Podcasting?  Influence other bloggers to blog about you –Solar powered backpack example  Start offering RSS feeds  Create a community –Forums? listservs? Chat rooms? Wikis?

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Precepts for joining the conversation  “Say something worth talking about” - Nick Usborne  Be remarkable. “The opposite of remarkable is very good. Very good is boring.” - Seth Godin  Start fires. “Markets are conversations; and conversations are fire. Therefore, marketing is arson.” - Doc Searls  Share the love. “Share your knowledge. Share your network. Share your compassion.” - Tim Sanders

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Blogs  Online journal, organized in reverse chronological order  165 million Google search results for “blog”  3 types, according to Seth Godin –News blogs, Writers blogs, “Our blogs”  The community of bloggers = blogosphere  Blogosphere is rich with interlinkages –Bloggers always cite (and link to) their sources in their posts –Links also appear in “blogrolls”, “trackbacks”, comments, RSS

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

RSS  Better than the Inbox –Unspammable content delivery channel to individuals –Viable replacement for enewsletters  Web-wide Syndication –Propagate deep links that drive traffic and “search engine juice”  “You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed.” - Robert Scoble, Microsoft

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Slashdot headlines syndicated on Nanodot.org

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts How subscribers follow RSS  Web-based aggregator –Bloglines (now owned by Ask Jeeves), My Yahoo!, MyMSN, MyFeedster, etc.  Installed application –NewsGator (Outlook plug-in), Sage (Firefox plug-in), Pluck (IE plug-in), FeedReader, etc.

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

RSS  What will help subscribers keep their finger on the pulse of your business/industry and compel webmasters to disseminate to their visitors? –News alerts, latest specials, clearance items, upcoming events, new arrivals, new articles, new tools & resources, search results, a book’s revision history, top 10 best sellers, project management activities, forum/listserv posts, recently added downloads, … –For blogs: latest posts, latest posts by category, latest comments per post, …

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to search results on MSN Search

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to search results on Yahoo! News

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to deals with online retailers

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to articles

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to podcasts

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Make It Easy to Subscribe  1-click add to your favorite aggregator –“Add to ____” buttons –Link tags e.g. –Make your listings in the Yahoo! SERPs display the “Add to My Yahoo!” link

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to a feed personalized to you

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Wikis  A website that visitors can add to / edit easily –Without knowledge of HTML  All previous versions are kept  Can easily back out to a previous version if needed

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Discussion Forums  Web-based message board  Can be -based too. Called a listserv or a discussion list.  Very unlike blogs –Everyone is equal –Threaded –Anyone can start new “threads”  Also unlike chat rooms, which are ephemeral

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Case studies  President Carter’s blog  Numa numa  Somerville Gates  Voltaic backpack  A9  HOTorNOT.com  Unleashing the Ideavirus   Budweiser parody

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts President Carter’s blog  8 days of blogging during a trip to West Africa  138,000 results for “carter west africa blog” in Google  Blog was marketed via press releases, through partner organization Web sites, and via the Google AdWords program  “garnered significant increases in visits to our site, resulting in an average quadruple our normal daily average. We have sustained a significant increase in Web traffic since February 2004” - Carter Center

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Numa  A student with a web cam and too much time on his hands  Spreads through the blogosphere quickly as A-list bloggers like Seth Godin and Rick Bruner blogged about it  Made it onto Good Morning America

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Somerville Gates  “a micro sendup of the saffron extravaganza in New York's Central Park”  $3.50 in art supplies  Received over 4 million hits  Invitation from Tufts University for juried art show

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Voltaic Backpack  Solar-powered backpack from a small start-up  Blogging friend Treehugger blogged about it  Then got picked up by CoolHunting  Then got picked up by Gizmodo  A flurry of orders ensued.

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts A9  When Amazon.com’s search engine company (called A9) launched, bloggers got the scoop, not traditional media  A9’s beta launch rocketed through the blogosphere

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts HOTorNOT.com  Formerly AmIHotorNot.com  View photos of strangers and rate their looks from 1 to 10 or post your own photo  Launched by 2 unemployed Californians on a whim and with no funding  A MediaMetrix Top 50 most visited site  Peaked at 14.8 million page views in a single day

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

“Unleashing the Ideavirus”  Book by Seth Godin - in paperback, hardcover, and e-book format  Free to download from the web at  Web site also allows you to easily it to all your friends  Most downloaded e-book in history  An Amazon.com best seller

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts  Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence  Analyzing noise from space  Over 2 million PCs crunching numbers in their spare time, for no compensation  Propagated by ‘powerful sneezers’  Persistent

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Budweiser Parody  “Wassup Superfriends”  Budweiser, wisely, didn’t interfere  Further burned Budweiser’s brand and ad campaign into our subconscious

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Ready, Aim, Misfire.  Negative WOM spreads like wildfire –Raging Cow –Kryptonite –Dan Rather (“Rathergate”)  What went wrong?  Be transparent. Be truthful. Communicate.

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Search engines  Rankings can be manipulated  “Implied endorsement”  Combination of on-page and off-page factors  On-page –Body copy, title tags, headings, etc.  Off-page –Links act like votes. Votes weighted. Favors A-list bloggers. –Link text very important (“Google bombing”)

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts In Summary  Viral marketing dwarfs traditional WOM  Identify your best sneezers  Make a compelling offering and exploit the sneezers’ motivations  Make it easy to spread (“smooth”)  Join the conversation, through blogs, RSS, wikis, etc.  You can influence, but not control

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Further Reading / Resources  The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell  Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin  The Anatomy of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen  Creating Customer Evangelists by Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba  The Cluetrain Manifesto by Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger  Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders  The Purple Cow by Seth Godin  Word of Mouth Marketing Association (  MarketingProfs thought leaders summit on buzz marketing

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

Q&A  for the audio from the MarketingProfs thought leaders summit on business blogging that I led earlier this year  Questions after the conference? me at