New Media Marketing Is Word of Mouth Marketing

It struck me recently that I've assumed something about new media marketing that I had never really expressed. That realization was that I assume word of mouth marketing is the most effective form of promotion. Everything I advocate when it comes to new media marketing is based on the premise that word of mouth marketing works and is truly effective. The entire content as the new promotion strategy series I did had word of mouth marketing at its very foundation.

Here's why I say this: word of mouth marketing is people telling others about something. That's the core of new media marketing and a content promotion strategy. You want to use content (see here for definition) that people will find valuable and then pass along. The new media tools simply let this happen exponentially faster than the old word of mouth marketing. It's still word of mouth...just at hyper speed.

Two weeks ago Ketchum released the findings of a new study that verifies this. Here are two interesting quotes from the study:

"Advice from family and friends is the No. 1 source that consumers turn to when making a variety of decisions – ranging from purchasing consumer electronics to planning a vacation."

"Communicators rank their companies’ own Web sites as the most effective way to share corporate news or issue a response to a crisis, but consumers rank company Web sites sixth and seventh among places they turn to for corporate news and crisis response, respectively."

What we see here is verification that people telling other people about things is the best promotional tool and that despite any company's high regard for its own website, the people are looking many other places first (including search engines as the study later shows.) This isn't really new news, it's just the latest in a line of validating information along these lines. Kind of makes me glad I'm not doing traditional marketing anymore.

Content is the new promotion strategy, part 3: Why content for promotion?

This is the third installment of the content as the promotional strategy series. Here are the first and second parts if you haven't seen them already. In this post I'm going to answer the question:

"Why choose content as a promotional strategy?"

So, why look at content as the new promotion strategy? It's simple actually. Content as a promotion strategy forces a marketer to think about the consumer. When a marketer thinks about the consumer, she thinks about what will be valuable to that consumer rather than what's valuable to her (or her company or her client.) This shift may seem subtle but it's huge.

There are somewhere between 3000 and 5000 marketing messages aimed at Americans every day and each of them is standing there saying “hey, look at me!” or “check this out” or “you need this really bad.” What none of these promotional messages says is, “here's something for you” without a hook. They may give something away but they're going to ask for something in return like buy one and then get one free. What's understood but not spoken is that if you buy now, then you'll get one free now. You may get the consumers attention with the deal but you also lose it as soon as the transaction is complete.

A content promotion strategy changes the model because you're A) giving away something of value to the consumer without an immediate hook and B) extending the length of their attention for you. A content promotion strategy takes the long view of a consumer's time and attention (two very valuable commodities) knowing that the valuable content you're providing now earns their attention this time and likely their time and attention a next time with even more valuable content. The strategy is to give now so that you can get later.

Advertising is about the advertiser. Content is about the consumer. Promoting with content forces you to put yourself in the consumer's shoes and therefore deliver something to them they will value. It's not about you. It's about them. They already know that. When you know that and when they know you know that, then you're just beginning to connect with your best customers.

Content is the new promotion strategy, part 2: What is content?

Earlier this week I started this series called "content is the new promotion strategy." Today I'm going to begin with the first question some may have for understanding this promotional paradigm shift...

What is content?

The Wikipedia definition for content is: "information and experiences created by individuals, institutions and technology to benefit audiences in contexts that they value."

For our purposes I expand on this definition a bit to say that online content for promotion is any information, idea, experience, or digital good that will have value to the consumer without the perceived primary objective being an advertisement, offer, proposition, or call to action.

For instance, a series of videos on the website of a home improvement magazine with short "how-to" videos would be content. A banner ad on the same site that simply says, “Order now and save 30%!” is not. This is not to say, however, that at the end of the how-to video there couldn't be an offer to order now to save 30%. The difference is that the content (in this case it's a video) is primary and the offer is secondary. The content earns the attention for the offer. In essence you've given them something now so you can ask for something in return that benefits you (even if you ask it in such a way that you're telling them it's a good deal for them too...like 30% off.)

Content is only as good as its value to another person. High value content is therefore considered high quality content so the opposite is true as well. Low value content is low quality content. The correlation between value and quality is inescapable. The million dollar question then is this: “What is valuable content?”

Valuable content will mean different things to different audiences so an understanding of your target audience is paramount. I was recently talking with a photographer friend about this concept of content as a promotion strategy. At first he wasn't sure it applied to him. He thought it meant he might start a blog about photography tips or something along those lines. Though that's one route he could go (and it may very well be a good one) he could also look at creating digital goods or showcasing his photographs in a form that would be valuable to people who may later be interested in his services. For instance, he could use his pictures as a series of free custom desktop images or inspirational e-cards. Maybe he could take some pictures of children and put music to it to create a funny and touching video about kids. If the video is done well I can just think of all the moms and dads who will want to pass it along to friends/family/coworkers and all the while be promoting his photography in the process. Any of these ideas would be viewed as valuable to people who are potential customers for him and he's promoting himself by giving away content. By giving any of these away, he's not asking for anything in return yet. He just knows he's credited with each photograph that goes out and for now he knows it is more valuable to gain people's attention than to make a hard sell. After all, it's a promotion strategy not a sales strategy.

There are three easy categories to remember for valuable content that can be remembered with this question: Is the content helpful, hopeful, or humorous? This is certainly not an exhaustive list of all the types of content that could be beneficial, but I've found it to be a quick reference to gauge whether something will be perceived as valuable.

• Helpful - Is the content you're going to create going to help someone in any way. Maybe it's going to help give them knowledge or perspective they didn't have before. Maybe it will teach or train them to do something they want to learn. Helpful content helps people. It's not a difficult concept to understand but it could be easily overlooked as a content option. It's not an accident that Lifehacker is the sixth most popular blog in the world.
• Hopeful - Content that is encouraging, touching, or in some other way has an emotional appeal more easily lends itself to being appealing to your audience (assuming this is appropriate for your audience) and then being passed along as well. It's the same thing Hallmark has done for years and more recently Extreme Makeover: Home Edition has been successful with this approach. Kleenex's Let it Out campaign was all over this too.
  
• Humorous - Let's face it, we've seen more than our fair share of funny online videos, stories, or pictures and we've probably recommended a bunch too. Whether it's some guy dancing around or a baby laughing, humor is one of the easiest ways to create valuable content. Making people laugh is valuable. Last summer eMarketer studied this topic and showed that the most watched online videos are humorous. The band Ok Go got the break of a lifetime with this approach.
  

The next part of this series will talk in depth about why content is the new promotion strategy.

Content is the new promotion strategy

For a year and a half now I've been talking about web 2.0 to people with varying levels of understanding about the term and the technology that it represents. In August, 2006, I posted for the first time about the six categories of web 2.0. I've used the "massive Volkswagon" many times to help give a basis for understanding in personal meetings and in seminars to groups of people.

Several months ago, however, I began to see a flaw in what I was talking about. My focus was totally on the technology, and as a marketer talking mostly to marketers, I found that the technology discussion was really only one part of the true shift in new media/web 2.0 marketing. It's one thing to start talking about fishing with nets, it's something else entirely to talk about why fishing with nets is important and strategic. That was the piece I was missing and as a marketer focused on new media, I was only talking about the technology without taking an important step back to explain the strategy for using it. If the mindset shift comes in forgetting the big fish, then the strategy to accompany it is this: content is the new promotion strategy. The technology (the nets...to stay with that analogy) simply lets content spread faster and go further than ever before.

This week I'm going to dig further into the idea of content as the new promotion strategy. After all, what is content and what makes it so special anyway?