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Marketing More Powerful Than SEO
By Mark Daoust (c) 2007

There is a vicious rumor circulating among website owners that
search engine optimization (SEO) is the single most powerful
form of marketing on the web. I have my suspicions that this
rumor was started by professional search engine optimizers, but
I have not yet received my mail-in Nancy Drew kit to reach a
definitive conclusion. All the same, it might be best to not
share this information with any professional SEO who is trying
to win your business.

The truth, however, must be told – SEO is not the best
marketing for your website. To those of you who are
professional marketers, this will not come as a surprise, but
SEO takes a backseat to the real king of marketing.
Unfortunately the mystique of Google, complete with their daily
updates and rumors (I heard that Larry Page has been parting his
hair on the other side this week - a pagerank update must be
near!), has gotten so many website owners Googley-eyed that they
are missing the real marketing gem that we should all be aiming
for.

Buzzing Over Your Website

Marketers know that there is one thing that will bring more
sales for a website than a well-optimized site could ever bring:
buzz. This has also been called viral marketing or passive
marketing, but unfortunately both of those phrases have been
used so much that they lack their own buzz-power, and as a
result we often look away when someone mentions viral
marketing.

There is no real secret to viral marketing – the secret is to do
just what the name says: create a buzz. You want people to talk
about your website, to let others in on their secret which is
your website. You want those that learn about you to have a
sense of excitement, a sense of privilege, a sense that only you
can offer what they are seeing. You do not want to resort to
calculating CPM rates, optimizing PPC campaigns, or working
tirelessly on optimizing your website for some algorithm that is
likely to change in a month - you want others to market your
website for you.

And that is just what viral marketing is - it is the process of
getting others to market your website for you.

Examples of Successful Viral Marketing Campaigns

Fortunately there are several examples of viral marketing
campaigns which we can look at for inspiration. Some of these
may be unrealistic for our unique needs, but we can take away
principles from these campaigns which will teach us more about
viral marketing.

]Xbox 360

When Microsoft released the Xbox 360 in November of 2005, they
attempted to do their first world-wide distribution rather than
staggering the distribution to help supply keep up with the
demand for the new gaming console. Their worldwide distribution,
however, fell far short of their goal of getting an Xbox to
everyone in the world that wanted one. The result was that the
new units quickly sold out in most stores even while hundreds of
people waited to get their own gaming box.


The perceived scarcity created a buzz that fueled eBay auctions
(http://news.com.com/eBay+buzzing+with+Xbox+360+auctions/
2100-1043_3-5969730.html) and news stories about the new
Microsoft product. Most eBay auctions sold at a tidy profit,
and sold quickly.

The news died down once the intial wave of scarcity passed, but
while there was a perceived scarcity in the product, and while
hundreds of people waited in line for their Xbox, the Xbox
was news. People, who may not have had any desire to buy
the product, talked about it, became familiar with it, and
shared their opinions on the issue.

From this scarcity – and the extreme demand for this product,
buzz was born.

Gmail

Admittedly, anytime Google so much as moves a corporate pinky,
they create buzz. But of all the examples of viral marketing I
have seen in the past several years, none seem to match up to
the buzz that Gmail created when it was released.

Gmail was released just as the SEO industry was ramping up for
what was being dubbed as the 'search engine wars'. Yahoo had
recently announced that they were ditching their Google results
in favor of the newly acquired Inktomi indexing engine, and MSN
also threw in their hat with an announcement that they would
become rivals of the rising Google.

In what was perceived to be a response, Google released Gmail.
Gmail had buzz written all over it. The timing of the release
appeared to be a direct jab at Yahoo. The record breaking disk
space offered with each account was itself newsworthy, and the
fact that you could not get it unless you were offered a special
invitation all worked together in a way to make Gmail one of the
most desirable invitations on the web.

And this was a key point – Google gave people the opportunity to
feel special. Those who had the first invitations were in a
special club – a club that affirmed their place of importance in
the world of Google. They were the first adopters, the first
people to accept a hot product from a hot company.

Buzz-worthy? Absolutely.

Viral Videos

A development in the past few years as Internet connection
speeds have increased is the advent of viral videos. We have
all seen viral videos – Brokeback to the Future
(http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4615266676615092514&q=
brokeback+to+the+future&pl=true), Why Macs Suck
(http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6553260189868317794&q=
macs+suck&pl=true), Russian Climbing (http://video.google.com/
videoplay?docid=515642196227308929) (wait until the second minute
of this video before it gets good), Japanese T-Shirt Folding
(http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4776825453418327083),
or even a cool commercial for a Honda (http://84.40.3.164/),
viral videos have a tendency to get passed around.

I don't think this point needs to be made too much – if you
watch these videos, chances are pretty good that you will
forward one on to your friends, family, or associates if you
have not yet seen it. These videos are funny, amazing, useful,
or simply awe-inspiring enough that we want to share them with
others.

Anatomy of Viral Marketing

There is no shortage of examples of viral marketing in action –
any time you learn about a website by word of mouth, through a
blog entry, or through a genuine link on another website, you
are participating in viral marketing. With all these examples
of viral marketing, it becomes fairly easy to breakdown several
aspects that seem to make web pages 'buzz-worthy'.

Buzz-worthy Sites Stroke People's Egos

Everyone likes to be 'in the know', to be a first adopter of a
product that everyone eventually comes to love. If you know
some of the first adopters of Apple's iTunes system, you know
what it is like to know a first adopter and how much pride they
take in being able to spot a winner before anyone else.

Buzz-worthy sites, like Google's Gmail, create an exclusive club
that both affirms its members and creates a stronger demand.
They create news, create conversations, and create envy on the
part of those who are not so beneficial to be a part of the
first adopters.

Being one of the first to discover something that everyone will
enjoy or find useful, or being one of the first to be invited to
an invitation-only club, is an honor. It strokes our ego, and
if you want to get people interested in you, stroking their ego
is a great start.

Buzz-worthy Sites Promise to Amaze

If you want to create an initial buzz about your website, you
need to get people excited enough to talk about your website.
The only way you can do this is to promise real amazement, real
insight, real controversy, real humor, or any mix of these
attributes. The Xbox 360 was touted to be the first in the line
of several releases of the next generation of game boxes. Gmail
was promised to be an email system like none we had ever seen
(and with more space than ever offered). Viral videos promise
to show you something that you have never seen before, and that
will either make you laugh, cringe, or shake your head in
amazement.

Buzz worthy sites need to stand out from the crowd of competing
sites. There are millions of websites all asking for our
attention, but those that get the attention are able to create
a message that is unique, useful, appealing, and attractive.

Buzz-worthy Sites are Original

In order to be buzz-worthy, you must first create something that
people are going to feel as if they 'discovered'. No one is
going to talk about something which has already been discovered
or which everyone knows about. People talk about things which
they have never seen before, things which are particularly
useful, particularly funny, or particularly insightful.

The Xbox 360 is the first of the new gaming consoles. Gmail
was the first to offer a full gigabyte of disk space.

Buzz requires that people see something for the first time, are
promised amazement, are amazed, and get the ego-stroking feeling
that they have just discovered something great.

Considering Buzz for Your Business

Practically applying buzz to your website is not easy. Although
viral marketing is by far the most powerful form of marketing
available to website owners, it is not an easy thing to create.
Even if you devise the most buzz-worthy creation, you may find
that in practice it just does not seem to resonate with the
general public.

You may also decide that viral marketing is not the best thing
for your business. Viral marketing, unlike other marketing
which is fairly easy to control, can quickly grow out of
control. If you happen to be successful with viral marketing,
you may find that you are not able to meet the new demand that
you see for your products or services. Viral marketing, once
released, becomes its own beast outside of your control.

Those concerns aside, most businesses would love to have a viral
aspect to their website. Consider today what you could create
that would create a buzz in your industry. Is there a tool that
you could offer for free that no one else is offering? Is there
an opinion that you have that is original and insightful? Is
there a free service that you are willing to offer?

Viral marketing is, ultimately, the greatest form of marketing.
Not only does it produce incredible results, it is also an
affirmation that what you are doing is worthy of praise – enough
praise that people are willing to talk about you to others.
================================================================
Mark Daoust is the former owner of Site-Reference.com
http://www.site-reference.com). This article was originally
published at http://www.site-reference.com/articles/
Internet-Marketing/Marketing-More-Powerful-Than-SEO.html
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