Western Union made the concept of the telegram widespread in the US. It was the first communications empire. Lets compare that to Instgram rise to fame.
Western Union current valuation = $11bn =======> time taken = 100 year (give or take)
Instagram curent valuation = $1bn ============> time taken = 2 years
If Instagram was to follow Western Union trajectory it would be worth $50 bn in 100 years.
A nice simple way to validate your product…may be, may be not. If your “friends” or happy early adopters do rant & rave about your product that should set you up nicely but i’ve had successful products that didn’t follow this pattern – phil
This, in two words, is the secret of the new marketing.
Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need you/listen to you…
Those ten people need what you have to sell, or want it. And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they’ll each find you ten more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Repeat.
If they don’t love it, you need a new product. Start over.
Your idea spreads. Your business grows. Not as fast as you want, but faster than you could ever imagine.
This approach changes the posture and timing of everything you do.
So, I’m starting a new business and I’m wondering where to begin marketing my products. I’m looking no further than where I live.
My home town is Atlanta, GA and it has a metro population of 5.3 million people (2010 US Census). Putting this is context that is larger than 126 other countries in the world. Here’s some of the countries that we’re larger than (by population):
(Here’s the complete list if you’re interested)
Why is this relevant? What does it mean? Well, if you consider that Croatia (population 4.3m) came 3rd position in the 1998 World Cup (soccer); Atlanta should therefore be able to field a team and come pretty close to winning the largest sporting event on the planet.
Maybe, not, but here’s my point.
I was trying to explain to a co-worker the other day that we can validate our new product (FlashIssue) by looking no further than our own door step.
If Atlanta existed on it’s own, as an island, we have enough people to sell to right here in front of us. Go talk to them first.
If we cant sell our product to an entire “nation” of 5.3 million people then may be we dont have a product to sell at all.
So, if you live in a larger City than Atlanta things get better and better:
And viewing it in terms of soccer. NYC, LA and Chicago should be beating the following countries at soccer:
If you dont live in one of these large metro US cities, then find someone who does and have them market your product.
If you find someone to work for you in New York and they just sell for you there and nowhere else, then you you’re tapping a market equivalent to 183 countries (that’s 76% of all countries on our planet). That’s a big enough market for you.
Late night talk show host Conan O’Brien called out the Chinese online talk show Da Peng for ripping off his opening show sequence, plagerizing his opening graphics and using his branding.The next night the Da Peng show opened with a slide and what Conan calls “The saddest thing I’ve ever seen.” And Da Peng also issued an apology that ended with a “sorry” dance.
Content curation is a sure fire way to add compelling stories to your blog. One problem that can arise though, is how do you avoid cluttering your home page with lots of articles you want on your blog site but not necessarily at front stage. For example, you may not want a curated story competing with the blog posts you write yourself.
What i tend to do is send most of my curated articles to the background using a wordpress plug-in WP Hide Post.
Here’s an example of how i put together a series of curated articles on guerrilla marketing. Only one of the posts actually appears on my home page; I tagged the others with a common tag (How-To-Market-Like-A-Guerilla) and then point people to the tag summary page so they can view all of the articles as a list - http://philhill.net/tag/How-To-Market-Like-A-Guerilla.
Here’s how the plug-in works – I grabbed this from the wordpress website:
This plugin excels in giving you full control over the visibility of your a post. By default, any post you add to your WordPress blog will become the topmost post, and will show up immediately on the front page in the first position, and similarly in category/tag/archive pages. Sometimes, you want to create a “low-profile” addition to your blog that doesn’t belong on the front page, or maybe you don’t want it to show up anywhere else in your blog except when you explicitly link to it. This plugin allows you to create such “hidden gems”.
In particular, this plugin allows you to control the visibility of a post in various different views:
The posts will disappear from the places you choose them to disappear. Everywhere else they will show up as regular posts. In particular, permalinks of the posts still work, and if you generate a sitemap, with something like the Google XML Sitemaps the post will be there as well. This means that the content of your post will be indexed and searchable by search engines.
For a WordPress page, this plugin also allows you to control the visibility with two options:
This means, technically, whenever pages are listed somewhere using the get_pages filter, this plugin will kick in and either filter it out or not according to the options you choose. The same rules apply regarding permalinks and sitemaps as they do for regular posts.
“WP Hide Post” plugin is a great tool in your arsenal for SEO optimization. It allows you to add plenty of content to your blog, without forcing you to change the nature and presentation of your front page, for example. You can now create content that you otherwise would be reluctant to add to your blog because it would show immediately on the front page, or somewhere else where it would not belong. It’s a must-have feature of WordPress.
Please enjoy this plugin freely, comment and rate it profusely, and send me feedback and any ideas for new features.
Download the free plugin from here.
You dont have to have big brand budgets to use guerrilla marketing effectively. In fact, it’s a an exceptionally low cost way to get your message and brand out there. This post is part of a series about Guerilla marketing i put together called “How To Market Like A Guerilla” (read here) – Phil Hill
You have probably heard Guerrilla Marketing as there are dozens of books published, but you may not be exactly sure what it is and how it can benefit you. Here are 7 defining characteristics of Guerrilla Marketing:
1. Guerrilla Marketers Invest Time, Energy, Imagination, and Knowledge Instead of Just Money
Superior marketing provides all companies with their greatest leverage, or control, and should be viewed as an investment. Unlike traditional marketers, guerrillas invest more time, energy, imagination and knowledge – or information – than money. This is probably the single most important guerrilla marketing principle of them all. Additionally, they don’t waste their precious time making penny-wise and pound-foolish purchases or throwing good money after bad.
For example, guerrillas are keenly aware that poorly designed and written marketing materials are recipes for disaster, so they hire graphic designers and copywriters – even if it means they have to barter, lease, or pare down their wish list. Conversely, guerrillas are also open to investing in new skills so they can do for themselves, instead of hiring others, which is much easier today than it’s ever been due to affordable software and Internet technology. In the end, guerrillas believe in their hearts that money is not the key to joy or achievement but they sure enjoy the beautiful gold and silver keys you can buy with it.
Read the next 6 ways to guerrilla market below…
via 7 Low-Cost Guerrilla Marketing Principles You Should Know.
Knowing how to guerrilla market well is a big plus because when done poorly it can majorly backfire
This post is part of a series about Guerilla marketing i put together called “How To Market Like A Guerilla” (read here) – Phil Hill
#1 October 2003: Smirnoff
Smirnoff – the Vodka producer – used steam jets and stencils to decorate a busy underpass in Leeds without prior permission form the Government. Stylish slogans and catchphrases were added to the underpass in attempt to promote Smirnoff Ice (alco-pop) to the young public.
However, the Government were soon on the case, branding Smirnoff’s guerrilla campaign as “vandalism” and have slapped a cleaning fine on the company which is expected to cost several thousand pounds.
Smirnoff apologised for their failure to ask for permission and have accepted to clean the underpass once their campaign has finished.
Our Assessment: It is always important to get prior permission from the Government if you are to perform such a task. However, Smirnoff have been lucky to negotiate leaving the “art work” until their campaign has finished accepting to pick up the cleaning bill at the end.
The success will depend on the sales it has made in relation to their cleaning bill. However, I’m sure that being in a busy underpass in a large city will certainly have tipped the balance in their favor.
Read the next 3 examples below…
via 4 Bad Examples of Guerilla Marketing – Creative Guerrilla Marketing | Creative Guerrilla Marketing.
For all intent purposes “National Cleavage Day” may just be a marketing stunt by UK lingerie retailer Ann Summers but it plays well to a social media driven audience. It also highlights the power of guerrilla marketing which can be done cheaply and with high impact if implemented well.
This post is part of a series about Guerilla marketing i put together called “How To Market Like A Guerilla” (read here) – Phil Hill
What do you get when you combine a faux-holiday with women nearly naked in the streets?You get a group of women strutting around London and making a scene, all in the name of National Cleavage Day — oh, and also getting people to go to Ann Summers.Whats National Cleavage Day? It depends who you ask. The Sun describes it as a holiday to “celebrate womens independence and power in their careers and relationships.”
via National Cleavage Day 2012: Women Strip In London NSFW VIDEO.
This post is part of a series about Guerilla marketing i put together called “How To Market Like A Guerilla” (read here) – Phil Hill
Guerrilla marketing has become all the rage these days but it is nothing new – it is simply a twist on delivering a message, communicating a concept and selling something in a way that engages an audience. The best part about good guerrilla advertisements and clever guerrilla marketing campaigns is that people know that there is a commercial interest but still approve of the installation or innovation – even despite its corporate nature.
This post is part of a series about Guerilla marketing i put together called “How To Market Like A Guerilla” (read here) – Phil Hill
Ad-agencies are finding it more and more difficult today to get through to the average consumer, and marketing saturation only grows with every year. It’s for that reason that guerrilla ad-campaigns are becoming so prevalent in the industry. Here we take a look at some of the recent, most effective and ingeniously simple guerrilla marketing found since our 8-part series last year.
via 12 Extremely Effective Guerrilla Marketing Stunts | WebUrbanist.
