Professor: David Meerman Scott, author of New Rules of Marketing & PR and World Wide Rave
I have to start this off with a rave of my own – David Meerman Scott. Wow! I’m not sure how he’s managed to stay off of my radar this long, but I think he’s going to quickly become one of my favorite resources.
David packed a ton of useful content into this presentation, but if you can only see the slides you’re missing at least half of the story. There’s a reason this guy speaks for a living! This was, by far, my favorite presentation at IMU.
Here are just a few of the lessons I learned:
- Social media is a powerful tool, regardless of the size of your company. Don’t be afraid to make the leap!
Cindy Gordon launched The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Orlando by skipping the traditional marketing channels and instead telling seven top bloggers. Within 24 hours, she estimates that 350,000,000 people had heard of this new attraction.
Dentist Helaine Smith was spending $2000/mo. for traditional yellow pages advertising for her practice. Fed up with doing things the same way, she created an ebook, Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex, launched a blog, and jumped into social media. Two years later, her business has exploded, growing from $150,000/yr. to $1,000,000+/yr.
- Use buyer personas to help you tell your story directly to an interested market. Don’t create content based on your needs or the needs of the nameless, faceless horde. Speak in language that’s meaningful to the persona.
Say you’re an independent business traveller. How would you feel about a hotel that had created content addressing your needs instead of promoting their products (rooms, restaurants, etc.)
Should Disney “create unparalleled entertainment experiences”, or are they in the movie and theme park business? And, all of those happy, multi-cultural office workers in the stock photography on your website – visual gobbledygook. Check out The GobbledyGook Manifesto and The GobbledyGook Grader for more fun with this one.
- Use social media to earn your customer’s attention. On the web, you are what you publish. Interesting, well-designed ebooks provide a welcome alternative to the traditional white papers and can provide far greater returns. For example, say you have 1000 downloads/yr of a white paper and therefore have collected 1000 email addresses (“leads”). Now, what if you’d had 50,000 downloads of an ebook instead (no registration required, but with a secondary offer requiring registration included) and 2% of those users convert? Now you still have 1000 email addresses, but of people who have already spend time with your information.
- Don’t be afraid to lose control. Losing control is required if you want people to share your stuff.
- Stop making excuses. What do you have to lose?
Here’s David’s presentation:
[slideshare id=1592776&doc=viralmarketinggf301-090616132030-phpapp01]
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