When Luc was trying his hand at his first startup, an affiliate office of Ready 2 Play., he and his partners read Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes. They eventually came up with an idea to stack thousands of CD’s on top of each other near the Washington Monument on the National Mall. That never happened, but the book is still worth reading for generating marketing ideas.
The key takeaways are:
Marketing is not buzzmarketing. In a traditional marketing paradigm, marketing is about news releases and getting blogs to write about the latest achievement of your company. That’s bland, and consumers are great at filtering the noise. The goal of buzzmarketing is compelling the consumers and the media to have a conversation about your product. Once they have the conversation, then the product sells itself. But buzzmarketing is more than a means to sell your product. It should be an end in itself.
Know the six buttons of buzz. These pressure points for buzz are: the taboo, the unusual, the outrageous, the hilarious, the remarkable, the secrets. If you take these buttons to heart, you should think in these terms to create buzz for your company.
Create a compelling story. If you leverage the six buttons of buzz and create a story, then you’re more likely to grab the media attention that you so desire. Hughes offers his six templates for stories, that the media gravitates to: the David-and-Goliath story, the unusual or outrageous story, the controversy story, the celebrity story, and the “what’s already hot in the media” story.
Like some have already said, the story about two college kids creating a webs site is kinda done and old. We’ve all heard it, and we need something new. You have to work on the story as much as you have to work on your pitch or on our tagline for your site/service/product.
Advertise in an unflitered media stream. You have to take risks, when you’re a young, hungry enterpreneur. Of course, you can start a Google AdWords campaign to spread the word on your product. You can go through print and television advertising, but these are tried and true methods. And, like Hughes drums into your head throughout the book, consumers are great at filtering commercials through those media. Find other avenues to advertise, like renaming a city. Half.com renamed a city in Oregon to increase the buzz around their product, and you can’t pay for that type of publicity.
Keep swingin’. Inevitably, as we plan to stay creative and market in creative ways, we’re bound to fail repeatedly in attempting to generate buzz. That’s unfortunate, but it’s true. The only way to be successful is to keep trying… at developing the right product and creating the right buzz.
