Tony Attwood’s Blog

The phrase “viral marketing” - a bit like the phrase “word of mouth” is one of those that is floated around here and there.

The concept that these phrases encapsulate can seem rather like geese and golden eggs - the route to free marketing. But equally they are rather vague.

Unfortunately neither “viral marketing” nor “word of mouth” are ways of advertising for free, but they can be a very powerful approach to marketing which can be very cost effective. Below is a brief outline of the how these approaches can work. As always if you would like to know more, please do get in touch.

These approaches basically relate to having a promotion which customers and potential customers pass on to each other. At its simplest you send out an email, and the person to whom you send it is so impressed that he or she sends it on to others, who send it on to others who….

The variation used by many firms is to put an advert on the internet, and people then tell each other about the site, and so go and look.

Obviously the key here is to have something that people want to look at or see. A very funny You Tube piece can draw in a lot of viewers, not just because they have been told about it by friends or colleagues, but also because others find it through searching for key words on Google.

But most of us don’t have the ability or finance to make a You Tube movie, so we come back to text - and here again it is possible to write pieces that others will refer on. But you do have to get the text right.

Here’s one example. We send out an advert for the Royal Academy to 2068 people, and 422 clicked on the link we gave, which went to their web site.

Now a 20% click through rate is incredibly high - (the average for the sort of list that we were using is about 6.5%) and when we checked what had happed it was clear that many of those clicking through were not the people we had mailed. They had in fact sent the advert on to colleagues.

Articles that appear on blogs and web sites can be forwarded too. The experimental blog set up by Hamilton House two years ago now regularly has its articles cited by other blogs - sometimes with phraseology such as “there’s an excellent piece on this at….” sometimes with phrases such as “this guy might be a bit of a pain when he bangs on and on about finance in football, but he really does know his onions….” Either way the article gets read, and the word gets out. Through our tracking program we pick up about three or four such referrals which give the full web address of the original article, each day.

Another approach is to use other people’s blogs and news services. Here one reads what others are saying (for example where they are discussing a subject close to your product or service) and then one jumps in with one’s own comment, which relates back to your product. Obviously you need to be sophisticated in the way you do this, but as a method of advertising it is ten times more cost effective than Google Ads.

As I mentioned, I am happy to talk about this further - but if you would like to read a bit more background on this final point, there’s an article on http://www.mailing.org.uk/Adwords.html

If you would like to read a sample blog which is not at all about direct marketing or other subjects Hamilton House is associated with, try www.blog.emiratesstadium.info. It is about football, but don’t be put off even if you are not interested in football. Just flip through some of the articles, and note that this gets approaching 200,000 individual readers a month (a figure achieved with an advertising budget of £200). Such success can be found with all sorts of topics.

If you would like to know more please call me on 01536 399 013

Tony Attwood

The Advertising Association (AA) has suggested that more non-broadcast adverts should meet the Advertising Standards Authority requirements.

According to reports “The recommendations, if accepted, will bring companies’ marketing communications on their own websites, and other non-paid for space online, such as brand activity on social networking sites, within scope of the CAP Code.”

All other marketing communications activity in paid-for space online, such as search marketing and display advertising, is already within the ASA’s remit and subject to the CAP Code.

The idea is to bring this into play before the end of the year, and then effectively stop government control of advertising to children by claiming it is all “self-regulated”.
Rae Burdon, chief operating officer at the AA, says: “Contrary to general understanding, much advertising online is already in remit and there’s a very high level of compliance with the existing rules. There are some complex issues in the remaining space which require careful analysis.”

“The industry has delivered to CAP a clear mandate that first and foremost will protect consumers and children, that will also – crucially – protect editorial content, and that will, if accepted, maintain CAP/ASA’s reputation as a world-class operation. The whole industry has pulled together to make this happen. What’s important now is effective implementation and raising consumer and stakeholder awareness.”

Tony Attwood
01536 399 000
Sales@hamilton-house.com

There is a book by Geoffrey Miller Spent: Sex, Evolution and the Secrets of Consumerism. which seems to argue that people in develop an intuitive understanding of behaviour through their experience of selling stuff.

Well I suppose some do - but when they do, they don’t make much of a fist of it, because it is also vital to know about the psychology of perception - at least when sending out emails and direct mail.

People do not read messages as we expect them to - and unless one has mastered the psychology of perception then one can’t expect to get the maximum out of a message. If you don’t know how colour affects the way people see a message then you could be using completely the wrong colours.

The whole theory of the psychology of perception is on www.theory.bz - but there is also a complete index to the leading articles on http://www.theory.bz/factors.html

If there is any issue you would like to talk about from that site, do give me a call
Tony
01536 399 013
Tony@hamilton-house.com

The rapid development of new powers for the Information Commissioner seem to have slipped in under the radar - but they are quite alarming.

There is the ability to a £500,000 fine (from April 6), and the new guidelines of March 2008 new guidelines on data breach handling and disclosure are now in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act.

If you suffer a security breach in your organisation and you are fined anything up to £500,000 you will also get the stigma of failing, which will hardly be good for your business.

If there is any evidence that there were continuing reports of data breaches or failures, and action was not taken then you could be in real trouble.

Call me on 01536 399 000 if you want more information on this, or any aspect of selling via direct mail, email or the internet.

There’s more about Hamilton House on www.hamilton-house.com

Tony Attwood