Marketing Type

A Strategy for Viral Marketing

 Here's a link to a new Marketing Sherpa case study called, "How to Make Your Technology Brand Famous Via Podcasts, Blogs & Games: 12-Month Viral Marketing Plan."

There's no advice to be found here that can't be found elsewhere. But while the article offers no surprises, it does reiterate something that I find myself struggling to find (polite) new ways to explain to companies all the time: viral marketing is not something that should be treated as a single-purchase item. For most folks, building buzz for your brand is a long-term proposition. The single requirement is not CA$H so much as it is ENGAGEMENT. Of course engagement requires a lot of time as well as a particular kind of personality. And we all know time is pretty much the same as money, especially for busy entrepreneurs.

Ecommerce for dummies

A new Typepad widget is available from ProStores, one of the companies that allows anyone to set up a web site to sell stuff. A number of other companies offer a similar value proposition, among them Yahoo!, but this is interesting for several reasons.

• ProStores is owned by eBay, a company that owes its success to having enabled individuals and small businesses to sell things. This could be seen as an evolutionary step beyond that--and the model that could actually replace eBay to some extent.
• At the 'Advanced' level ($74.95 a month) ProStores enables you to sell subscriptions and digital things as well as physical things.
• They are offering a Typepad widget, which will easily enable bloggers to sell things at a step above the current CafePress standard.
• Also interesting is the fact that this can be seen as an attempt (Google-style) to disrupt one of the many thriving businesses that have grown up around eBay: ProStores offers distribution  management services similar to ChannelAdvisor, a successful company here in RTP.