Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Since there a no doubt many other B2B manufacturing directories, why would your directory be better/different than all the others? What is truly remarkable about it? How can the directory change people lives? How can it make them tremendously more efficient, save lots of money, and have confidence in working with those listed? To go viral, it has to be either amazing or outlandish. Since B2B people aren't looking for outlandish, that leaves amazing as your goal.

I live in these directories. Personally, I prefer written and bound.

Hoovers.com drives me crazy.
Businessweek.com is too slow.

1) Don't put too much on the home page
2) Avoid ads (like the books do)
3) People FIRST. I'm seldom looking for an address or financials
4) Updated since.....this helps a ton


Michael

Dear Adam,

I'm not sure viral status in marketing is anything you create by mixing this element with that element: as far as I'm aware, there's no magic formula.

In the world of biology, viruses succeed because they mutate. According to those nice people at Wikipedia: a virus is a small infectious agent that can only replicate inside the cells of another organism.

In marketing, a viral campaign(the infectious agent) is an idea
or a message that is somehow worthy of enough note that it is deemed of enough significance to be passed on because its host tells someone else "You've got to see this!".

This means your site has to have enough social presence to be worthy of passing on to other people via viral channels, which in marketing are the outlets of social media.

This means your message has to be odd enough or unusual enough to cause it to create ripples that spread out into people's spheres of awareness and then out into those people's spheres of influence.

Viral ideas only catch on if two qualities are present: first, the message in question must NOT look like an ad of any kind. Second, the message in and of itself must be deemed of being of enough by its sender to be worth passing on to its recipient and this feeling must be powerful enough to then impact the recipient in the same way so that he or she then passes it on to more recipients.

Here, we're talking about huge degrees of social significance, of the message being passed on to similarly minded people as the people sending the message out into the world, so the message must be worthy of successive social interest and comment.

Viral campaigns stop or fizzle out when the interest level declines enough due to other, more relevant or more newly significant messages coming into the line of view and comment.

So, your viral idea must be socially relevant enough and intrinsically significant enough to gain attention. Only then will it take on the "life of its own" format so prevalent of the world of viral marketing.

Your idea must also have a life cycle and social credibility outside your normal sphere of influence or effect, and it must be culturally anchored to something other than your direct service or product range so that it becomes relevant enough to be remarked on as being worth people's while in viewing and in passing on.

What becomes viral? Think of Susan Boyle's audition on Britian's Got Talent, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY or of Gary Brolsma (www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmtzQCSh6xk the YouTube "Numa, Numa" guy https://www.newnuma.com/) and you'll get the idea of what "infection" in viral marketing can truly mean.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

I agree with all of the above comments. Viral is the wrong approach for your peoposition.

Viral is just another way of saying 'Word fo Mouth'.

People pass on to each other via email or social netwrok interaction stuff that thye find funny, amazing, outlandish, outrageous etc.

The number 1 watched video in Youtube for 2009 was 'Susan Biyle' the English lady who thrille dthe world and made Simon Cowle look stupid.

BUt what is the relevance to your business? None atall.

People will watch an amazing story but how can you monetise it?

You could display video labelled 'Britney's boobs' and drive plenty of traffic on your site but it has absolutely no relevance or value to your business.

So how do you get some or all of yopur users to build your business through 'WOM'? Word of Mouth.

Your propositionnhas to be so specila, so fascinating, so new and interesting that they simply can't wait to tell their industry colleagues about their amaing new discovery.

Your resource has to be so brilliant, so complete and so much better than any of your competitors that they simply cannot resist sharing it with their friends.

On the other hand, if your service really is fantastic, then I might be inclined to keep it a secret because I don't want my competitors getting the news and having the same competitive advantage.

You need to really understand very well the market sector that you wish to serve. Who would be the typical user of your directory? A facilities manager maybe?

It may be that there is only 'one' 1 person per company that needs access to your service so do the math and figure out exactly how many potential target clients you have in the world region by region.

You will see that your virus has little potential to spread because each user is quarantined :)

Good luck.
Matthew

Hi Adamherson

To go viral you need to be sort of Wikipedia in your area. Jut some up with ideas that will force your target audience to check your website for all answers. Also, I would strongly recommend one word domain name with no dashes. Every dash takes visitors away from you.


Whatever Happens -
Good luck!
Natasha Chernyavskaya
Artographica
Los Angeles, CA