1. Becomes popular seemingly overnight (o views to 2 million in a week)

2. Creates a culture or “meme” around the content. Covers for songs, spoofs etc

Interestingly enough I came across a piece of content that fulfills both of the above “viral” components; but I think it would be even more interesting to break down the why for this particular piece of content. WARNING: Profuse cursing

Viral Breakdown

So let’s dig into 5 main reasons this video was able to collect several million views within only 4 days (nearly 1.5 million for this exact video at the time of writing, but several duplicates are cropping up on YouTube), why people started to do covers for this video and the heck do people even care about it in general?

1. Shock value

One of the first things you will notice about this video is how “in your face” it feels. It doesn’t ease into its purpose so much as it jumps in head first, making a big splash and getting every ones attention. From the color scheme, the washed video effect to the giant red “FUCK YOU” that shows up a few seconds in; this video smacks you over the head in a way that most videos fail to capture (for better or for worse).

2. Polarization

The other thing about this video is that it will completely polarize the people who watch it. You either love this video because you think it is absolutely hilarious, or you hate it because it is.. well vulgar, demeaning and gives a “we don’t care about ANYONE” kind of attitude. There isn’t a lot of in-between, and polarization drives discussion, pageviews and awareness.

3. Taboo

We aren’t supposed to like things such as this video, and for that reason many of us do. Like it or not, there is still a lot of money in the adult entertainment industry with part of the allure for many shoppers being the very fact that they aren’t supposed to have/like/watch/participate in whatever the content etc is. Again, this type of behavior just drives more traffic and therefore more awareness.

4. Emotion

This is one of the intangibles for marketers to calculate, which basically is my way of saying I am guessing; but it is not a far stretch to think that a certain percentage of people watching and sharing this video have some kind of emotional motivation to do so because they feel an emotional connection to the story. Did the event portrayed in the story happen to you? You might be tempted to shoot it in an e-mail to your ex. What about one of your friends? You may want to share it on their Facebook wall to make them feel a little more satisfied with the less than stellar situation they just went through. Either way, there are plenty of emotionally driven reasons why someone would share this video.. it is just a lot harder to measure.

5. Scarcity

This one is interesting because the video appears to be part of a pre-launch for a very real song and album and was posted by the “artist” themselves. The lack in ability for customers to buy now does kill  the opportunity to buy the song immediately, but what if they just can’t get the song out of their head? What if YouTube might take it down do to the shock value and polarization of its audience? These things force a video to move sideways into new social graphs through duplicate content (reposting of the same video which is common on YouTube), or the fact that it forces people playing it on repeat to have YouTube open which could then expose their friends to the video version of the song which is almost always the “richest” form of online experiences.

Conclusion

Ultimately there have already been covers done for this song by various artist (some actually pretty decent replications) because those artists want to be associated with the meme and cash in on the fringe brand associations. So the question is here, how can you deliver shock, polarization, taboo, emotional and scarcity components to your next promotional push in order to hit mainstream awareness?

Enjoy!

The Good Stuff

What I was amazingly interested in however, was the contrast between the conversions of clicks to leads that stem from a very warm (and large) e-mail distribution list that has a) heard of Shoemoney before and b) has been communicated to by the list owner. Luckily enough, non other than Mr. Jonathan Volk of JonathanVolk.com decided to openly use a Bit.ly link with his e-mail push which meant we were able to peak into the results.

Bit.ly is a great way (mostly because of accessibility and free cost structure) to track the number of times your link is clicked, when that is, where its from (application) and what country. However, when doing a very public e-mail push, you are going to get called out on it from time to time.

Quick Background

So first things first, how did Jonathan Volk build up this e-mail list.. and how big exactly is that list? Jonathan Volk, Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker, Frank Kern, Andy Jenkins and a laundry list of others all operate in the affiliate marketing space to a certain degree. Because of that, they have a large audience that overlaps with each other and at the very least has a very similar set of actual needs. When Jonathan Volk wrote an eBook about effectively advertising with Facebook and other affiliate marketing promotional methods, he was able to leverage his existing relationship with people such as John Chow, Shoemoney to pump his eBook to a ready, willing and eager audience while providing value in exchange for a nifty e-mail address.

Jonathan decided to chime in on my Twitter conversation with John Chow to make sure it was stated that he pulled off this e-mail list for JUST the cost of 3 iPads as Chow has stated…

But there were certainly more promotional methods than just this for Volk, but tapping into lists such as Shoemoney, Kern, Chow and Jenkins was a good way to capture the low hanging fruit. I know for a fact that he also used some Sponsored Tweets to promote his book to the affiliate marketing space. (side note: I plan on covering Sponsored Tweets pretty in-depth very soon).

The 150x ROI

The rule of thumb in the list building business is that a targeted e-mail list provides about $10 of profit per year for each subscriber depending on how effectively they are marketed to. So to figure out the total value return of this list for Volk, lets do some simple math that rounds up on the cost of promotion and down on the number of subscribers.

Subscriber Value: $10

Subscribers: 10,000

Average Subscriber Validity: 3 years

Lifetime Value of Subscriber: $300,000

Cost of acquisition: (3 ipads at $500 ea. ) = $1,500 + (sponsored tweets0 = ~$500 : $2,000

With these quick and dirty numbers, Volk can expect to get up to a 150x return on his $2,000. Not a bad return at all if I may say so myself!! So what about this particular launch that we have click and conversion numbers from?

Warm & Communicative vs. Cold & Direct

Volks list produced 1,629 clicks over a roughly 1 week period and two mailings out of list that is known to be at least 10k.

Click through ratio? (clicks/emails) = 16.29% or lower for an “active” list

Number of leads generated? 824.

Conversion Ratio? (leads/clicks) = 50.58% HOLY SHIT THIS IS GOOD

Cost per conversion (cost per lead/conversions) = $2.43 per lead, but has a much longer lifetime value

What were my results with my leads generated through advertisements?

I generated 588 clicks over roughly the same period of time as Volk, relying primarily on SponsoredTweets for Traffic with a total cost of $25.86

Click through ratio? This is hard to tell because I just used Bit.ly and we don’t know view/click data

Number of leads generated? 23

Conversion Ratio? (leads/clicks) = 3.9% MASSIVE DIFFERENCE

Cost per conversion (cost per lead/conversions) = $1.12

Summary

What is amazing about the difference in lists compared advertising for lead generation is the conversion of leads into your relevant product, service or affiliate offer. If you have a list that you have build of good will with in the community you are going to see a MASSIVELY better response rate from your audience and a much larger return.

In regards to me having a much lower cost per conversion for this particular push, it is important to note that while Volks cost if confined to this case study alone would be more than double what I paid, he will have the opportunity to repeatedly market to this audience for a return that is many, many times larger than what I may generate through this study.

Building a List

How can you build a list and start cashing in the huge return that people like Volk are reaping the benefits of? Here is a check list of things to remember when pursuing this opportunity.

1. You absolutely MUST provide value to your market (doesn’t matter if it is Dog tricks or Car Cleaning) in exchange for their opt-in e-mail.

2. You need to establish connections with as many people related to your targeted industry as possible. This is going to give you a much wider audience and essentially allow you to cherry pick the most active and highest paying users from your competitors list for years of marketing success.

3. GET YOUR LIST STARTED TODAY. Getting it started as soon as you possibly can allows you to compound your results and start seeing the power of list building, lifetime returns and a “list ATM” that so many affiliate marketers are used to at this stage in the game. If you are looking for a high quality service provider to use, Aweber comes highly recommended and gives you the first 30 days for ONLY ONE DOLLAR.

Click here to get the massive Aweber deal and start building your client base today.

]]> http://thecollegestartup.com/2010/07/24/warm-leads-vs-cold-leads-case-study/feed/ 3 http://thecollegestartup.com/2010/07/06/lebrons-787522-75-brand-in-2-hours/ http://thecollegestartup.com/2010/07/06/lebrons-787522-75-brand-in-2-hours/#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:09:06 +0000 Travis Ketchum http://thecollegestartup.com/?p=441

We all know that the notion of a brand is enticing, and that people are willing to pay more for a Coke simply because it says “Coke” on the side and not just a random house brand. We also know that when Coke brings out a new product, if we liked the original we are much more likely to try the new product.. emotionally we are tempted to dive head first into products, services, locations etc we wouldn’t have otherwise because of how a brand makes us feel.

What does a brand mean when it is a person though? Does a celebrity have brand value that is nearly instantaneous? The answer is HELL YES they do. For an example look at the Twitter account started by LeBron James.. in a short 2 hour period after sending his first tweet that simply announced he was on Twitter.. he has a staggering 127,225 followers (and counting!!). So what is this brand equity worth? Well if you read this article you might believe that each follower is worth $6.19; and that value multiplied by his follower base adds up to nearly $800,000 in only 2 HOURS.

According to Ad Age, each person who ‘Likes’ a Facebook page is worth $3.60/year which is probably pretty fair if you were comparing the cost of traditional media to the reach of social media. If you think that this size of audience simply can’t be worth this much money, keep in mind that Jeremy Schoemaker (@shoemoney) had roughly 90k followers and PROFITED $50k in about 7 months time on Twitter.. the value is real and so are the paychecks.

How are you building your brand and finding your audience? It is likely worth much more than you think right now.

Enjoy!

Komo News Radio 12/2009

Think about the last time you purchased something based on a recommendation. Who suggested that you buy it? Was it a friend, a co-worker, an online persona? How did they solve your problem and what made you respect what they had to say to the point that you actually made your final decisions? These are all things that you probably don’t think about while you are in pursuit of a purchase (or often times, you weren’t actively looking to start with) but ultimately separate you from your dollars in exchange for a product or service.

Before we go any deeper, lets take a look at what the word “arbitrage” means. Arbitrage is simply the difference between two markets, or the under/over valuation that someone has over resources that are currently at a different value somewhere else. The most simplistic form of arbitrage is often found on auction sites like eBay where we see the effects of supply and demand between markets. Remember the red hot items like when the PS3 first came out? It was selling for 2-3x the retail price that customers were paying in stores.

Online Marketing

No one understands the value of arbitrage more than online marketers (such as Jeremy Schoemaker or John Chow), and because of that they were quick to realize the power of building trust with their readers and what financial value that represents. The personality that is involved with marketing products online is really in the business of building relationships with an audience so that you will trust them and act upon their ‘suggestions’ so they then don’t have to take in the advertising costs of reaching you on a transactional basis, or suffer the accompanying dismal conversion rates associated with what I refer to as ‘first encounter’ sales (where the consumer has no awareness of you prior to the landing page).

Your Business

So how does this apply to your startup, or even fortune 500 companies? As you start to understand the value of your relationship with customers and the trust that they subsequently have with your brand; it is only then that you can put a value on what people are willing to pay (and therefore help you profit) simply because they TRUST who you are and what you are doing. You then only need to keep a channel of communication open between you and your customers (typically one way, but listening is a separate but important aspect of success) through e-mail lists, social media and websites. Thankfully technology has opened up all of these avenues to facilitate this relationship.

The Impact

So how is this going to change the landscape of how business is done? It is widely accepted that an online presence is a necessity for any business in operation within the United States today, so how is the process of acquiring users going to change with our new found knowledge? As Gary Vaynerchuk has clearly pointed out, the future will require us to build brands not only around businesses but around ourselves. Society can no longer hide things from each other (at least for very long) so it is very important that we establish ourselves based on tangible qualities that resonate with our audience.

Only after you have developed a relationship centered around trust can you then start to ‘suggest’ relevant products and services to your audience that will expand your verticals while continuing to offer value. This is very do-able for anyone with an online presence, and if you take the approach of building relationships you will see your conversion rates, prosperity and acceptance go through the roof.

How does a company who runs in a highly competitive field continue to acquire users? With the rising cost of Google AdWords for affiliate companies, they are running out of cost effective options to reach new publishers as well as advertisers but still need to get their name out there in order to even maintain their current volume.

So what are some of the options? You can obviously target ‘authority’ publishers within your space which most of the top affiliate networks already do (read: Shoemoney, John Chow) in order to raise brand awareness, even if the CPM rate doesn’t make since from a pure ad performance standpoint, they are able to make it back in the perceived valued of their brand.

So how is Affiliate.com trying to utilize their resources in order to build awareness, backlinks and a little bit of grass roots press? They are sending bloggers a pretty sweet T-Shirt in exchange for a blog entry. Their incentive is not only the shirt, but additionally they are going to award a $1,000 donation to the American Red Cross Haiti relief fund (which fits in nicely with my beliefs that investing in people is simply good business), but they are also offering the winning blogger a $1,000 bounty. So what would I do with this bonus cash if I am to be selected as the winning post? That money will be directly invested into my philanthropic web startup http://www.mybiggive.com.

This tee made for a good party shirt last weekend during some card games, fun socialization and an overall good time. Rocking the King of diamonds may just be my new good luck charm, and I am sure this network won’t complain about me wearing this shirt in a social setting since it has it’s URL plastered across the back

Affiliate.com has made a good move here by offloading the shirts they had originally produced for Affiliate Summit West by getting a little extra press, some back link love in addition to some good will from bloggers and users! So if you are looking for a good group to be working with make sure you check out Affiliate.com as either a publisher or an advertiser.

So you have worked so hard in order to get users to your website, now what? What is it specifically that you want those users to do once they get to your site? Getting users to  operating specific goals is referred to as your “Marketing Funnel” because, much like a regular funnel you have every web page hit at the top, and only a certain percentage of users ultimately end up completing the action(s) you want them to.

An important aspect to remember when deciding how your users will interact with your goal is that each layer, or step that you add for the visitor to do, the greater the probability there is that they will “abandon” your funnel for either more content or worst case scenario even leave your website entirely.

Goals

Before you get rolling, you need to decide what exactly you want your users to be doing on your website. More complex sites can have multiple channels for their users to start down individual funnels, but for this example let’s assume you only have one primary objective to achieve with your users; what is it?

Tracking

Once you have decided what needs to be happening to create value from your users on the site, trace the path that a user would need to take from landing on your home page to completing the intended action. Each click or decision should count as a “checkpoint” for this funnel in order to track where you need to improve the process.

Action

What action is worth value to you as a site owner/operator? If you are an ecommerce site you would be wanting customers to purchase a product. What about content sites? Maybe your funnel includes getting that user to sign up for a newsletter, or other action that makes them more ‘sticky’ to your site to ultimately improve pageview counts, conversions into affiliate programs etc.

One you have nailed down this action, along with critical checkpoints along the way you will be able to start testing conversion rates and generate a value that each customer is worth. Start with trying to improve abandonment rates (i.e. reduce the number of users ditching your funnel at each step). A great tool for this is Google website optimizer, however it does have a bit of a delay on the data that will force you to take a little time in order to make the right decision.

Lead Value vs. Lead Cost

This is one of the last, but probably the most critical portion of your business that you need to understand. How much money is each lead worth to you after they have been pushed through the funnel at your best possible conversion rate? It is actually pretty simple to figure this out by taking the total amount of revenue calculated against your conversion rate.

For example:

If I had a funnel that starts with 100,000 leads that initiate the funnel with a 6% conversion ratio (to funnel completion) and that generates a total profit of $20,000; this would mean that as long as I spend less than 20 cents per lead I should be making money.

Now you may be thinking, “But I can easily just calculate what I am making per lead without knowing the conversion rate, why do I care?”. This is a valid point, but it is key to understand your conversion rate because this will be the most cost effective item to change in order to boost your profitability per lead and be more capable to scale your business. With a 6% conversion rate and $20,000 in profit as stated in the above example this would mean that for each per who converted was worth $3.33 cents in profit. Imagine if you could boost your conversion rate to 12%? Then you would be able to spend 40 cents in order to obtain a lead and still be profitable which puts you above the average costs for highly targeted PPC advertising and thus allows you scale more feasibly.

So now that you know the basics of a funnel, how to optimize them and what numbers should be driving your business building decisions, start figuring out how you can implement these steps as soon as possible so you are more effectively managing your business and producing results.