Tag Archives: viral marketing

There is a simple way to sum up all the trends around social media, viral marketing, mobile apps and other developments in marketing — we are shifting from a world in which attention is bought to one in which attention must be earned.

I recall attending an AOL conference back in the day when AOL was bigger than the Web. One panelist whose name sadly escapes me, shared some amazingly prescient wisdom over a technical discussion of how to deal with the limits of dial-up internet access. He said “I think our biggest bandwidth problem is going to be people’s attention span.” That sums up the marketer’s challenge better than anything else I can think of.

The number one question all marketers should ask themselves before launching any program is “why would this be of interest to anyone in my target?” Interest can take many forms, so not everything has to work in the same way.  A great Superbowl ad and a great customer service experience can both engage people. Our basic human motivations provide multiple ways to attract our attention. Here are five broad categories that we look at to help design marketing programs that earn interest:

• Passion – We all have passions that bring pleasure to our lives. It may be for fashion, the Green Bay Packers,  or Broadway musicals. Whether carnal or intellectual, we seek out avenues that allow us to feed and  indulge our passions.
• Curiosity – We are naturally attracted to mysteries and riddles. There are few things in this world more seductive than an unopened package. Once something piques our curiosity, it’s like an itch we have to scratch.
• Entertainment – As YouTube empirically proves every day, we seem to have a bottomless desire to be entertained. Whether it’s through humor, drama or pure spectacle, there are few better ways to endear yourself to someone than to entertain them.
• Interaction – It is deep within our species to want to connect with others of our kind. Shared experiences give us more satisfaction than solitary endeavors. Bars and online forums both owe their existence to our inherent desire to interact with others.
• Utility – We all feel like our lives should be easier. So we embrace tools that fulfill the promise of saving time, money, or effort. 

Successful marketers are those who can earn the interest of their target. Marketing plans sometimes still refer to “paid media” (advertising) and “earned media” (PR). It’s all earned media now.