Importantly – and unlike a disease – a company is capable of actively pushing information and reasons to take up your product towards customers, and it will do this through a carefully thought out marketing campaign involving Awareness, Alliances, Adoption, and the support of long-term retention of the product among users. Think of it like a “disease v host reaction”. If you are feeling really mean today, then traditional marketing is your “toxin payload” though which you reduce your hosts ability to defend against you.
There are always some immediate improvements to the marketing campaign which can be made. Quick stabs of that toxin to get some new wins. A quick tabular check list of the positive and active steps that traditional marketing can take are given here:
| Channel | Volume | Cost/user | Time to implement | Mktg Effort | Production Effort |
| Viral / Referral | depends on CTA; size of accessible social networks / # users | low/zero | Low for FB social networks;
med/hi for normal sites |
low | low/med |
| depends on CTA, size of your house lists, email signups | low/med | Low | low/med | low/med
(med = create templates) |
|
| Blogs / Bloggers | Depends on # blogs in your segment, competitive scenario | low/med | Low (if just you blogging);
med (if you’re setting up big CMS / evangelizing to other bloggers) |
low/med | low/zero
(med = CMS, prof design) |
| SEO | depends on your keywords | Low/zero | Medium
(depends on your search geeks) |
low/zero | med/hi |
| SEM | depends on your keywords | Depends | Low/med
(depends on your marketing) |
Low/med | low/med
(landing pages = med) |
| Contest | small unless big prize $
(don’t, keep it under $5K) |
low/med | low/med
(depends on contest, site, campaign) |
Med | low/zero
(med = prof site) |
| Widget | Depends on CTA; size of accessible sites, level of adoption + bloggers | low/med | Low/med | med | med/hi (depends on complexity) |
| domains | depends on keywords, domain costs | depends | low | low | Low (redirects/co-brand?) |
| PR | depends on your business & audience & news | Med/hi | medium (develop story, build contacts) | med | low/zero |
| Biz Dev / Partner | depends on partner, size of customer base, conversion | med-high | med/hi (capture metrics, generate reports) | Med/hi | med/hi
(reports, co-branding) |
| Affiliate / Lead Gen | depends on economics | Med/hi | med/hi (need to build affiliate program, capture metrics, generated reports) | med/hi | med/hi (depends on rqd tracking & reporting) |
| Direct / radio | depends on geography | Med/hi | medium | Med/hi | low/zero |
| Telemktg | depends on target demographics | med-high | med-high | High | low/zero if no system;
Med/hi if integrated SFA |
| TV | Potentially large (if you spend) | High | Med-high | High | Med/hi (TV production assets needed) |
As we have said all models are wrong, but some are useful. By using the bioogical models above we can rapidly prioritise features and functions of your product and the associated websites and services so that we can maximise the initial rate of uptake and adoption of your product amongst target users whilst also maximising the long-term rate of increase of your products use.
So, time for a think through the whole model and see where it takes us with some real examples of products out there that appear to be using biological models.
davidjwbailey dot com 