Modern Insider – Online Marketing Blog

Driving to the gym yesterday morning I passed Macys as I always do but there was a line outside. While I’m not one for crazy morning sales and certainly don’t have a Macys card that I’m waiting to use I have to admit, seeing the line made me mighty curious what was happening and I almost had to stop and check it out. Of course Macy’s isn’t the first place to use a line – nightclubs and restaurants do a great job of having people line up for what is really an empty venue, all to drive interest. Lines attract attention, attention means people coming over which creates an even bigger line and so begins a great and very false sense of importance. But online you can’t show people how many customers are lined up at a product so creating a line takes a little initiative… a little social media. Here’s how to do it.

Driving to the gym yesterday morning I passed Macys as I always do but there was a line outside. While I’m not one for crazy morning sales and certainly don’t have a Macys card that I’m waiting to use I have to admit, seeing the line made me mighty curious what was happening and I almost had to stop and check it out. Of course Macy’s isn’t the first place to use a line – nightclubs and restaurants do a great job of having people line up for what is really an empty venue, all to drive interest. Lines attract attention, attention means people coming over which creates an even bigger line and so begins a great and very false sense of importance. But online you can’t show people how many customers are lined up at a product so creating a line takes a little initiative… a little social media. Here’s how to do it.

1 – Get people talking on Facebook, blogs & forums.

While there may be no way to line people up on your site literally you can sure get them talking like there’s a line and social media is how. Whether it’s discussing on your own forums, comments to your blog, blogging about your product or using a third party social network to talk about you, talk is hype, hype drives interest and forms attention.

Getting people talking isn’t a simple task but it can be accomplished with 3 key ingredients. A topic, a place and a reason.

Your topic should be obvious – a new product, a celebrity endorsement, a remarkable campaign, a volunteer event, a great sale, anything major and new that your customers are hyped up about.

The place you’d like them talking isn’t generally your site although that’s nice; it’s the rest of the web where they can build the most attention. If you do have a strong community already on your site or a good blog following them using your own site makes more sense, just remember… you want them to share what they talk about which means easy tie ins to other sites as well.

The reason is your catalyst. Sure your sale is good for a customer returning but why would they post about it on facebook? Well if they get a discount or their network gets a discount for using a certain link that’s a good reason. If your new product is just available to the “in” crowd that’s a good reason. If the new celeb. launch has exclusive content or the charity event is just starting that’s all good reasons.

On every network there are the regular, fairly passive users who come to the site, read a bit, and take an action or two and then there’s the super users who do it all. Taking advantage of super users to help seed things is also a great way to build more talk and because super users are authentic members of a community they aren’t seen as plant. You’ll have to identify these users, get them hyped up (sharing information is good, demos are great, free samples are awesome) and they’ll start spreading the word.

Using your own networks can also help get the conversation going or getting hype. Last week I caught a tweet from Zappos CEO about a special insider’s deal for Twitter members. I jumped to sign up and so did many others in my network who traded a few messages about it. Not a ton of talk but using the existing network got the message out… it bred attention.

2 – Build an invite only line.

It takes a very strong brand with a lot of customers and a lot of interest to pull this one off but the results can be phenomenal. Here’s what you do… weeks before launching an anticipated product start teasing it out either with limited information or a full profile. Invite people to register to be able to purchase it with the pretense that inventory is limited (if it’s not limited then tease early purchasing rather than purchasing in general).

As you get closer to launch run some campaigns on and off site further teasing the launch to build up suspense and start emailing your new lead list reminding them of the product and launch. When it comes to your prelaunch or launch date and that blast goes out you’ll have a set of customers looking to buy, ready for the hype and if you really have enough pull you may find that you get a nice bump in that social media talk driving people back – people who get stuck waiting to buy the now sold out or not yet available product themselves. It creates a nice cycle where you can force hype around something and some brands with good demand like Nike have been able to drive huge interest through promotional teaser launches like this.

3 – Add reviews. Count reviews. 

Reviews are great for conveying information about your products that your copy doesn’t tell, great for showing how strong they are and great for showing how good your customer service is too in the event of an issue. But customer reviews also serve another often overlooked feature – they drive product by product interest. When you look at a product be it a shoe or a hotel seeing that 5 people have reviewed it just isn’t as interesting as the place with 5,000 reviews… Anything with that much feedback must be an interesting option worthy of a second look.

So rather than just showing stars all over your site make your reviews meaningful and consider showing the number of reviews that went into them as well. This helps show the popularity of particular products as well as qualifying reviews – a product with 5 reviews is clearly going to have a different weight than one with 5,000.

If you can’t add the number of reviews to your browsing pages put them on the product page; it’s not as useful to the customer but at least they’ll still know if they click in.

4- Show popular picks with numbers.

While not the most traditional idea there’s a lot to be said for product popularity. Right now many sites list their search or category results by popularity and that’s good but you can go a step further and really show customer preference with a graphic.

Add a small metric (think either an odometer style dial or a red/yellow/green bar chart) and give the visitor an immediate sense of how many people are picking each product. This can help them narrow down the popular option and make a choice. Having products with clear interest also shows the visitor that people are buying from you and that this is a spot with hot stuff.

5 – PR = attention.

This isn’t strictly web but it can definitely become a web play if used right. What amazes me most about PR is how few companies take proper advantage of it for their web business. Sure there are releases about product launches but that’s not enough to be really interesting or capture any major media ttention. What you want to do is get the word out to the media about something of value, something news worthy that drives back to your site. The new product that changes the world, the new product that saves the customer money, the new product that they just have to have

Last night I saw a TV news segment about websites that help people save money on their cellphone bill. 3 sites were mentioned, one was interviewed – you can bet how that story got started (the interviewed site pushed and got them to pick it up).

For your website business using PR means getting people to talk but like every campaign you want to try and time things right. Whether you’re on a TV show getting interviewed, have a product placement, or are just mentioned through a contact you’ve networked into endorsing you, you have to be ready to strike. Get your homepage popping with some video, set things up to capture leads, funnel people right into that key product category or the specific sku.

What you don’t want to do is get people buzzing and drop them off at your same old homepage which has no relation to what they just saw. Get them focused and let them talk about it. In an ideal world a campaign landing page with a place to comment on the media (i.e. tell us what you thought of the ABC news segment), a link to the service or product and a way to get more info or buy is ideal. Feature it on the homepage and you’re set.

The same idea applies to big video or online conversation – you get the buzz going elsewhere and when people land at the site you’re ready for them, ready to direct their attention, get them talking even more and take them down the sales or lead funnel.