

Are fans telling friends? If not, improve, don't promote. - sivers
http://sivers.org/purplecow

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swombat
A fair point, although I'd say it's highly dependent on the kind of product
you're building, too, and who your audience is.

For instance, if you're selling enterprise products rather than consumer
products, and you're selling them to a less communicative industry (like the
construction industry, for example), you may find that there's a lot less
"word of mouth" going on, so the fact that it's not just spreading completely
by itself shouldn't necessarily discourage you...

Another point - you might need to reach a critical mass of users in order to
be able to effectively improve the product using A/B testing and other
techniques that rely on larger numbers... if so, it may be worth investing in
marketing the product to build those numbers and then be able to make those
improvements measurable and rapid.

~~~
10ren
It's just that wom is the _best_ marketing. It's free. It's credible. If you
can make it work, do it.

"Crossing the Chasm" claims wom works _better_ in smaller, specialized niche
markets, because everyone in it has similar needs. Though it takes your point
that they do need to actually be talking to each other for wom to work. There
are trade-shows and trade-magazones for every industry you can imagine (not
saying you should necessarily use them, but it indicates communicativeness),
and I believe (without proof) that when people of related industries bump into
each other, they'll talk shop, sharing their news and common concerns. _hey,
what do you think of this new thing? Isn't it terrible what's happening with
that new issue?_

In practice, I've seen wom for my developer software product on mailing lists,
websites and blogs. Someone even targetted it as an AdWords keyword (cool). My
product doesn't target a tightly communicative market - it's not specific to
an industry, but cuts across them; and it's not a whole solution to a problem,
but a tool that's part of a solution. So I think its wom is fairly diluted.
And yet... there is wom.

 _EDIT_ hmmm, perhaps I'm really targeting the "IT" industry (even though its
members work in other industries.) And, I guess, it is by far the most "tech-
enabled". I still like "Crossing the Chasms" idea of crafting your product in
a way that fits in with those shop-talk conversation: the shared concern +cool
solution, in a short, memorable, interesting soundbite (like a joke that goes
viral.)

~~~
swombat
_It's just that wom is the best marketing. It's free. It's credible. If you
can make it work, do it._

No disagreement there. But the article claims that if you _can't_ make it
work, you should go back to the drawing board... I was disagreeing with that.

~~~
10ren
I see now: you're interpreting the article as saying wom is a litmus test of
how good your product is: if wom isn't working, your product is rubbish, and
you're better improve it. You're saying that the ease of wom varies with
industry, so that as a metric, it's not a universal indicator of the quality
of your product. I think you mean "discouraging", in that one thinks one's
product isn't good enough. But maybe you mean "discouraging" in that one
thinks one's marketing isn't working.

I interpret it a strategy: make your product so extraordinary that wom comes
into play. Wom is so great, that it's worth the effort, even in an industry
where wom is harder.

But I see your point: maybe the wom-bar is so high, that you're better off
just marketing in traditional ways. I still think wom is great, and worth
trying for, but I acknowledge it's a tradeoff, not a simple "if no wom, do
nothing but improve your product".

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kragen
So what does that say about people who put a lot of effort into promoting?
Does it mean their customers aren't telling their friends? Are the customers
just not internet users, or is the product bad?

What does that say about companies (newspapers, Google) whose income stream is
from people pouring money into promoting their products? Does it mean they'll
be continually in search of new advertisers as the old ones go broke, unless
they can fool their eyeballs into confusing ads with honest recommendations?

I have been thinking this from a theoretical point of view for years. But it
doesn't seem to be happening. GM is still in business, the New York Times
isn't going anywhere, AdSense payments-per-click aren't dropping, and
Anheuser-Busch still seems to be spending plenty on ads — right?

~~~
brlewis
I think you're absolutely right. This idea sticks like the emperor's new
clothes. Nobody wants to point out it's not true for fear of looking bad.
Because supposedly the people who believe it's true will be producing
exciting, awesome products.

I'm still trying to work out what amount of organic growth one should see
before doing advertising. It certainly isn't every user getting ten other
users.

~~~
kragen
I expressed two contradictory points of view in my comment (or possibly
three). Which one are you agreeing with?

~~~
brlewis
I'm agreeing that it's good to question the central thesis of the article, and
that there's a lot that casts doubt on it.

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DenisM
I think there are two pieces to it - "making things exciting for the user" and
"making it easier to share the excitement". A "tell your friend" link here,
"post to facebook" there - this sort of thing.

~~~
sivers
Really? Do those "click here to share" things make any difference? Has anyone
seen a measurable difference?

~~~
Alex3917
Yes. YouTube only had 150 videos uploaded after their first 1.5 years of
existence. But once they added the click to share buttons and allowed users to
embed their content they went crazy viral.

~~~
smakz
That doesn't really jive with wikipedia's history:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube>

According to wikipedia a few months after they launched they were extremely
popular.

~~~
Alex3917
Then Wikipedia is wrong. There is a video of the founders at Arrington's house
over a year in where they talk about this.

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zouhair
If you have a lot of money just create the need rather than make a better
product, most corporations do that, especially pharmaceutical ones.

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keltecp11
I just told people by up-voting... nuff said.

