Understand and Engage
Posted On: 2011-04-11
Many years ago there was a competition being run by over here where I live. I can't remember any of the details about the competition but I have never forgotten the slogan they used to get people to participate.
'You've got to be in it to win it' was what they kept telling people and even though that was used for a competition years ago it still has a lot of meaning for us today. It may also be a lesson that Larry Page from Google needs to learn too.
Over at Google they know that they suck at social ... oh sure they've tried to get on the social bandwagon several times now but it seems that everything they try to make it big in social just ends up sucking down a heap of money for no obvious result.
But ow that Larry is in charge he wants to change all that and he's using a carrot and stick approach on all of Google's employees. The only problem is that I don't think Larry quite understands the world of social. As one commentator asked on Twitter yesterday ... where's Larry's Facebook and Twitter pages?
Yep you've got to be in it to win it ... you've got to be part of it if you want to have any hope of understanding it and making your mark in it and that applies to adult marketing too.
While some people seem to be able to wing it with whatever they choose to promote here in adult the fact is that you're going to have a much better chance of making money from what you promote if it's something that turns you on or that you're involved in.
If you can't put yourself inside the head of the person who is surfing your free sites or galleries and know what motivates him to want to see more of a particular niche then the chances are that all you will do is entertain rather than make a sale.
So what turns you on? What are the particular features of the niches that get you hot and horny? If they turn you on then those same things are going to turn others on too so identify them ... focus on them ... concentrate on them in your marketing and you could make some serious money.
On the other hand if you go on trying to market in a niche you don't understand you could have just as much success as Larry has had to date ... about none when it comes to social.
It's a shame
Sometimes I think that it's a shame that our industry seems to have locked itself into just one form of marketing. We're forever thinking in terms of free sites, galleries, AVS sites and tubes and most of us just don't look beyond that very limited way of selling our product.
We think in terms of traffic ... of getting them in and then getting them off to our sponsors. We don't think so much about engagement because we want to get people out of our sites and over to our sponsors' sites just as quick as we can because we want to make money but we don't want to waste resources.
When we do think about engagement it's usually short-term engagement ... get them interested as fast as we can and then get rid of them.
That type of marketing is what is drummed into us right from the moment we come into the industry and it's probably a good start for a beginner. But is it such an effective way of marketing if we've been around for a while? Could there be a better way of engaging people and selling them on our products?
I don't know for sure and I'm probably just thinking aloud here but what if there was a better way of marketing our product?
Recently here in Australia a car maker produced a mini-site for a new model that was about to be launched. It was quite different to anything any local car maker had tried before. It was an interactive site that let people design their own exterior by choosing colors and adding decorations and after a couple of months some of the stats for the site were amazing.
The average length of time a visitor spent on the site was 45 minutes. Yep, we'd be horrified if someone spent 45 minutes on any of our marketing sites wouldn't we?
But stop and think for a moment about what was happening with this new vehicle's mini-site. All the time a visitor to the site was so engaged that they didn't want to leave they were also seeing marketing for the new vehicle. Of course there were banners and there were other marketing tools being used as well.
Those marketing tools obviously didn't interfere with a visitor's engagement but the combination of marketing tools and the interactive elements that engaged the visitors did their job very well.
Sales for that particular vehicle have been extremely good ... so good in fact that the car maker is going to use a similar approach when they release their next vehicle.
Now what if a marketing approach like that would work for the adult products that you're selling?