Hey, next success – we made it to the finals of the Gründermarkt at Forum Kiedrich in Wiesbaden! Markus and Daniel went there to present earthfaves in a 5-minute pitch, people loved it. The whole event was great and we made many interesting contacts for the future.
Some days ago we had the great chance to pitch to 20 investors at Rhein-Neckar Technology Ventures, an elevator pitch competition in Mannheim, here you can see some images. Normen and Markus went to pitch. After two hours of talking non-stop, we knew we did a good job as we received the business cards of [...]
Here’s the latest earthfaves report. 
We were selected (among hundreds of applicants from all over Europe) to move on to the finals for Mini SeedCamp, Berlin on June 9th - a really well organized event, I must say. In the morning, the top 20 teams pitched their ideas (5 minute elevator format) - and after hearing all of them, we had a long afternoon of “roundtable” discussions with mentors (including various VCs, successful entrepreneurs, lawyers, etc.) and got some very valuable feedback from them all. The amount of contacts we made at SeedCamp was tremendous - business angels, VCs, experienced business owners - you name it! If you’re an entrepreneur, this is an event you definitely shouldn’t miss. TechCrunch Europe posted an article about all of the teams, and the winners circle. http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/06/09/seedcamp-berlin-so-which-startups-won/
Then on the June 18th, Markus pitched at “Sprungbrett 2009″ (LaunchPad 2009) - a competition for new online innovations for the tourism industry. Again, we were selected into the top 10! Another great experience - even more contacts to experts in the tourism industry - and even more proof that earthfaves is really moving forward!! More about the event here: http://www.tourismuszukunft.de/2009/06/das-sprungbrett-macht-grosse-spruenge/
Barrett went this week to meet and greet at Stanford Universtity. The Entrepreneurship Week has been going on there, and it was a great success for us. We made many good contacts to students, start ups, business angels and VCs.
Emanuel Rosen, one of the world’s renowned experts in word of mouth marketing, spoke about the “Seven Concepts of Word of Mouth Marketing” at Stanford University. Make sure you read his books if you want to find out more on how to save on advertsing but still win more new customers - and to get ready to use earthfaves Promoter Relationship Management as your word-of-mouth and recommendation marketing solution.
Here is a short overview on the most interesting chapters on the revised version of his book “The Anatomy of Buzz” that will be released on March 12th: “Buzz: Real-Life Lessons in Word-of-Mouth Marketing”.
Delight your customers and they will talk about you. This is the foundation of word-of-mouth marketing, but even delighted customers tend to forget, and eventually they will run out of opportunities to talk about you. Companies should therefore be proactive about stimulating conversations.
A study by Robert East from Kingston University in London found that 30% of negative word of mouth was by people who never owned the product. Counterbalancing this trickle of negative buzz is another reason why companies should stimulate honest, positive word of mouth.
The power of old online buzz–mostly text based–is now multiplied by visual buzz. New technologies give people more opportunities to observe and imitate each other. I discuss one study that measured the value Adidas derived from implicit recommendations on MySpace. Two organizations–Toyota and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS)–share their experience with new buzz.
The obvious answer is that the Internet has caused the volume of buzz to explode. It has made buzz visible to marketers. More importantly, online buzz can serve as an accelerator of offline buzz. It is the combination of online and offline discussions that makes buzz so powerful.
Several companies are involved in measuring both online and offline buzz. I visited a couple of these companies–The Keller Fay Group and Nielsen Online.
Understanding what customers want to talk about is a key factor in stimulating word of mouth. Your best bet to finding a way to stimulate buzz is by first listening to what people are already saying about your product. Then, look for ways to amplify these discussions.
Some people talk more than others. I call these people “hubs”. I make a distinction between social hubs—people who talk more because they know more people—and expert hubs—people who talk more because they know more about something. How do you identify these folks? New examples for the use of hubs can be found throughout the book: Microsoft’s MVP program, American Express’s Partnership in Preservation, Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life and Prostate Net campaign with barbers.
The best buzz comes not from clever PR or advertising but rather from attributes inherent in the product or service itself. What does this have to do with marketing? A lot. People who focus on the promotional aspect of marketing get nervous at this point, but good marketing starts with the first “P”–Product. I also discuss here the role of visual buzz and network effects.
Eventually, people will spread the word about a great product. But how do you ensure they talk about it now?
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The 2001 movie On the Line got lots of initial buzz. So how come the movie bombed? Researchers point out the difference between volume and dispersion. While the volume of buzz matters, it is also important for it to be widespread.
People love to tell each other stories. What’s the story of your business and how do you find one?
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In 2007, Red Bull introduced a game called Roshambull on Facebook (it’s rock, paper, scissors with a Red Bull flavor). A few years earlier, Fiskars created a community called Fiskateers where scrapbooking fans share layouts and project ideas. The publishers of Lonely Planet created a forum called Thorn Tree where people share advice about travel. Buzz in these cases is generated not only from product experience but from human interaction. We constantly report to others about our social interactions. Any time you can plug into this habit of ours, you’ll stimulate talk.
Counter to the view that buzz is the exclusive result of grassroots and guerrilla marketing, significant buzz can be created by mass media. And as one story in this chapter illustrates, sometimes buzz is your best press release–it can give journalists this warm and fuzzy feeling that your story is for real. That there is true excitement for your product.
A headline in a 2007 Advertising Age article presented an intriguing question: “Want Online Buzz for Your New Product?” The subtitle provided the answer: “Better Have an Ad Campaign, Nielsen Finds.” So does it mean you can buy buzz with advertising? a deeper look into the Nielsen study shows that things are not that simple. “The formula for generating meaningful buzz is not as simple as spending money,” the Nielsen researchers wrote. Still, advertising clearly can increase the pool of people who are aware of your product and therefore can buzz about it. With all the talk about buzz, you could easily begin to believe that advertising no longer matters. The truth is that very few products can live on buzz alone. There are also ways that advertising can stimulate and simulate word of mouth.
We usually don’t trust people who sell us stuff, right? Actually, there’s a certain breed of retailers that enjoy a lot of credibility with the public. Think about the owner of a local boutique who has a following among fashion aficionados. Think about certain independent booksellers. Why are they trusted? Perhaps we can say that they are simply good editors–editors of merchandise, who sift through all the products available out there and prove to us, time after time, that they find the ones we want. I also discuss how retailers increasingly weave buzz into the customer experience.
As in the first edition, this chapter leads you through a series of questions to keep in mind as you think about whatever product or service you’re trying to market. I updated this chapter to reflect the new concepts covered in the new edition. It’s not a summary of the book, but it should get the ideas flowing.
