Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

Meerman Scott's six rules are:
1. Nobody care about your products (except you). In other words, customers care about themselves and solving their own problems. If you want to be talked about online, create something that will be interesting and valuable to customers.

2. No coercion required. Forget the hype and special offers. Instead create something worth sharing and people will share it.

3. Lose control. Make your information free and easy to access. (That's right, B2B marketers, no more forced registration for white paper downloads, he says.)

4. Put down roots. Get involved in the online communities your customers are participating in.

5. Create triggers that encourage people to share. Is your content truly valuable, is it funny, interesting, outrageous? If so, it's more likely to be shared.

6. Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep. The more people share and link to your content, the more will find their way to your website, and the higher you'll rank on search engines.

According to Meerman Scott, marketers don't need to follow all six rules, but missing any one of the six will make for a less effective "rave."

When I recently met with Meerman Scott, who was in New York to celebrate his book launch, I asked him for some examples of effective triggers, and also ways to measure the success of a world wide rave.

A trigger is not a special offer, he emphasized. Examples of triggers, he said, are doing a YouTube video, posting a blog, giving a white paper or research report without registration so it's easy to share. "That becomes a trigger for people to share," he says. "People will blog or tweet about it. The key is to understand the buyer personas of the people you're trying to reach."

With traditional marketing, the first P is product. With online marketing, the best trigger starts with the people you're trying to reach. "What are the problems you're trying to solve and how can you create something with customers in mind, so they think, 'This was made for me,' then they're willing to share it?" he said.

The key, Meerman Scott emphasized, is to facilitate sharing. Having prospects register their interest doesn't have to be at the first touch. "This is a hold over from direct mail," he said. Make first touch free, whether it's a white paper or e-book or webinar; get someone interested in your ideas and show that you understand their needs and then somewhere within that free offering make a secondary offer: If you like this, how about attending our webinar? "That's where you get the registration, from someone eager to know more," he added. "B2B will freak out, but...it works really well. It's counterintuitive, but it's certainly worth experimenting with."

Companies that test removing initial registration requirements see the number of downloads increase by a factor of 20 to 50. If only 2 percent respond to your second offer, he said, it's same total number of respondents, but that 2 percent is more qualified because they read the white paper or e-book or watched the webinar and are interested in it. "You need to think differently about how you calculate ROI," he said, adding that if the tests don't work out, marketers can always put back the registration requirement. "The idea of marketing on the Web is that it's different."

So, what should marketers measure to know if a rave is successful? Meerman Scott recommends measuring the number of downloads, the number that becomes leads after that, and any resulting sales. He also suggests tracking the most important search terms customers will use when looking for the type of product or service you're marketing. "Create something valuable around that and see if search results go up," he said.

Also, track what are bloggers saying, if anything, as well as what's being posted on Twitter. If they're not saying anything it's likely because there's nothing worth repeating, or the information is gated, so why bother writing about it, Meerman Scott said. Give bloggers something interesting that they can write about, and then measure how many posts are written as a result. "I'm a fan of trying to measure how your ideas are spreading and how people are talking about you," he said.