First Prove Your Model
We recently had a publicity strategy meeting for Somethinglocal.com. We sat down and tried to identify as many things as we could that would increase traffic, build brand equity, increase down loads and more, (what else do you usually talk about at an internet marketing meeting). We identified some great things we could do that would be news worthy, along with a number of different strategies to synergize our upcoming podcast with our upcoming quick-time commercials, Big Al and other promotional efforts we have coming up.
Of all of the things we talked about, the one that rang the most true was this: Prove your model, and it will do most of the promotion itself. Of course this is not the case with everything, but if it’s a model that really provides goods or services that people need, you can bet they’ll tell their friends about it. Myspace, Amazon, Google Adsense, Commission Junction, Ebay and more, provide a service that benefits their customers and brings them back for more. I might be wrong, but I bet the budget for the time and money to market these services is relatively small. I know I mentioned only big models, but I’m pretty sure the same applies to little things as well. Wasn’t Craig’s list just a small start-up?
Somethinglocal.com satisfies a need. Local bands need to connect with their fan base in such a way to be exposed, promoted and make profit for further development. It promotes bands and sells their music. Bands get 69% of all of the proceeds from their downloads. The rest of the money is used to promote the bands through the different modules of the website. It hasn’t been a smooth transition for somethinglocal.com, but we’ve finally got the backend working as of last week and we’ve already got over 10 bands with a balance in their accounts. As we really help bands sell their music, it will help lead and orchestrate the other marketing aspects of Somethinglocal. It’s still too early to tell just how successful our model is in practice, but it looks like we’re on the right track. Either way, it seems our marketing and promotional strategy has a clear top priority: First, prove the model.