MyMarketing: A MySpace Marketing Consultation
A few weeks ago I posted some coverage about how MySpace can be used as a marketing venue for businesses of all sizes by studying the Fox/NewsCorp/MySpace campaign for the movie X-Men:The last stand.

At the bottom of the PosterFoo post, I asked for those of you who are currently doing MySpace marketing to contact me to discuss your strategy and site tie-ins. I also wanted some real life examples to share with the rest of you. Of the responses I received from that post there was one MySpace marketer I was able to sit down with to discuss.

A MySpace Marketer Introduction
I would like to introduce you all to Niambi. Niambi has a technical consulting company that she runs to pay the bills. Like most of us however, that is not her passion.

Her passion is in mentorship and helping friends and family succeed in life through the promotion of wellness and self empowerment. She is also the author of the book 100 Words of Wisdom. Currently she has a number of venues of which she spreads this message of well being. She uses a mix of websites, list serves, email newsletters, a blog, teleseminars and MySpace.

The first thing I needed to do was get a feel for her overall company goals and how she was using each venue to further her message. After a 30 minute Q & A session I had enough to make some initial recommendations. We than proceeded to have a great hour long interaction about her sites, MySpace and her business on as a whole.

The two main sites are www.HiyaahPower.com and www.PowerPacks.com.

Cross Channel Consistency
Her primary challenge was that her navigation on both of the sites was based on her understanding of her products and services rather than based on her users' understanding of those products and services. What I mean is that she needed to organize the site in a way that will quickly allow her users to identify their need and be presented with a path to meet that need quickly and efficiently.

I also noticed that the 2 sites while having different purposes were overlapping in a lot of areas. I recommended that rather than overlap, she have each site fulfill the need for the other.

For instance, rather than having a store with the same products on both sites, she just make PowerPacks.com contain the store. This way, when she markets a product on HiyaahPower.com she just link to it with a "buy now at PowerPacks.com" button instead of a traditional buy now button.

Alternatively, when she talks about the empowerment blog, teleseminars, the email newsletter or other resources on the Powerpacks.com site, she link with something like "sign up for the Empowerment Newsletter at HiyaahPower.com"

We discussed more solutions for both of these issues at length on both the HiyaahPower.com and PowerPacks.com sites. In a later post, I will describe some of the changes she makes and their effects on her business.

MySpace as Marketing Channel
Now that we had addressed her sites, her primary outlets and they worked together, we moved on to the MySpace profile.

Through our conversation, Niambi shared that a large part of her goal is not just empowering individuals, but also helping them to empower others. In this sense, MySpace is a great venue for her to create a dialogue that can quickly spread through networks of like minded individuals.

When I pulled up her MySpace page, I noticed right away the success she was already having. She had over 1000 friends.

Surprised, I asked how she had already befriended so many people.

Targeting Your Demographic with Profile Searches
Because she had a fairly specific demographic in mind she used the MySpace Profile Search to find individuals who might be interested in her products and invited them to be her friends. They would then click her profile to check her out and if they were interested they would accept.

The other thing that caught my attention was that with with all she had to offer, all the profile was doing to really help people to interact with her core business venues was an email sign up form. I was glad it was there but it didn't do her offering justice.

Tying it Together
My immediate reaction was that we needed to get more links to her products and resources on her sites. We quickly realized, however, that we can't just make a corporate looking MySpace page with links and marketing messages everywhere as it will destroy the authenticity of the page and her credibility with it. What we decided was that all of the MySpace sections would remain pure with exception to the General Interests Area.

This is the area of a MySpace profile just under the Contact section. It's not above the fold on most profiles and it is out of the way of the Blog section and the About Me section but is the first thing you see if you decide to scroll down the page to learn more.

We figured this way, a user's initial reaction is authentic and they only see the commercial information if they would like to learn more about Niambi and her business.

What we are going to do with this space to keep it simple is to only focus on the 3 main areas of importance:

#1 is to add a simple list of deep linked Powerpacks for purchase with a note to learn more about them and what they are.

#2 is a few links to Hiyaahpower.com about the resources and information available there.

#3 A mini form for people to sign up for the email newsletter.
The rest would stay authentic and just be about Niambi, her quest, her background and her interests.

We also talked a bit about making sure to raise awareness through her non-MySpace channels to her My-Space page (which she was already doing).

Incentiving Top 8 Addition
The next step, now that each channel is primed to drive interest to her other properties, was to incentivize participation and awareness.

What we came up with initially as a test campaign was to give a complimentary affirmation card set to anyone who adds her to their top 8. That day she sent out a MySpace bulletin to that affect. Almost immediately she received a couple of people who have done just that. In further conversations we will explore some other ways to incentivize further interaction with her users.

Stay Tuned
Keep an eye on www.HiyaahPower.com, www.PowerPacks.com and MySpace.com/HiyaahPower to see how things are moving along. I will keep you all posted on Niambi's progress with her MySpace marketing efforts and once it's all said and done, we will get into all of the juicy, geeky analytical details of her success.

Please let me know if you have any additional suggestions/feedback for Niambi in the comments or if you would like a FREE MyMarketing consultation for your business email me and we can set something up.
Adam Schultz - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |