"Flipping the Funnel"

When Seth Godin traveled to the Google campus last year for a presentation relating to his book All Marketers Are Liars he addressed the importance of creating a unique product that customers are interested in and utilizing available technology to market the product. According to Godin, marketers' top priority needs to be finding a way to "flip the funnel" or widen their audience through associated networks.

Godin champions the idea of "permission marketing," the concept that you tell your story to the people that want to hear it. Google does this extremely effectively. You only see ads for products you are interested in seeing ads for. Boom, permission marketing. However, online social networks provide ample opportunities for permission marketing as well. There are all sorts of online forums within social networks for discussing certain types of activities or products and marketers are just starting to discover the ample opportunities for product promotion in this area.

During the question and answer segment of his presentation, a Google employee asked whether hiring people to go into forums and create buzz by talking about their products was a good idea or not. Godin was of the opinion that, while there are people out there that do that and are successful, it is a form of fraud and deception and if people find out you're not one of them it's very likely going to get them upset.

So, the primary question is: how do you infiltrate social networks in a way that is in harmony with the idea of permission marketing? How do you create buzz in an organic way?

I think it's helpful to look at some of Godin's main points on what it takes to get an initial group of people interested in a product. First, you need a story, and it needs to be a story that people haven't heard before--something that is going to catch their interest and make them want to talk about it, i.e. "A Purple Cow." Second, you need to create a product that people already want, not a product that needs built up attraction. Third, you need to know where your niche of people is that want your product, and you need to reach as many of them as you can. Through this niche, word of your product will spread because these are the people that are passionate about it.

How do I get conversations to take place? How do I flip the funnel? These ideas are a solid beginning.

To hear more, view the video at: Google Video.