How to Take Unfair Advantage of Commercial On Line
Networks
Now that you have a good overview of electronic
marketing, the commercial on-line services, and the
relative benefits each has to offer, we're going to
cover an area that will be crucial to achieving
your greatest success in electronic marketing.
We're going to tell you how you can use the non-
commercial aspects of these services to your
advantage.
First of all, you need to remember that Forums,
Roundtables, Rooms (or whatever they're called) are
little electronic communities that have what
amounts to a set of Restrictive Covenants. People
hang out there to get answers to questions, to get
advice, and sometimes to get product referrals.
They've built up a trust in the other people who
hang out there, and they couldn't feel any more
protected by the System Operator (Sysop) who
policies the community than if he were Officer
Friendly himself. If you barge in and try to blitz
the community by sending a sales message, you're
likely to get your privileges revoked. And even if
you don't get your hand slapped officially, no one
is likely to communicate with you for a long, long
time.
Instead, spend about 30 days just monitoring
everything that's going on. Observe the questions
that are being asked, who answers them, and how
good the answers are. On every forum there are a
handful of experts on whom people rely. Your
strategy is to become a stable, respected member of
that community. You have two objectives: (1) to get
on the good side of the experts, and (2) to become
one of them, as rapidly as possible.
For purposes of illustration, let's take a specific
example. Suppose you are a Certified Financial
Planner, and you've produced a course called "How
to be Your Own Financial Planner", which consists
of a 100-page report, a series of worksheets (maybe
done with an electronic spreadsheet like Lotus or
Quattro Pro), and 6 one-hour audio cassettes. The
package sells for $295, plus $5 shipping and
handling.
You log on to the financial forums which would best
match your standard psychographic profile - let's
say the Investments forum. You monitor the
questions and answers every day for a month; you're
amazed to find that many of the same questions get
asked repeatedly. (It's primarily because there are
new people showing up all the time.) But you know
it's no picnic for the experts, who have to keep
answering those questions over and over again.
Armed with this knowledge, you sit down at your
word processor and write a short "report" that
answers the most commonly-asked questions, but
which includes some information of a broader nature
(and which opens up some areas where readers will
want to ask more questions). You then end the
document with a short "bio" that goes something
like:
Joe Doakes is a Certified Financial Planner, and
author of the consumer course "How to be Your Own
Financial Planner". Joe welcomes all your
questions. He can be reached at <your user id>.
You never, never, never try to sell anything with
this report. Now you pick the expert who seems to
be handling most of the questions being asked by
"your" people, and you send him a private message,
through electronic mail (this will not be seen by
anyone else on the Forum). It goes like this:
Hi, Bert. I'd just like you to know how much I
appreciate your work in helping people with their
questions about investing. Although I'm new to
electronic communications, I've been around
financial planning for more than 12 years (I'm a
CFP and I've authored a course on the subject). So
please take this for the compliment it is - the
answers you're giving are Top Notch. I have
noticed, though, that many people ask the same
questions. I have prepared a report that answers
most of these questions, and which gives some
important background on some of the issues a
beginning investor must face. I believe it would be
helpful, and would like to include it in one of the
libraries here in the forum. It's in a file called
BEGINNER.ZIP. Do I send it to you personally? - Joe
Doakes
You have accomplished several objectives: (1) You
have introduced yourself to your prime expert, and
in a non-threatening way - you're asking for his
help and offering your help to others. (2) You've
admitted your ignorance only in the area of
electronic communications, and only before the eyes
of one person. And (3) You've opened up the subject
of your course for later discussions.
Bert replies to you, says a brief "Welcome", and
(if he's not the Sysop) lets you know you should
contact the Sysop to upload (send) your file for
approval. He'll probably thank you for your efforts
to help, and maybe acknowledge the compliment.
Now you send a private message to the Sysop,
introducing yourself and telling him that you were
talking with Bert, who suggested that you send your
file with answers to some of the more commonly
asked questions to be included in one of the
libraries. (You are "borrowing" Bert's influence.)
The Sysop asks you to send the file. He looks it
over, sees that it isn't commercial in nature, and
he puts it in the library. Now your document is
available to anyone who wants to get it. More than
likely, a little blurb about the new document now
in the library will appear as an announcement to
everyone who logs on to this Forum. This
announcement will last up to a week.
As soon as the file is approved, you send another
message to Bert - but this time, you send a public
message:
Bert. I'm the Certified Financial Planner who sent
you the note the other day about the report I wrote
which answers many of the questions asked by
beginning investors. I just wanted you to know it's
now available in Library 1 with the file name
BEGINNER.ZIP. Thanks for the help. - Joe Doakes
Of course, Bert already knew this. Because you
piqued his interest earlier, he has already looked
at the file. But the point is, that for every
person who asks a question, there are thousands of
others who are silently reading the answers to
those questions, but are afraid to ask one of their
own (or don't even know the questions to ask). Now
you've let them know your credentials, that there
is a report available that will answer more of
their questions, and exactly where they can get it.
And once they have it, they'll be sending questions
to you by private E-Mail, out of the prying eyes of
everyone on the Forum, and where you can begin
softly selling them your course. Meanwhile, Bert is
suggesting to all the newcomers that they get a
copy of your file; it's saving him from answering
the same dull questions.
After another 30 days pass, you can start providing
an occasional answer, along with the established
experts, but on a low-key basis. As time goes on,
you gradually raise your profile. You make friends
with the other experts, and gain their respect.
Maybe you're even able to have one or more of them
take a look at your course - just as a professional
courtesy, to give you some feedback. But if they
like what they see, they'll start recommending it
to the people they advise on-line.
Meanwhile, you've become a respected member of the
electronic community. You're helping people by
giving them free answers to their investment
questions. And in turn, they're giving you free
market research that you would pay tens of
thousands of dollars for: you're talking directly
with mainstream consumer America - and they're
telling you exactly what your next product should
be!
Pushing the Envelope
There are several techniques you can use to enhance
the strategy we've just described. Some of them are
downright underhanded, and we would not use them
personally. But since we have promised to tell you
about them, we are compelled to reveal them all.
Quite possibly, some of the most interesting and
enlightening information you've ever received has
been quite unintentional - sitting next to people
at a party, standing in a group at the airport, or
whatever. And we always tend to give that
information fair consideration, because we feel
like we're not being "sold". Our guard is down.
Sort of the way an advertorial works.
Now consider this: whatever you say in a public
message on a Forum will be "overheard" by thousands
of people. If you could somehow control the
questions - at least some of them - you would be in
control of the conversation that someone else
overheard, and that can be a powerful position to
be in. And of course, you can do that.
One way is to have a confederate ask you in public
a question that lets you promote something you have
to offer. In the case of the example we've just
discussed, Joe might get a friend to ask him a
detailed investment question that would require a
complex answer. Joe would then give an answer like
"That is beyond the scope of what I can do on this
Forum, but if you would like to obtain my course on
how to become your own financial planner, send me
an electronic mail note at XXXX.YYYY and I'll send
you the details." That would probably not raise the
hackles of the Sysop, as long as it didn't happen
too often. But it would reveal the fact that Expert
Joe has a course, and it would tell anyone where
they can get more information. The authors have
successfully used this technique to promote a
conference.
This brings us to the next level - where the dirty
tricks begin. We really don't recommend these, but
we believe you need to know about them, if for no
other reason than to protect yourself.
Someone who wants to control a conversation doesn't
need a confederate, of course - all they need is
two accounts on the network, one in a fictitious
name. (Some services, like AOL and Prodigy, allow
up to 5 different user names on one account.) That
way they can ask exactly the questions and give
precisely the answers they want people to hear. By
establishing several accounts/identities, someone
can begin to talk between their fictitious
characters.
An example: Joe's unscrupulous brother Moe decides
to sell HairBrain, his anti-baldness formula. He
obtains 5 account numbers and signs them all up
with different names. Over the period of 3 weeks,
he logs them all on to the Baldness Forum. Then he
uses one of them to write a public note to the
Forum, asking if anyone has ever had any experience
with HairBrain, then, one by one, each of his other
"identities" sends messages giving it glowing
recommendations, including the price and where to
buy it. When things begin to die down, Moe logs on
with yet another identity, asking about products
that grow hair. Then begins another round of
recommendations from the other identities...
Finally, there is promoting a product that truly
doesn't exist - but not for the purposes of
committing fraud. Here is a real-life example of
how multiple identities were used to recruit a team
of the best computer programmers in the United
States:
About a year ago, "Roy" (not his real name) was
given the challenge by an executive recruiting
agency to assemble the best possible team of highly
specialized computer programmers. The recruiter's
client was a startup company that was itching to
get a jump in the market. Now normally, recruiting
a group of highly qualified people like that would
take at least a year - but Roy was given only 30
days! So Roy obtained several accounts in different
names on the network he felt would have the most
highly skilled programmers as subscribers.
Roy then made up a fictitious product for which he
knew any of the people he was out to recruit would
give their eye teeth to be on the design team. Then
he logged on to the technical forums, and he
started conversations about the XYZ company (a
fictitious company) and their Frammitz (the bogus
product), and how they were at least a year ahead
of everyone else in the field, giving them a
tremendous edge. After a couple of days, one of his
identities came up with an electronic mail address
where those interested could get more information.
That number was, of course, one more of Roy's
account numbers. And the super-tekkies began to
send E-Mail to that address...
Roy closed out the accounts, never answering any of
the mail. Less than two weeks after he started, he
presented his employer with the electronic
addresses of some of the most qualified programmers
on the planet.
Summary
Before reading this report, you may have been under
the impression that the average user of commercial
on-line computer services is a teenage "hacker"
with no money and all the time in the world.
Hopefully, you now see a very different picture.
The typical subscriber to commercial networks is
middle-class or upper- middle class. He is
obviously tied into technology, and probably has an
interest in anything High Tech. "He" is probably
male, and is to some degree isolated from the
world, either physically or psychologically. He may
be a member of the paranoid market.
He is typically a busy person with little time on
his hands, and who places a high premium on
convenience. One person we know hates fighting the
crowds in the local malls, so he does nearly every
bit of his Christmas shopping in the CompuServe
Mall.
The average subscriber eagerly consumes mass
quantities of information, frequently on a daily
basis. He is looking for that information from an
alternative source of his choice. He will tend to
trust anything he reads from that source -
especially if it comes at the recommendation of a
trusted expert on a Forum.
Finally, there is a very high probability he has a
credit card. Nearly all the services charge their
billings directly to the subscriber's credit card.
(In those cases where they will bill the
subscriber, he has to submit a credit report with
references, and is forced to accept a higher level
of service.) He appreciates convenience, and is
willing to pay for it. He is an excellent candidate
for a continuity offer (perhaps a newsletter), and
has proven to be so because his subscription to the
network is itself a continuity offer - with a
minimum tab and a maximum determined by his use of
it!
If this consumer profile doesn't get you excited,
there's got to be something wrong with you!
Think about this for a moment. How much effort do
we expend on a direct mail campaign, trying to get
and keep his interest, so he'll read the offer?
How about trying to get someone just to open the
envelope?
Now consider this. There is an affluent, proven
consumer out there, who is paying for the privilege
- with his credit card - of searching for
information that will meet his needs. When he hears
reference to your product, he is actually willing
to spend money to seek more information about it.
And he will eagerly read every piece of electronic
mail sent to him!
And you can get in front of him, and hundreds of
thousands of people like him, for as little as 8
cents a day.