“…smart marketers know that word of mouth almost always needs help. They do something to make that word spread faster.”

“Two things are needed to create buzz successfully. The first one… is to have a contagious product. But having such a product alone is not enough. Companies that get good buzz also accelerate natural contagion.”

“Technology markets, for example, are almost like presidential election campaigns, where there’s no prize for second place. Winner takes all. In these markets the natural spread of word of mouth must be accelerated. Having a good product is not enough.”

Excerpts above from Emanuel Rosen’s “The Anatomy of Buzz”.

It took radio 40 years to reach 10 million users, TV only 15 years, Netscape 3 years, and both Hotmail and Napster less than a year. Hotmail and Napster got the hang of viral marketing. HAVE YOU?

PRODUCT OVERVIEW

What is Accelerated Contagion?

It’s a way of adding teeth to the longevity of your word of mouth marketing management.
Be a tiger!

Before you can fan the flames of your word of mouth marketing efforts you have to ignite the fire!

Paradox of a Word Of Mouth viral marketing epidemic: before creating one contagious movement you have to create many small movements first. There is still a role for traditional advertising in viral marketing. It’s called Accelerated Contagion, or leapfrogging, formerly known as the 90-Day Blitz. Only it employs a broader tool set … and it’s dependent on the buzz that you put in motion.

WHAT IS ACCELERATED CONTAGION?
Accelerated Contagion is a multi-media, lead generation activity based on response compression techniques. It is a fully integrated three month program that combines traditional media with interactive media to create a sense of event, which in turn produces a substantial flow of leads in a very short time with minimal commitment of financial resources. Typically it uses three to five media vehicles to present your message to prospects over a week to ten day period at the beginning of each of three months.

THE SOURCE - AND RATIONALE
Why response compression? To quote Ernan Roman, author of Integrated Direct Marketing, “We have found that the traditional sequencing of media does not create the maximum synergy from the media being employed. Specifically, the impressions are conveyed over too long a time period, diluting the impact to a significant degree ... we create a sequence of ongoing contacts, using a variety of media. These are deployed with short, carefully orchestrated intervals between contacts so that we gain a disproportionate share of the prospect's attention. A sense of event is generated - a feeling that something important is going on. It would be far more difficult, if not impossible to achieve this effect through isolated media. We call this tighter time-frame approach ‘response compression’. By deploying media in an abbreviated time frame, we create an intensified synergy between media that generates much higher response rates."

TYPICAL COMPONENTS
Media for Accelerated Contagion runs the gamut from microsites, search engine optimization and marketing, weblogs, chat rooms, email, voice and fax broadcasting, telemarketing, direct mail, tradeshows, webinars, print media, broadcast, experiential, promotion, seeding, CGM (consumer-generated media), and evangelism … plus others.

BLITZ GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
· Goals include sales acceleration and increased market awareness
· Objectives focus on rapid generation of quality leads, shortened cycle times
· The challenge is to do this quickly, and within a manageable budget.
SPECIFICALLY ACCELERATED CONTAGION IS DESIGNED TO:
· expand the numbers of contacts for influencer relations
· add longevity to the impact of your viral marketing
· and raise public exposure and product enthusiasm via evangelism.

SALES/MARKETING PROBLEMS THAT PROMPT THE BLITZ STRATEGY
· Poor response levels to present marketing communications efforts
· Return on investment of marketing dollars poor, or not measurable
· Cost of sales too high caused by ineffective media strategies
· Long cycle times due to low market awareness, bad positioning
· Too slow to market with marketing messages
· Quarterly, annual sales goals not being met
· Failure to find a Lightning Bolt... or Big Idea that reaches the “feeling" side of your prospects. Selling the steak, not the sizzle (selling features not benefits)

THE KBA VISION
Our vision is to help technology vendors, focused on fast growth, in fusing the traditionally adversarial disciplines of sales and marketing into the single business process of sales/marketing communications. Keith Bates’ proprietary Marcom Engine drives this process.

A LOOK AT THE KBA MARCOM ENGINE
The Marcom Engine is a methodology evolved from 30 years of serving the marketing communications needs of 150+ software/services vendors.

It combines the principles of BPR (Business Process Reengineering) and IMC (Integrated Marketing Communications) into a business process for the management of marketing communications.

It is a six step process as follows: perform marcom audit, develop key strategies, build creative repository and graphics standards, construct marcom arsenal, plan and deploy media, and measure the results.