Marketing: What's Working?
The opulence of years past and the lavish excesses spent to woo webmasters and entice partners has, for the most part, come to pass – at least on a grand scale. What was once a sure sign that your company had arrived on the scene may now be viewed as a lack of focus, or worse, an act of desperation.
Yet within the rather small community that makes up the online adult entertainment business, we constantly hear and see ideas that work. We are talking about ideas that may or may not cost a fortune, but succeed in some way in bringing value for whatever dollars are spent. Essentially, we’re talking about guerilla marketing.
What is guerilla marketing? Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the book Guerrilla Marketing: Secrets for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business, describes it as “achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.” It sounds ideal, but who is doing it – and doing it right?
The inspiration for this article was a seminar at The Phoenix Forum back in February. During one of the panel discussions, Johnny V, President of the Porn Posse, a company that specializes in marketing for the adult entertainment industry, mentioned a program that really caught his eye building up to the Phoenix Forum. The company was YanksCash, an affiliate program that specializes in solo masturbation sites. What they did was put together a couple of videos and posted them on some of the popular Webmaster chat boards.
First off, you’ll see that they’re simplistic in nature and not heavily produced. The first video was done with all their own equipment, clothing and loosely arranged script. That meant the only expense they had to cover was the copious amount of alcohol they consumed during the shooting of the video. The second video was slightly more costly, as they purchased some clothing for it and, again, enjoyed a few well-earned beverages after the footage was in the can. Estimates for the grand total for the two videos is somewhere between $200 and $300.
To add fuel to the fire, the people at Lightspeed Cash picked up the challenge and retaliated with a video of their own, culminating with a showdown at the conference.
“It was hilarious,” said YanksDanielle, “It turned into a competition between Rochard (from Lightspeed) and YanksTodd dueling it out in the joust and the loser had to wear Speedos at some point in the show.”
But for all the fun and games, there is a serious side to spending company money and time on any idea. Johnny V said that as long as you have a plan in mind of what you’d like to accomplish, you’re ahead of the game.
“Different campaigns are run for different reasons,” said Johnny V, “And it is important to define what your goals are beforehand. This is an element of marketing that most companies miss. They may have a great campaign, and never know if they were successful or not.”
He also ads that if, after an event, people are still talking about what your company did, than it may not matter if you brought in X amount of sales or new clients. Publicity, although sometimes hard to quantify, can be all you need, but he warns, “Webmasters should keep in mind that they may be defined by that campaign for a long time, and while there is no such thing as bad publicity; be careful what you wish for.”
Another campaign that has made waves recently was the CJ Bucks thread on the Webmaster chat board, Go Fuck Yourself (GFY). It’s size and scope seemed destined for great success or utter failure. It succeeded in achieving both.
“It was just after normal working hours,” said Rick Latona, President of CJ Bucks, “I was reading GFY noticing how many bullshit contests there were. Many of the people had posted threads like “The person who replies the most in the next 72 hours wins 50 dollars via PayPal”. I was thinking to myself, why wouldn’t they type their company name in the title? If you are going to spend money to have your thread virtually pinned to the top of the board, shouldn’t you put what you sell in the title? Then it occurred to me, post a thread that was just ridiculous. Make it so obnoxious that people will stop posting all of these useless threads. So I decided to do one for $10,000 dollars, put CJ Bucks in the title and make it last for six months. My theory was that (GFY) would get so sick of it that (they) would ban the contest or I’d have my thread pinned at the top for 180 straight days. Either way, I win.”
And win he did. The thread received close to 11,000 replies but failed to stay within the first four pages of the board, one of the requirements of the contest. However, for a month it remained in the top pages, was a topic of conversation for webmasters and CJ Bucks never had to pay out the grand prize of $10,000.
You clearly don’t have to have a thick wallet to come up with solid marketing ideas, but it certainly provides options. Johnny V said that one of the best ideas when it comes to effective marketing is simply dinner. In affect, dinners allow you to have a captive audience and you can tailor your approach so that it’s most effective. It may not be textbook guerilla marketing but it is what good business is really all about.
In short, keep it simple, be creative and set out your goals before hand. Or if you can’t find it in you come up with an innovative concept or a creative approach to your marketing, then save up for that special dinner. Just keep in mind this sound advice passed on from the great Orson Wells, “My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.”
Reader Comments: (3 posts)
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Keiko says: My site is in good shape for always using the same caniaocnl name, but the in-site Google search engine keeps screwing me up, coming up with "ftp.aplawrence.com" even though nowhere do I have any such link.I wish I could tell the Search to make all results be the caniaocnl name! |
November 28th, 2015 at 4:15am EST Rating:  |
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Prem says: OMG! I never knew that girls are making money this way but I like your aidcve for them designing logos is the best way to make money. If you are good at it you will end up with thousands of dollar just my designing logos.Anyways, your research on this was superb buddy. Now, parents will get more strict when they hear that their daughter are making money online. All thanks to you. |
November 26th, 2015 at 10:48am EST Rating: |
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Chay says: Hello! I recently got my webgape indexed in Google. I know the google bot passed it and indexed it due I see the searches of my company in a small list under the Title. Problem is that the same day I got it listed I changed the URL of a very important part of my website. How can I make Googlebot to pass and redo my listing? thank you! :) |
November 25th, 2015 at 11:22am EST Rating: |
