Christopher Mance II

The shocking truth about the cost of a word-of-mouth campaign

April 22, 2013by Christopher Mance II in Word-of-Mouth tagged bootstrapping entrepreneur, earned media, going viral, paid media, word-of-mouth

So you think word-of-mouth is free? So did I until yesterday. That’s when I came across a tweet that got my brain juices flowing.

The tweet was on the topic of what marketing professionals call earned media. Earned media is more or less pitted as the antithesis to paid media, thus it is often used synonymously with free media.

For those not familiar with this marketing jargon, types of earned media include press coverage and word-of-mouth. Earned media also represents the idea of something going viral. The term paid media typically just means advertising.

One simple word-of-mouth shortcut for service providers and digital sellers

April 22, 2013by Christopher Mance II in Social Selling, Word-of-Mouth tagged eCommerce, Etsy, going viral, word-of-mouth

As an entrepreneur bootstrapping your business with a small or no advertising budget, you are left with no choice but to depend on word-of-mouth advertising to grow your customer base. For some types of businesses, such as clothing companies and tech gadgets, this serves as an opportunity for them to do something remarkable with their design and/or packaging. For other types of businesses, such as service providers and digital sellers, generating word-of-mouth buzz is a more complex problem to solve.

Warning: Bathroom Etiquette Can Kill Your Word-of-Mouth Advertising

April 21, 2013by Christopher Mance II in Word-of-Mouth tagged daddy blog, going viral, referrals, word-of-mouth

Alert: This is a post from my Daddy blog series

This weekend was a typical weekend for the Mance family. My boys waking me up at the crack dawn requesting cereal, an hour of Phineas and Ferb on Disney, finger painting at the arts center, then a ride on the birthday party bus. And just like the wheels on the bus, the list of parties to attend goes round and round predictably year after year. What’s not so predictable is what’s going to happen at the establishment that host the 10 to 20 little boys and girls as they devour pizza and cake.

Must Read: Gangnam Style viral is not the same as bootstrappers viral

April 20, 2013by Christopher Mance II in Viral Advertising tagged bootstrapping entrepreneur, going viral, viral loop, your best customers

When I woke up this morning, I noticed a really good comment on one of our blog post. It was so good that it inspired me to write this post today. The comment was from intercultural executive coach, Anne Egros. Anne blogs over at zestnzen.wordpress.com. She made a thoughtful comment suggesting that going viral is about connecting emotionally with an audience on our post 10 things entrepreneurs should do everyday to help word-of-mouth go viral.

7 surprising reasons going viral is easier than you think

April 19, 2013by Christopher Mance II in Viral Advertising tagged going viral, referrals, viral coefficient, your best customers, YouTube

As an entrepreneur bootstrapping your business, you know the easiest way to get to the promise land is by having your business go viral through word-of-mouth advertising. The problem is that most entrepreneurs believe that the chances of this happening amounts to winning the lottery. While this is true to a certain extent, the lottery ticket aspect of going viral is only one side of the coin.

3 effective ways to use ‘anticipation’ to make word-of-mouth go viral

April 18, 2013by Christopher Mance II in Viral Advertising tagged anticipation, best practices, going viral, new superman movie, word-of-mouth

The ability to make something go viral is both an art and a science. On the one hand, the art of going viral is synonymous with luck. While on the other hand, the science of going viral is typically attributed to skill.

When you are bootstrapping your business, you just don’t have the luxury to spend money on advertising that requires luck for success. This is why the vast majority of bootstrapping entrepreneurs default to word-of-mouth advertising as their only strategy to grow virally.

New Superman Movie ad campaign shows ‘anticipation’ is most powerful viral storytelling technique

April 17, 2013by Christopher Mance II in Viral Advertising tagged anticipation, best practices, going viral, Jonah Berger, new superman movie

The first thing you learn when studying the techniques of storytelling is that triggering the right emotions in your audience is critical. In addition, when you study the traits that make something go viral, you also find that triggering the right emotions is the first thing that matters. So it follows that when you start planning a viral advertising campaign that uses storytelling as the base ingredient, defining the emotions of the campaign is the first thing you must do.

New Superman movie uses multi-channel storytelling to go viral

April 16, 2013by Christopher Mance II in Viral Advertising tagged bootstrapping entrepreneur, going viral, new superman movie, storytelling

As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, staying on top of the latest advertising trends is a must. It’s a must because in today’s society, people see over 5,000 ads per day. There is just no way the average person can pay attention to more than 1 or 2 of them. As a result, big corporations spend big dollars researching how to get consumers to pay attention. There is no reason why entrepreneurs can’t take advantage of this research.

Viral word-of-mouth advertising requires this one thing

April 15, 2013by Christopher Mance II in Word-of-Mouth tagged customer service, daddy blog, going viral, word-of-mouth

This past weekend I celebrated the birthday of one of my little ones. The party was held at an indoor children’s play center named KangaZoom. The facility had your typical inflatable jumpers, bouncers, and slides. From the outside looking in, there was nothing exceptional about KangaZoom. However, once the party was over I knew the owners of KangaZoom had the one thing it needed to grow its business virally with word-of-mouth advertising.

10 things entrepreneurs should do everyday to help word-of-mouth go viral

April 14, 2013by Christopher Mance II in Word-of-Mouth tagged best practices, bootstrapping entrepreneur, goal setting, going viral, word-of-mouth

Over the years, I have found that the difference between a day of progress and a day of stagnation is separated by whether or not there was a written to-do checklist to follow. So now that I have declared that the only goal that matters for a bootstrapping entrepreneur is to create a viral referral loop, there must be a daily checklist with the things to do that will incrementally progress you to this goal. Both you and I know that without this checklist, the dream of going viral is nothing but a pipe dream.

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