Internet Marketing

The Winner’s Curse is a term used to describe auctions whereby the winner will overpay because he/she overestimates the item’s actual market value. This tendency to overbid is due to factors like incomplete information or other market participants. Recent research show that people also overbid because of the fear of losing in a social competition. 

A team of NYU neuroscientists and economists conducted brain imaging studies and discovered that the striatum, a part of the brain’s reward circuitry showed an exaggerated response to losses during an auction game. When a group was told that they would lose $15 if they failed to win an auction, they consistently bid higher than others who were told they would win $15.

Imagine you’re a email spammer. Your strategy is to send out thousands of unsolicited emails everyday hoping that some unassuming individual will purchase your product or inadvertently get infected by your malware/virus, so you can phish for credit card and banking details.

So here’s the situation. You’re dealing with millions of people whom you don’t know. You might not even know their age and gender, the basic demographic yardsticks. You can data mine email archives on a zombie computer to create personalized and convincing email messages but you’re always going to be dealing with a barrier of not-enough-trust.

As some of you might know from my Twitter profile, I enjoy following politics and have been an avid spectactor of the on-going 2008 U.S Presidential Elections. It’s very entertaining to see how political parties compete with one another during an election to win votes.

A similar pattern has been repeating itself in the last few months. A candidate makes a statement, his/her opponent absorbs what was said and re-uses it within a campaign ad or a speech, in a manner which weakens the original statement or intent.

Many have made money and built reputations by solving problems. Doctors cure the suffering of illness, psychiatrists help heal the troubled mind, lawyers protect names from being tarnished, consultants offer marketing advice and a dazzling array of products help to remove any inconvenience you might possibly encounter in your daily life.

Many people are solving problems. They’re all offering solutions to people who need them. Some are giving them away for free. Others are selling them for a price. When problem and solution is a perfect fit, a relationship of trust is built between two parties. If this helps me now, it might help me again. If this solves my problem, it might solve my friend’s problem too.

Ambush marketing is a strategy used by companies to promote their brands at events without paying any sponsorship fees. An example: “Dutch buyers of Heineken beer were given green hats to wear to the recent Euro 2008 football tournament. Anyone who tried to enter a stadium wearing one, however, as many fans did in 2004, was asked to remove it.

The hats were an “ambush marketing” campaign… Heineken’s rival, Carlsberg, was an official sponsor of Euro 2008, paying $21m for the privilege. A few TV close-ups of fans wearing Heineken hats would have cost very little by comparison”

In every narrative there is inevitably information omitted for various reasons, sometimes in order to intentionally obscure/simplify the plot or because specific agendas cannot be made known to the public. The background information or history behind the story, video or news report you are viewing is known as a back-story.

A back-story usually involves the history of the individuals involved, their environment, socio-cultural data and other information relevant to the visible narrative. Plugging in the back-story for your website, marketing campaign or product is not only a great way to distinguish it from the competition but an excellent method of persuasion that works incredibly well.

Successful ideas and messages are shared when people are able to relate to it on their own terms, within their existing worldview. Data will remain cold, inert and impersonal unless it is framed in a concrete way that is relevant to the experiences of the recipient. You don’t want cold data. You want high-impact information that leaves a strong impression on your audience, so they’ll pass it on to others in their network, who’ll then do the same.

News framing is the process of filtering and transmitting news through an angle or ‘frame’ in order to support specific ideologies, stimulate widespread attention or persuade an audience. They are narratives which contextualize information. As a form of selective reporting, news framing is a remarkably useful tactic for bloggers, journalists and marketers.

Politico recently published an article about media hype in political journalism which talks about how trivial or sensationalist news stories capture the attention of the political-media community much more than important stories or serious reporting.

Sometimes you can’t do everything yourself. You don’t have the budget to launch a big marketing campaign. Or you don’t even know where to start. One of the best ways to promote your website or business is to work together with others to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

The legal form of this is known as a joint venture, where two or more parties create a new entity by contributing equity and sharing revenue, expenses and control. Another form of collaboration is known as a strategic alliance, whereby the parties involved pursue common goals while remaining as independent organizations.