Turning Marketing Tools Into Profitable Products

We are doing the network. Marketing But we are from " network The dream of starting a business starts. We often talk with enterprises that you may have such a possibility to do this marketing activity, not only bring users, let more people know about your products, maybe one day, "itself" will become a product!

What's the meaning of this?

For example, you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a large activity website to attract users to fill in their data. After the end of the schedule, people will continue to play. You simply turn it into a charging website, users pay, you earn money. Of course, online marketing activities, such as voting, submitting or experiencing 3D or raffle awards, are unlikely to become "products". Therefore, marketing activities must be more creative. Maybe you have created a new profit product for the company by marketing personnel, and promoted to the head of the Department, making the boss smile.

This is not a dream, it has history. AdMob, which had been bought by Google for $seven hundred million, was originally an advertising platform for entrepreneurs to sell their own other software. The result was that the software was not red, but it was worth selling for seven hundred million dollars. Another story, Reebok's marketing website, did not play many people during the event. But after a long time, when the company didn't pay attention, it accumulated millions of users silently. Although it was not profitable yet, it helped Reebok continue to attract some jogger to come, which is more effective than official website.

Now let's talk about a real case of "marketing" to "product" - this entrepreneur has made a set of mobile phone software, so that you can know the background of strangers around now. This is a system of "understanding strangers", which is called "exchanging information with strangers". In this cold city, if you download this software, you may bump into a "fellow townsman" in a different place, or a "heterosexual" who is endemic to you, or a "business partner" that is exactly what you need. The entrepreneur himself came to Silicon Valley from different places. He naturally thought of this idea and hoped that he could make more friends in Silicon Valley.

Such a wonderful product? After that, only five people downloaded.

　　 Entrepreneurship At that time, the family thought, well, start the "marketing" software! Since it is a software that is automatically introduced to strangers around him, he will focus on all kinds of large-scale "trade shows" or "international conferences". Tens of thousands of people come in and out of the exhibition every day. These people want to know others in the most efficient way.

But how do you get into these exhibitions?

Entrepreneurs think of a marketing idea. European and American social activities always like to paste a "Hello, I am..." The "name card" written by yourself is better than letting you write it yourself, so you can input your name on a small computer. The machine prints the sticker by connecting the small printer, so that your name is on it. Cool? So this little machine takes the place of the brand sticker which usually needs to be written in Mark's pen. People don't have to write, just put their name in, and print the stickers on their chest.

In fact, he was not the first to think about this concept. Apple headquarters had made you fill in your name and print out a pass. No one has ever provided such a "brand name" service for such large-scale activities. Such services, according to the entrepreneur, are too easy to do with the smartphone software that he mainly wants to promote, "exchanging information with strangers". In order to write only 300 lines (usually a large software, as long as a file is 300 lines), buy a computer and a printer. So he stuffed the machine into an oversized suitcase, looked for an international conference everywhere, wrote to the organizer, and asked the organizers to set him up with a name printer. As a result, the organizers liked the machine very much, not only letting him set it free, but also providing air tickets, lodging, and hanging him up as a sponsor. In this way, every exhibitor who printed the name, put LOGO stickers on their clothes with their own names, walked around, and so many mobile billboards became a very good publicity.

The entrepreneur was very happy because he found a great way to sell his own software, so he walked around the exhibition and slowly discovered two cruel facts:

First, the mobile phone software to "popularize strangers" was popularized. After so much publicity, no one wanted to buy it.

Two, I didn't expect that the name printer, which carried the task of promotion, was sold to the exhibition hall at a low price of US $50~300 for a whole year.

Interesting things come, these entrepreneurs concluded that the original marketing can also turn into products. A year later, someone offered to buy equipment and software, and the entrepreneur readily agreed to sell it and go back to develop another set of mobile phone software. He didn't realize that he had already bumped into a huge business opportunity because of the demand of marketing. He thought that the marketing activities had ended and sold their things, and then went back to make the product that was not very red.

Let's think about it. Many products end up selling a simple concept. The myth of Internet entrepreneurs always wants to sell the most complex parts on the Internet and mobile phones, rather than the simplest part of the "entity". But in fact, as the entrepreneur said, "completing" such a small computer is a little trick to him. As long as 300 lines of procedure, a super blue ocean, super money making product has been completed by others.

This is also a great encouragement to marketers. We must constantly discover more fresh marketing ideas and spend more money on creative marketing activities. It may not only help you promote products, it will also have opportunities to become your "main products" in the future.