Nobody Cares That You're 60 Cents Cheaper*

You've got a quality brand, people know you, like what you've got to offer and are willing to pay extra for it.

Enter cheaper, private-label brands. 

Your market share comes under pressure.

What do you?

1. People are paying extra for your brand, find out why and see if you are still worth this premium.
2. In your advertising, highlight these benefits. 
3. Don't mention the price. You don't want to play by your competitors rules.
4. If your price is too much of a barrier, maybe think promotions or couponing.

*Lessons from the marketing of paper towels.

Grow Your Tribe With Number Magic

A subscriber count on your site works great as social proof. It shows that other people cared enough to signup and that it is ok for you to do the same.

But once you are subscribed, this number loses much of its meaning. The Get Storied newsletter found a way to use this number to strengthen their relationship with existing subscribers. In every mail, they show how the tribe has grown. It makes me really feel like there are other people that care. Plus it works again as social proof if people forward the mail.

Get Storified newsletter

[Big welcome to 89 new members of the tribe.

You now join over 8,754 subscribers of storytelling mojo.]

If you need some help crafting a better story for your career or business, go check it out, they got some excellent advice!

Why Your Stuff Won't Go Viral

A user visits your site, registers, fiddles around with your service and leaves.

A success right? Not if they are not coming back or aren't telling anybody about it.

So if it is your job to make your product or service go viral, you've got a problem.

We've seen before that most of the people online don't engage. And a new study on the adoption patterns of various online platforms (Twitter, Yahoo IM,..) has more bad news.

User adoption trees - click for full size - image by Sharad Goel

When people try out a new service, Twitter for example, they are very likely, 93% to be precise, to leave and never come back.

Across all researched platforms this turns out to be the most common user behaviour.

Only in 1-4% of the cases users will invite more than one person. Hardly something you can call a viral success story.

Google+

With the above patterns in  mind, it is interesting to look at the recent introduction of Google+.

Now that the false scarcity effects of the beta invites are fading, the press coverage is also decreasing.

One real advantage they have opposed to a stand alone platform is possibility to force users back to the platform. Their integration and mergers with other services gives them extra touchpoints with users, which might tilt the numbers in their favour.

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I'm surprised how low these numbers are. But they give a very clear indication that it stays incredible hard to get your stuff out there. But nothing is stopping you from adding special viral sauce to it!