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Inside the PayPerPost marketing play book.

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payperpostTed Murphy, the CEO of PayPerPost, is a genius. Not because of what his company is doing, PayPerPost and paid posting isn’t my thing, but I find him a genius with my marketing hat on, because in years to come Ted Murphy and his marketing strategy for PayPerPost will be taught to kiddies at University in their ECommerce and Social Networking text books. It’s that good. Really.

Let take a run down of the PayPerPost (PPP) marketing strategy.

1. Launch a product without the one thing everyone said you should do: disclosure.

There are a number of competitors out there to PayPerPost, can anyone name more than maybe one? I can’t. PPP cut through because they intentionally left out forcing their “posties” to disclose the financial arrangement. Net result was a complete bushfire of outrage and indignation. Not even PPP itself could pay for that sort of attention and link love.

Remember that there is NO such thing as bad publicity. All those indignified soles were NEVER going to sign up in the first place. However, not all of their readers would have shared these views, and the company received exposure to millions of people.

2. Get in peoples faces

Industry events, even industry Top 100 lists, just to provoke the haters to slam you some more. If Web 2.0 is all about Attention, then PPP has mastered the art. I can’t remember a week in the past 3 months where I haven’t read someone carrying on about the company. It’s literally a red rag to a bull play, PPP wants attention, it helps drive new “posties” and advertisers to the company. Most people are grown up enough to make up their own minds…but they need to know you exist, what better way than to whip up the haters.

3. Hire a prominent opponent

Robert Scoble and PodTech have decided to turn down payment for Scoble speaking at the “Postiecon”, but he’s still speaking at it (and the time of writing). Whether he is for them or against them makes no difference, his credibility is being leant to the conference by his appearance. Just word of his appearance has whipped up a whole pile of PPP discussion in the blogosphere (me included). Lots of mentions, lots of attention….lots more visits to their main page, potentially lots more signups and advertisers…you get the idea.

4. Self Promote

Have you checked out the PPP’s fly on the wall style documentary (or should that be mokumentary) Rockstartup? I watched an episode and I really wanted to reach through the screen and punch half the people in it. Jeff Jarvis covered it at Buzzmachine last week. Yes, it’s awful, yes it makes them all look like grade A w*nkers, but as a promotional tool to get more attention? it totally rocks (pardon the pun). More attention = more visitors = more posties + advertisers.

5. Thick Skin

The above 4 sound simple, but having a think skin is the magical ingredient that makes PPP’s marketing strategy work. It’s not nice being slammed in any shape or form, and yet if you can hold it together, take the blows, and the end of the day you laugh all the way to the bank…just as PPP is now undoubtedly doing.

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Originally posted on February 4, 2007 @ 8:23 pm

Comments

  1. I’d add one as a 2.5 – once you’ve got in everyone’s face over the one thing everyone says you shouldn’t do – do a backflip and do what everyone’s been saying you should do. This way you end up with publicity AND a good product.

    I don’t know if they planned it this way or just discovered this marketing model but they certainly milked it for all it was worth!

  3. You’re kidding right? Let me finish one of your sentences for you. “Ted Murphy and his marketing strategy for PayPerPost will be taught to kiddies at University” only as an example of how to run a media company in a completely unethical manner.

    By the way, 2.5 doesn’t work because PPP still isn’t requiring people to actually disclose in any kind of laid out manner. “Disclosure” can be as dodgy as placing a small icon on your website that links to your about page which has a bit of small print at the bottom that says you’re being paid off to write about products.

    I’ll finish the sentence again: “Ted Murphy and his marketing strategy for PayPerPost will be taught to kiddies at University” to show how bloggers can instantly lose all credibility.

  4. Oh, and 3 is the exact reason that a lot of people are pissed off at Scoble. He doesn’t seem to realise that PPP is leeching off his credibility. I’m glad someone has finally pointed this out on a platform other than the comments on Scobleizer (it’s very heated down there).

  5. Conrad, what exactly does “credibility” have to do with marketing. Marketing is the art of selling a product or idea (I’d content that ideas are products, but that’s another story). Ethics is irrelevant as well, we’re talking a pure marketing play here, no rules, end game is to garner the most amount of visitors/ viewers/ advertisers/ publishers. If you want to talk ethics, why do you think soooooo many people spam blog, it’s because it works. PPP’s marketing strategy works, and there’s no denying it. They’ve been listed in a Top100 Web 2.0 list after all, and have taken some decent VC funding from some of the big names.

  6. I’m sorry, but a marketing campaign based on garnering as much attention as possible without respect for anything else is a bad move. If ethics is entirely irrelevant, why didn’t PPP just go all out and REALLY grab attention? Why not resort to racism in order to attract attention? (see Sony’s PSP marketing campaign) Why not be really unethical and kill someone, leaving the dead body slumped over a computer with the PPP homepage open? Ethics is relevant to marketing campaigns: that’s the primary principle of ethics. It affects everything everyone does.

    Sure, PPP’s tactics of pissing off a lot of people in the “blogosphere” have probably brought them a lot of customers in a very short period of time. However, the tactics that it resorted to have also greatly limited the maximum popularity of their service. PPP will always have a taboo attached to it and a reputation for running a service that deceives customers. In the short term PPP may be doing well, but it’ll never grow because of the way it was originally founded.

    Also, you cannot use the example as a being listed in the Top100 Web 2.0 list to justify the success of this company: http://valleywag.com/tech/tony-perkins/the-making-of-always-ons-top-100-233680.php