RIPPLE100 Micromarketing

No, this is not about Twitter. Please.

This is about getting big by going small, new rule of marketing for 2010. Big is the end, small the means. You want growth – bigger audience, more eyeballs, longer dwell rates, more productive conversion funnel, higher lifetime value from better customers, higher ROI? Look to these 9 reasons why you should micromarket in 2010.

Quick definition. At Ripple100, micromarketing means highly targeted marketing campaigns designed to unlock precise points in your sales funnel – you micromarket as often as you like using DIY software (read and write forms, really) that deliver and distribute each campaign as microsites, aka ripples.

1. Targeted. Every marketer has multiple constituencies, but that doesn’t mean every campaign should have multiple audiences. In micromarketing, you keep it to: one. One audience. One problem. One solution. One message. Throw out all other audiences/messages – that’s what you have other micro campaigns for.

2. Authentic. A byproduct of targeting, but worth its own mention. Keeping it real is like keeping your eyes on your date, nothing else. It separates you from 99% of marketing campaigns (ads) that are full of hype, spin, and crap – because they’re hobbled by roving eye syndrome: they mix one too many messages for one too many audiences in one campaign.

3. Actionable. Another byproduct of targeting, this ones leads straight to win vs. lose. Your call to action (god help you if you don’t have one), if addressed to one audience and leveraged on one value proposition, results in a higher response rate. Response is why you market, and in today’s tug-at-all-directions media, response is why you must micromarket.

4. Mobile. Micromarketing keeps content short. Short forces you to the point. Short and to the point make it easy for audiences to get your message and pass it on (in our words, to ripple). That’s how micromarketing makes your campaign mobile – it travels and sticks to the point of impact on your conversion funnel. Note: we don’t mean Twitter short – 140 characters in the hands of most authors is not enough to get a substantive message across.

5. Portable. If mobile means campaigns travel and stick from person to person, portability means they travel and stick across multiple platforms. Campaigns should port well whether they’re shared via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Email, or good old fashioned word of mouth. Good micromarketing works online and off.

6. Fresh. Nobody wants to see yesterday’s news, so why are we looking at yesterday’s ads? Micromarketing allows you to whip out a campaign everyday, week, or month – as often as you like, as there’s something new to share. Instead of one website “about us”, you get many microsites about what’s going on now. Micromarketing keeps you top of mind, fresh.

7. Ubiquitous. Ubiquity alone is noise and spam, in your face. But ubiquity combined with targeted, authentic, actionable, mobile, portable, and fresh means you’ve just maximized the chances that the right customer will find you for the right reasons at the right time. Think about this: there’s an entire industry called Search Engine Optimization that’s focused on helping Google find your website – your 1 needle in the haystack. Micromarketing is a smarter solution: many needles, ubiquitous needles in the haystack, and needles that have their hooks open!

8. Precise. Everything above is for your customers. This one’s for you. For your conversion funnel: the precise point of attrition you need to fix at any given time. Micro marketing allows you to focus – on awareness-building, or engagement, or trial, or the first repeat purchase that really constitutes customer acquisition, or frequency, or average purchase basket, or cross-sales, or up-sales, or referrals, or win-back. The key word is “OR”. Pick your precise point of attrition, drop all others. Fix it and you’re one step closer to maximizing lifetime value – i.e., you can move onto the next precise point of attrition, and so on, but not before fixing the current bottleneck.

9. Accessible. For all the reasons above, micromarketing only works when you can do it often. It must be simple and affordable so that you can micromarket – run a new campaign – everyday, week, month, as often as you need. No other marketing format does this – makes targeted, authentic, actionable, mobile, portable, fresh, ubiquitous, and precise accessible to mainstreet marketers. The game is all about who can play. For micromarketing to work, it must shatter boundaries of price and complexity so that anyone can. As we say, if you can read and write you can ripple.

We’ll continue to write about micro marketing, do case studies and examples next. Meantime, get your own micromarketing campaign in 30 minutes – free!