SeattlePI on the beast that is MySpace:

“More and more businesses from around the world are setting up camp on MySpace, using their bit of digital real estate within the Web site like lighthouses bordering a dark sea that, with a little luck — and enough approved “friend” requests — guide customers to their doorstep.”

It’s a good article covering an increasingly important online marketing channel. Read it here.

Do advertising and branding opportunities exist in the world virtual world of online games and communities? You bet they do! But where to start right? I know how you feel. Luckily the always excellent TrendWatching.com takes us inside the virtual world with their latest trend report titled YOUNIVERSE.

“Understandably, the focus within virtual communities has been predominantly about integrating offline goods, services and experiences into virtual worlds. As online worlds mature, ‘production’ solely for online use may become the norm, before potentially moving on to invade the ‘real world’. Which means selling opportunities more than anything else. Look at what aforementioned Nike, Habbo, Virtual Kingdom, and American Apparel have planned or have already rolled out, and what other brands like Puma, Nissan are doing in this field.”

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time but havn’t yet taken the time to participate in. That all has to change! While its still early, you can’t argue with the popularity of these worlds (50+ million Habbo Hotel users for example). Real people, many of them yours and my customers, are spending a lot of their valuable time there.

Getting started is going to be the hardest part. There’s a tonne of information to absorb and attempt to understand. Luckily TrendWatching’s report is an excellent primer that helps us dive into the ocean of information, and better yet, try out the virtual world for ourselves.

Be sure to put on your marketing hat for a couple hours this week and check out TrendWatching’s Youniverse Report

More wise words from Seth:

Great marketing pleases everyone on the team, sooner or later. But at the beginning, great marketing pleases almost no one. At the beginning, great marketing is counter-intuitive, non-obvious, challenging and apparently risky. Of course your friends, shareholders, stakeholders and bosses won’t like it. But they’re not doing the marketing, you are.

Derek Featherstone shares 10 ideas to help improve your businesses. His number 1 piece of advice - start a blog!

“I can attribute at least six figures of income to my blog (that doesn’t include the two decimal places!). Can you afford not to try it for yourself?”

Check out this video from a Chinese company. Is this you?
Don’t work so hard.

Note: This is a good example of viral marketing.

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through viral processes similar to the spread of an epidemic. It is word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it harnesses the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.

Millions of people use online mapping and yellow pages applications from Google, Yahoo or MSN to view aerial photography and satellite images of virtually any address on Earth.

To capitalize on this trend, some innovative marketers are getting out their ladders to do a little painting. Take retailer Target for example:

As WebProNews points out - How easy would it be to paint the roof of your business with a company logo, web address, and phone number? As aerial images are updated at the Googleplex and as people bring up an address in your vicinity, there’s your logo smiling at them from below.

Update: A couple of innovative startups are looking to capitalize on this trend. Wired points to RoofShout and RoofAds, two companies now offering “your ad here” on rooftops.

I used to recommend GotMarketing as an email marketing delivery tool. In the last year or so however, I’ve been less than impressed. So… today I tried Vertical Response and I gotta say - it puts Got to shame. The reporting and features are leaps and bounds better, and, on a pay-per-use basis, Vertical Response is loads cheaper. A Got Marketing campaign was going to cost me $39.40USD for 355 emails, Vertical Response was just $5.33USD.

My new recommendation for a do it yourself email marketing tool - Vertical Response.

And, if you want your campaigns professionally designed and delivered, get in touch with Greg and friends at Industry Mailout.

Don’t sweat about marketing. Focus on building an amazing product. Your customers will take care of the rest.

[Watch the video]
Created by one of Google’s growing legion of evangelists

I just had a fascinating conversation with a woman named Linda Samis, who started a company called Canaqua less than a year ago. Linda told me she’s never made a single sales call, yet today, her water is available at luxury stores across Europe and Asia.

How does this happen?

Linda says it all starts with a fantastic product. “We have been like the little fish in a big pond, but we are breaking through at an enormous clip. People around the world, recognize a great product when they see it.”

Yep. That’s true, it starts there. But…having a great product is simply the cost of entry in today’s market. That alone is not good enough. There’s no doubt that there a lot of factors at work in Canaqua’s success, but I’m betting the elegant design of her packaging is largely responsible for her traction.

It’s simple, it’s clean and it tells me a story about “living well” without even picking it up.

Wonderful design = wonderful word of mouth.
Steve Jobs gets that.
Linda Samis gets that.

What about you? Is your product so pretty that people will want to talk about it?

p.s. I almost forgot the best part of this story. Linda has also never hired a branding agency or conducted a focus group. Her son came up with the name and designed the logo and her daughter does all the photography.

p.p.s. I’m going to meet with Linda in a couple weeks to talk about how she can use the Internet to keep the buzz alive. I’m also very excited to try the water!

According to consulting giant McKinsey, about two-thirds of all economic activity in the US is influenced by shared opinions about a product, brand or service. To help make some sense of that, WOMMA (The Word of Mouth Marketing Association) has partnered with eMarketer to deliver a report examining why so many online marketers are engaging in word of mouth or viral campaigns - and why even more plan to do so in the future.

According to the report, the top ten reasons are:

1. The consumer is in control
2. There is a growing distrust of advertising messages
3. Empowered consumers are not just negative, they are fighting back
4. There is a marked increase in online advertising
5. Media fragmentation is causing marketers are shifting from mass advertising to targeting efforts
6. Email and other interactive platforms make it easy to employ viral programs
7. Word of mouth marketing is relatively free advertising
8. New tools can now track and measure online word of mouth
9. Online word of mouth marketing campaigns have a long shelf life
10. Remarkable offline marketing campaigns can ripple on to the web

The full, paid version of the report is available here. [via Church of the Customer]