What is Fauxtivation?
It’s hiding the ball from your customers to try to create a motivation to engage with your company that they wouldn’t naturally have, i.e., don’t need and don’t want.
Example: “emailing” travel reservation info that consists of a link to a website rather than, you know, the actual itinerary info. (Tip: that means you, Expedia.)
History: probably a holdover from the days of hits, page views, and monetizing eyeballs.
Also seen when “giving away” an eBook that actually requires you to confirm your email, ostensibly for the purpose of getting a link to the file but really for the purpose of adding you to the author’s email marketing list. (Tech tip: you need my email if you’re going to email me; if the PDF is hosted on your website, you could, you know, provide a link.)
BUT SEE Copyblogger/Chris Garrett’s Authority Rules ebook and Seth Godin’s recent What Matters Now.
If your business model or marketing plan hinges on getting people to give you an email address so you can send them things they haven’t actually asked for (and “opt-in” isn’t the same as asking for your marketing pitch), you might want to rethink that strategy or at least figure out how you’re going to move away from it. Remember, your customers are your friends. If you treat them that way, they might just become fans.
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blogging,
marketing,
productivity,
tips
http://unclutterer.com/2009/03/30/swap-baby-goods/
This site recommendation falls into my category of “they have a word for that: it’s called Craigslist.” Seriously, there are too many “me-too” sites on the web that don’t add sufficient value to really, deep down, justify the cognitive overhead of keeping track of something new. I’m not saying that a new social network site doesn’t make sense — it just has to provide enough value to make itself a destination. The intersection between with long-tail strategies and network effects is difficult for many people to model. It may be that the capital required to set up a site like this is so low and the ongoing operating costs so tiny that whatever modest conversion there is on PPC ads makes it cash-flow positive. But my question, I guess, is whether the bolt-on features below are so distinctive or important that they make the site better than craigslist for the primary feature: listing your stuff so someone else will take it.
So this site has some extra discussion forums (nothing new there) and list of “deals”, and a critical map/location-based finder for the stuff on there. Of course, there are two columns of ads on some pages (google on one side, yahoo on the other). Kinda funny for a “give your free stuff away” site. The proof is in the pudding, I guess.
Tagged as:
productivity
