The goal of marketing in a Web 2.0 (or Mobile 2.0) world is to identify clusters of users interested in your product and willing to help you promote it (because they benefit in some way themselves). This dynamic has led to the creation and success of widgets - tiny applications that help web users accomplish some task, from looking at a calendar to playing a game to giving money to a cause or political candidates.
Old school readers remember when "widget" was the all-purpose word used in marketing and sales pitches.
If Company ABC is making widgets that sell for $20, and Company XYZ comes in and begins selling widgets at $18, how much money should be spent on marketing to protect the $20 price?
Widgets are now much, much more, and it seems every company has one. The hope is to embed your widget on the millions of blogs, MySpace and Facebook pages, and thus create cheap marketing while giving the users some value.
It's a great strategy, at least when the widget is cool and people adopt it. A company called MoFuse has taken this strategy and added it to the mobile world. Victor at Mobile Marketing Watch chats with David at MoFuse on their success in widgeting their mobile marketing.
David though, emailed me for a different reason, he wanted me to check out their new SMS Widget, I’ve got it loaded to the right of this post on my site. From a mobile marketing perspective this is brilliant! Wanna know why? MoFuse is doing something that mobileStorm talks about all the time. They’re building their mobile marketing database by giving out this widget and getting folks to sign up for mobile blog delivery. Too, they’re helping me promote my mobile web site. Pretty cool idea huh? Hey David, are we gonna get stats on how many folks actually sign up through the widget?
The next question is how your company adds value to its users, and if you see how this can be used to build an army of brand evangelists in promoting your product. Can you integrate your website and mobile gadgets? Is your marketing firm aware of how to? (ed. hey, would this be a good place to insert a plug for blast marketing services and products?) It sure would.
Thanks for the shoutout Jim!
You're right, the widget must have a usefulness and cool factor or it's not going to work.
I recently yanked the BlogRush Widget from my blog because it was all hype and didn't deliver for me. I had some traffic early on but 80% of the traffic was estimated to be received in the first couple of days so naturally I became skeptical that the traffic was actual real traffic.
Posted by: vic berggren | October 23, 2007 at 05:23 AM