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August 18, 2005
trust (or no lipstick) marketing
I'm always having to describe SpreadFirefox. Other than it's a big 'ol experiment that's driven awareness, usage of Firefox/Mozilla products, it's also several concepts:
- open source marketing
- community marketing
- and trust marketing
We're actually defining all these as we go. I'm not aware of too many open source/community marketing projects out there. Trust and marketing don't often go hand in hand. So I think we're defining trust marketing too.
There's only been two places I've seen talk of trust marketing, this one article trying rename permission marketing to trust marketing and Steve Rubel.
"Permission marketing" apparently is all about opt-outs and opt-ins. Steve's brief mention of trust marketing is around citizen journalism and bloggers, and trusting your social circle which is a limited definition.
Well, trust marketing is all about telling the truth (easy enough) and being very open. It's not overpromising, it's not saying something is the best thing in the world, it's not saying we've solved the problem when we haven't, it's about being matter-of-fact, it's about being up front with problems, it's about going above and beyond when you mess up (over communicating). No one wants to be tricked into things.
Anyone notice that the prices at the Mozilla Store aren't $5.99, $14.99, or $19.99. The prices are like $6.00, $14.00, $17.00. So random and so refreshing. BTW, Windows XP SP2 is $189.99. So not only are you getting price gouged, you're getting tricked while you're at it. It's $200 for Win XP SP2, and what's the $50 difference between Home and Pro again.
The other piece of trust marketing is the word of mouth recommendation. It's much better to hear about something from your family, friend or co-worker then some spokesperson, analyst, etc. Trust marketing is also about helping that along, making sure folks are able to say great things about your product but also that people are equipped to know what to say when they do make that recommendation. So it's tell your friends and co-workers about Firefox, here's a blog space where you can do it, add this button to your site, get it installed on your family's computer, etc, and also some of the things you should point out are the tabbed browsing, popup block features, the security benefits, your favorite features, etc.
So that's trust marketing. Telling the truth about your products (no lipstick), being good to people, giving people an opportunity to recommend your product, and helping people come up with what to say when they do want to recommend your product.
Posted by rebron at August 18, 2005 10:10 PM
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