At Adtech last year, a well known broker was complaining to me that since pay per click advertising came out, there really haven’t been any worthwhile new forms of driving traffic. Especially compared to the past when there were new forms of traffic being developed quite frequently.
Well, there’s a new form of traffic around the corner. I’m calling it "trusted traffic". Facebook is the first company to deliver this, but others certainly will as well. It’s basically a form of virally driven traffic delivered via an application from a social network. Before I go into more details, let me tell you what it can offer you.
Volume? Let’s talk volume!
Facebook is a major social networking site and has recently surpassed EBay in total traffic volume. They are apparently on track to overtake Google. A year or so ago, they launched their internal photo sharing application, effectively like Flickr, but for their internal network. Volume took off, and Facebook now has as much photo traffic as ALL THE OTHER PHOTO SHARING SITES COMBINED- DOUBLED! Yes, Facebook has double the traffic of every other photosharing site added together. But that’s only a part of the overall functionality of Facebook...
This same platform that drove tremendous volume for their photo sharing application is now available to anyone who wants to make an application for it! James Hong, the founder of HotOrNot.com is calling this "the new internet". And, this is a brand new opportunity since it was just launched the other week.
So now Facebook is letting you drive traffic from their site, the same traffic source that is larger than eBay.
How to get trusted traffic to work
What they are doing is allowing the general population to create applications that will run within their network. So if you develop a simple website that does something the users like, they will all "install" it to their profiles. And, since social networking sites are so inherently viral, the application will automatically spread its way across the entire network. An application itself can be extremely simple – one from the Washington Post allows you to answer a couple of questions and then displays on your profile what your political leaning is.
Facebook is taking a very hands off approach, they will let you keep all ad revenue or processing revenue you generate via the site (and they are including a special checkout application to make it easy to bill users). For this community I think the real value is in the lead generation opportunities. When an application is installed, you automatically get access to a user’s data on their profile. I’m not quite clear what this means, but it may even be enough to qualify for a lead in some markets, eg email, name, phone.
But the key behind this is that it has to be a GOOD application, one that friends learn about from their friends. That’s why I’m calling this "trusted traffic". Running the latest "free plus shipping" offer won’t work here. It needs to be something people want (yeah, sure, everyone wants free plus shipping. ;-) ).
So if you can come up with an application that is interesting enough to a lot of users on Facebook AND which can generate leads, you’re going to be doing very well. It might be time to get that second aircraft you always wanted.
Viral marketing is a big deal
I always thought direct response marketing was the fastest way to drive traffic, but after consulting with some different clients I learned I was wrong – viral marketing done properly makes direct response marketing look smalltime in terms of volume that can be driven. As a simple comparison, just look at the market value of the biggest direct response companies (like who – Rodale?) vs. the biggest viral marketing companies (eg skype, paypal).
Trusted Traffic is part of the next wave of traffic I was describing in my article here about the impact on the CPA/Brokerage industry: http://www.dmconfidential.com/blogs/category/Affiliate_Marketing/1227/
And it’s already starting...
The applications that are on Facebook today are simple and not very useful. The platform itself is also not very well developed yet – these are the early days, so everything is new. But here are a couple of applications which are already on the site:
Win an iPod
One programmer built a win an iPod application, the idea being you refer friends to the application, who use your install code to refer other friends, and at the end you can win an iPod. It still looks a little buggy, but the idea is interesting. http://apps.Facebook.com/the_win/
Horoscopes
There is a horoscope application which plugs into people’s profiles, giving their daily horoscope. Naturally this application is already one of the most popular on all of Facebook. It doesn’t seem like this one is being used for lead generation yet, but it seems like it could be a good source of astrology leads: http://apps.facebook.com/horoscopes/view_all.php
EF Global print
This is a very lame application which is supposed to show users where they have been and where they want to go on a world map. But it is interesting because it sends users directly to a lead generation form, so the developers intent was probably to generate leads from Facebook. It doesn’t seem to be working very well since there has been quite a lot of negative user feedback. But this may be the first lead generation attempt on the Facebook platform. http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2329512140
The opportunity is huge.
If you can figure out how to get a lead generation application viral (just like the Gratis Internet guys did with the Free iPod), there’s a huge opportunity waiting right around the corner. And this isn’t just Facebook, other social networking sites will also be opening up their infrastructure soon too, one major social networking site has already confirmed this to me.
This is just like Microsoft did back in the day when they opened up their operating system for 3rd party developers (which Apple didn’t do anywhere near as well). From that time came billion dollar companies like Electronic Arts, Intuit and Adobe. Now Facebook has done the same thing.
Right now there’s a huge open first movers advantage for those that can get this working quickly. If you’d like some help figuring out how to make your lead generation application viral, feel free to drop me a line.
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