Tony Hsieh isn’t just an author of a best selling book or CEO of one of the fastest growing companies in America. He is a brilliant marketer. One of the most important tools for his book was using the book to raise the awareness of his company. Look at some of the ways he did this:
1. He created a dedicated blog (www.deliveringhappinessbook.com) about the book complete with menu, resources, bibliography. It’s visually interesting
2. He created discussion threads and thereby started creating a community of followers
3. He included a link with a graphic to order the book – just in case you didn’t read it.
4. He included an invitation to bloggers – his best method of creating word of mouth
5. He tweets about it and lists recent tweets
6. He includes a Facebook link to like it
7. He created Meetups in areas across the county
8. He invites and lists inspiring stories from other business owners about using his process
9. He uses pictures of people and great graphics to create visual excitement and interest
10. Saved the best for last. He identified a conference that is very popular and includes the attendance of the world’s best bloggers and rented a baby blue bus for free rides. The rides were fifteen minutes up and down the streets of Austin, TX where the conference was held. The bus had a bar, ipod plug-ins, and a balloon artist. Great, short 15 minuite conversations were held, connections made and an immense amount of word of mouth advertising was created at launch.
Great story, about the blue bus. I know another company that reserved a night cruise on Lake Michigan for a conference in Chicago, and drained the actual conference’s events on-land that night.
Scott,
I really think it takes the intention to think about what would make a huge difference to customers. I can only imagine a boat trip on Lake Michigan with the city of Chicago’s amazing architectual skyline as the backdrop to know that it created a huge amount of word of mouth and probably many happy customers as well!