Will Marlow

I received an invitation yesterday to attend a barbecue from an old friend from college.  He just returned from a "Birthright Israel" trip, which is a Jewish-Israeli charity that pays (over $400 million over the last ten years) to bring Jewish people who live in other countries to visit Israel for 10 day trips.

I just learned that upon return from the trip, Birthright Israel will reimburse the travelers for the costs associated with a welcome home party for themselves and as many guests as they wish to invite.  All the traveler needs to do is take a photograph of all the guests with the food and drinks, and they will be reimbursed. 

From a word of mouth marketing perspective, this is very, very smart.  If you are spending a huge amount of money on one key, necessary activity that is responsible for most of your costs, you need to continually ask yourself: how can I derive more value from that activity?  For example, if you have a fundraising event or a reunion once a year, but you don't arrange for a photographer (or if you don't position disposable digital cameras at strategic locations for the guests to use), then you lose out on gaining lots of permanent assets that you could use to promote next year's event.  You're already paying for the cost of the event - if you pay a little more, you can exponentially increase impact.

Or, if you are doing anything that is truly remarkable (in other words, something that people like to talk about, such as traveling), but you aren't encouraging people to talk to their friends in a number of ways about it (both offline at a party, or online on Twitter and Facebook), you're missing out on very important opportunities.

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Your only marketing challenge is to make it really easy for your customers, friends and fans to talk about you.  The state of Montana, where I'm on my honeymoon right now, fits into this category.  Anyone who happens to drive through Montana notices its beauty, and some people (like me) feel compelled to take photographs and share them with other people.  Therefore, from a marketing perspective, the state of Montana has a simple challenge: encourage and allow visitors to share their experiences with their friends by maintaining an active Facebook page, encouraging photography competitions, sponsoring Artist-in-Residence programs, etc., all of which are done here.

Life is easy when you are naturally remarkable.  For the rest of us, we need to do everything Montana does (i.e., enable our customers, friends and fans to talk about us in a variety of ways), but we also need to work really, really hard to be remarkable.

PS - You can check out some more of my photos from Montana, including beautiful waterfalls, mountains, and a black bear that was about 40 feet away from me, on Flickr here.  

I talk to a lot of people about how to make sure that the Internet is filled with positive stories about their organizations.  Recently I was talking to a reporter who was writing a story about "Googlewashing," which is a term I don't like, because it implies that you are somehow removing negative stories from Google, and that's simply impossible (just ask any celebrity who has ever tried to remove a sex tape from the Internet).

I was quoted in the story that the reporter ended up writing, and in my quote I outline exactly the same strategy that I advise to most clients: