Eyeball Marketing – Are You a Pioneer?

by Sean Purcell

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

What do running shoes, firefighters’ air tanks and cordless drills have in common? They are all direct spin-offs from the Apollo Space Missions (and before anyone comments, neither Teflon nor Tang was a spin-off from the Apollo missions or NASA in general).  Why is this important to practitioners of the 2.0 arts? Because Social Media Marketing is, at this time, a lot like the Apollo Space Mission.  It is young and unexplored.  It is obviously a new way of doing something and most would agree that it is quite powerful, but many more question its real use.   Apollo was questioned.  Many accused the entire program of being a boondoggle: powerful, but of little practical use.  “What is the point, even if you do succeed?”  Sound familiar?

The Eyeball Marketing theory is simple: if you can put enough eyeballs on you, someone will pay to access the brains (and wallets) behind those eyeballs – might even be you.  There is no shortage of people with products or services to sell that will gladly pay you to get in front of your group.  This is the basis of most large, multi-day seminars.  (You didn’t think they were paying those big names full boat to come and hock their books did you?)  Lots of people have something to sell, but few have the ability, the reach and the vision to put butts in seats and eyeballs facing forward.  Quick self quiz: how many of you have paid for leads in the past?  If you have then you are someone with a service to sell willing to pay someone else for the eyeballs they generate.

I suggest that there are two basic forms of marketing.  When we talk about past clients, sphere of influence and a community of raving fans we are talking about marketing to a target.  When we talk about hyper-locals, mass mailings and Google juice we are talking about marketing for eyeballs.  They are not mutually exclusive; in fact, the goal of eyeball marketing is to gather enough people into a specific group that you can market to a target.  Blanket an area with your bumper stickers, kiss their babies, give your stump speeches and create a community of raving fans… then be elected mayor (Mayoral Marketing).

So what does this have to do with NASA, BHB and the price of tea in China?  I have been thinking a lot about this ever since Brian Brady launched one of his rockets two weeks ago.  You may remember a couple of posts about Ashley Dupree that took BloodhoundBlog to #1.  It caused quite a stir in clicks and comments here at BHB as well as other sites.  Some accused the author of gaming Google.  Not so.  Was he writing with an eye toward Google? He wouldn’t be the Great and Powerful Oz if he didn’t.  But that was not the point and never is.  Brian saw an SMM event happening and it got him to thinking.  He then played with it and voila: a rocket launch that circled the earth and returned safely.  What was the purpose? What was the direct benefit? Does there have to be one?  Just a whole lot of eyeballs.  Social Media Marketing is still in its infancy.  The pioneers playing with it right now are building rockets, the limits of which are unknown.  Often times we explore for the sake of exploring. We take things apart because we want to know how they work.  We do not put rockets into space to make better running shoes.  But we do have better running shoes because we put rockets into space.

What will be the benefit of the most recent experiment to come from BHB’s mad scientist lab? I will leave that to better minds than my own.  I expect many answers to be given at Unchained.  But I rest comfortable in the knowledge that there will be benefits.  If you can generate eyeballs, the sky is the limit.