Maybe I had too much coffee this morning BUT I’m positively bursting with enthusiasm about the concept of Marketing as Service as both a timely and powerful way to cut through.On the timeliness front, consider Gordon Gould’s commentary today on MediaPost called “A Recommendation Economy.” This well constructed piece first confronts the challenge Social Networks are having converting their ever growing user bases into revenue streams. And then goes on to point out why these networks represent such untapped potential:
- According to a 2007 McKinsey study, fully 27% of all personal conversations in the U.S. involve some serious discussion of products or services.
- An eMarketer report on social shopping by Jeffrey Grau recently reported that the most credible source of product information came from “people like me” with a full 60% of users saying this is the best way to learn about an item.
Which leads me to the recently launched VISA Business Network on Facebook that I believe could be massively successful AND become the new poster child for Marketing as Service. I strongly encourage you to visit this site and watch the videos that explain the program with real life examples of how small businesses can tap into the power of Facebook. VISA is bringing real utility to Small Business through this $2 million partnership with Facebook including a $100 credit that 20,000 small businesses can use to engage customers and prospects via Facebook ads.The formula here is reasonably simple: create a service that customers and prospects can use, make it easy for them to share this service with their friends and use advertising to jump start initial interest in the program. Nonetheless, the VISA Business Network on Facebook is ground breaking in my mind given the scale, quality and perspicacity. VISA is not just dipping their toes into this, they are diving head first. According to an article on B2B, “Visa also partnered with AllBusiness, Entrepreneur, Forbes.com, Google, Inc., Microsoft Corp. and The Wall Street Journal to provide small businesses with news, commentary and tool kits to help them manage their businesses.”Perspicacity? You bet. Watching the nicely produced videos, you will see like I did that the customers of many small businesses are indeed on Facebook. They are shopping every day for eyeglasses, cheese or what not at small establishments and then telling their friends about the experience. By helping these businesses connect with their customers online, VISA is providing a truly valuable service that should help the cash registers ring all the way around. We can certainly expect MasterCard and American Express to be watching this social networking experiment very carefully and serve up their own iteration any time now. Undoubtedly, they won’t be giving credit where credit is due!