Seth Godin (Seth’s blog) has written several books on a term I believed he coined, ‘viral marketing’. I was talking to some folks at TechEd this week about ways to generate buzz for their products, and two topics dominated my advice: blogs and viral marketing. If you’re reading this then I probably don’t have to explain why I think blogs are an important way to spread the word about something, but the latter may be unfamiliar to you. If you’re interested in marketing (or sales, or business in general) then I would recommend you pick up Seth’s book, Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends and Friends Into Customers. I haven’t yet read the follow up title Unleashing the Ideavirus but it’s on my shelf and I’m planning to do so.

Seth’s argument is mainly that consumers today are completely overwhelmed with things vying for their attention, so any traditional marketing or advertising approach that tries to interrupt whatever the user is doing in order to steal away their attention is going to see limited success. The better approach he offers is to get the customer to agree to invest some of their time/attention first, usually by offering them something in return. This then establishes a relationship which the company can foster and use to build into a long-term relationship with the customer.