There are some great examples of how ideas spread in his ebook on the Top 10 unsigned bands from MySpace who just give away their music as a means of promoting themselves. Artists like Bec Hollcraft who know full well the goal is attracting enough attention and leveraging buzz marketing to get a record deal.
It reminds me of the Grateful Dead who were hip to this idea long before Bec was even born. They had special taper sections where deadheads could tape FOR FREE the bands show and reproduce it for anyone who asked (so long as there was no exchange of money, which was one thing the band was against).
Its brings into view the theory that the best way to spread ideas is to give them away for free - then why do B2B marketers have whitepapers hidden behind signup form?
While I believe in the theory - I am also a prime offender of the theory - so I went back over our data to test this theory and here is what I found:
A third of the papers downloaded on our corporate site are protected
That means free whitepapers were downloaded 67% more than, what we like to call, protected whitepapers.
If you think about the last few products you purchased. Did you see an ad on TV? Did you answer a direct mail piece? Go to a tradeshow to learn more about it? If you're like most people, you didn't do any of those things - you just went online.
82% of C level execs said they use search engines to get business information Source: B2B Magazine
So it begs the question - why are we marketing in the same old ways?
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