Social Traffic | Social Media Marketing

How the long journey ties in:

As discussed, for over two years now I have been writing posts about the gaps that I saw prevalent in the event marketing industry at large. My Event Marketing application was being built to bridge those gaps and meet those needs. Instead of just just selling my app, I wanted to educate people on how much more value they can get if they only change their perspective about events and event launches – regardless of whether they would eventually use our app or not. I identified a long time ago that the methodology I used to market physical events  through nightclubs and dance parties could only be done effectively through word of mouth. Worth of mouth hand-to-hand marketing is the only form of marketing that comes with social proof built into every ad even if the audience for each run can be as little as one person.

Anything can be an event. I built my backpacker chain through applying these event marketing strategies. Whilst my competitors opened their doors 24/7 paying receptionists to field inquiries and walk-ins around the clock, we locked our doors. We demanded a minimum stay of 4 weeks per customer and promoted recurring events week in, week out.  One of these events was the Sleeping With The Enemy house vacancy tours. Instead of  showing beds coming free at random we insisted all occupants give 1 week departure notice and sold all of the beds coming free in any given week off three scheduled tours.

These weren’t just any tours. They were held at dinner time when the houses were most active. We were selling people to people, atmosphere, a story or an experience they could treasure for the rest of their lives – that’s what our customers were looking for. They were not in the market for the softest mattress or the nicest couch. Three nights a week for 3 hours is all we spent to focus on sales. We employed the backpacker who had the most likable personality to drive a bus load of 22 backpackers from property to property viewing vacancies for that week in two tours, three nights a week. To engage the occupants of each house into selling it, we offered $75 commission per sales into each property that Sleeping With The Enemy would give back into the house kitty reserved for house dinners or community building house nights out.

We offered hundreds of dollars in bonus payments to any houses who went the extra mile each week depending on how many beds we needed to sell in any given property. The houses would literally do stage shows, singing and dancing to convince prospects to choose their community to sleep with. Other houses would use reverse psychology and hold interviews putting the onus on the applicant to pass a house judging panel for inclusion into their community.

Through a combination of ;

1. Thinking outside the square in taking a traditional backpacker business model of selling beds to a transient prospect base, into a community-centric model of homes by allowing transient people to stop and build emotion-charged relationships for a minimum of 4 weeks.

2. Taking the sales process of what was essentially renting beds as any tourist accommodation or real estate agent does every day, and building a revolving door event marketing strategy to it.

3. Engaging my customer base lead by evangelists into taking ownership of what was 28 mini events within each property three times weekly – we built one of the largest backpacker businesses in Sydney that ran at 97% occupancy year round. The next best occupancy rate was in the mid 70%.

Our vacancy tours were legendary. Our driver and office staff were famous for some of the stunts they would play on over zealous prospects desperate for acceptance into one of our communities. We had situations where 3 people fighting for one particular vacancy would race 5km on foot, back to our office to secure it above the other two.

I identified Social Media as the vehicle through which I would replicate my ability to build physical communities, dependent on the Social proof only word of mouth marketing could deliver across distance and time. I knew from the first day I set my eye’s on My Space some six years ago that building communities across Social Media was my calling. That’s when I set about selling my capital intensive and geographically challenged backpacker business to focus on doing what I am doing today.

My point here is this. If you are a person who is entering Social Media without a long term plan or vision because the barriers are low, or because you are under the impression that it’s easy to make money online whilst working from home. Think again.

The value I represent to most who follow me diligently today is that I have invested a hell of a lot of time and intellectual property into teaching people how to not only be web2.0-savvy, successful, and consequently wealthier. I have spent two years doing it for thousands of people for very little financial gain, my motivation has been to build authority in this space and most importantly become know for adding genuine value as a way of building trust. I don’t care if people like me. I care that people respect and trust me for the value I represent to them in their business efforts. I know that people who respect my time the most (by committing to extracting the most value from it) are the people who respect me the most and that this respect runs both ways. I also know that the more people I find who I can share this mutual respect with, the more people likely to bond with me in the same way will find me through these relationships. As my network of quality relationships grows, the goodwill carries over to my company brands and the bigger these brands become the easier it is for me to leverage other start ups off any success already enjoyed.

I do all this knowing the key to my success being the people I don’t waste any of my time on for whatever the reason because its reflective of who I do invest my time and knowledge into.  Any business plan I commit to these days is a 3 to 5 year commitment and most won’t forecast profit until year 2 or 3 at the earliest. All of the time and money invested up to this point is money at risk . I could invest in businesses start ups that aim to be profitable within 6 weeks – but I learned when I was very young that financial success and the frequency by which people do their financial planning are directly relative. When I started out in business I would manage my finances daily. Today I plan my finances over 5 yearly cycles. I am striving to earn enough through my current start ups to allow me to do my financial planning by the decade.

Commitment is an interesting characteristic. I can only leave it to your imagination to see how much work, time, risk and commitment has gone into my Events listed and Social Traffic start ups. This level of commitment is what it takes if you want to take any massive idea and turn it into a global company. It won’t happen unless the person with the original vision has the passion and commitment to make it happen. It’s that simple. Know one else will fight that hard for it. Plenty will get on board to help achieve a vision but very few will take full ownership of it in a way that the person who gave birth to it will.

Currently my Event’s Listed 5 year master plan is just 2.2 years in and is moving into Phase 3 now.  We’re still months away from officially launching the application to the public. Social Traffic which started out as a book on event marketing in Social Media was actually a small pre-launch campaign for Events Listed, designed to enhance my reputation as an authority in this space. Social Traffic has since evolved into a massive opportunity in its own right. Social Traffic and the Events Listed Social Media learning center were planned to be little more than benefits to Events Listed members. Because of the value these so called fringe benefits have come to represent to those who have enjoyed them… they have since become the nucleus of their own start-up opportunity. Remember all this is a culmination of not just 2.2 years of hard work and sweat but by putting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cold hard cash on the line.

What’s worth pointing out here is that everyone (except my now partner) in the EventsListed team was paid cash wages over the past 2.2 years. None of them will earn a share in any financial windfall that we enjoy through our overall success. That windfall rightly belongs to the people who absorb the risk of failure.

My partner in EventsListed is John Lester, John’s share looks like its going to be worth well over a million and a half dollars within the next 12 months. John took a risk in me and this opportunity by investing his time and expertise into the EventsListed opportunity over the past 1.5 years without taking any money off the table. It’s John’s mindset that will have earned him this 1.5 million dollars. His attitude is all that’s different about John’s outcome from a staff member paid $80,000 over the same period. That and the fact John added 5 times more value than the staff member on $80K because John’s focus is on success, not $80,000. Knowing success will come if he creates enough value having faith in the fact those around him won’t let him down. No, It’s not that simple. EventsListed has hit that many hurdles in our journey that would have broken the spirit of all my staff four or five times over had they not been receiving their cash compensation each week to keep them on the job. At no stage has John ever shown signs of quitting or walking away because it looked like his time investment may not be paying off in the lows.

It’s having a partner / lieutenant like John on board EventsListed under a deal that represents 100% commitment, trust and faith in ourselves and each other that will carry Events Listed to success. It all comes down to the mindset. With success comes more trust and faith between us which makes commitment that much easier. Likewise John is enjoying more value through the experience than he could buy through 6 university degree’s. I work with John directly day in day out. I teach John everything I spent 20 years putting millions of dollars at risk starting companies to learn. It’s my pleasure because I have no doubts it’s a very good investment.

The fact that I have attracted so many people just like John into the Social Traffic opportunity who are all cut with the same cloth as he, people who are all committed as John, who all trust as he does… and have the same level of faith.. It’s scary what this opportunity represents. I started to build a community around my book 9 months ago. In time, that community became active and hustling and was attracting significant traction. We pulled in notes to get conversations going on Facebook and keep everyone engaged and on the same page.  The team of influencers in our initial book launch attracted 4000+ visitors to our website of which over 2000 downloaded copies of the book. Leveraging off the success of this campaign I launched a second Social Traffic (2) campaign that set out to become a stand alone social media company for hire. Social Traffic (2) came and went over a 3 months period without success in terms of achieving its business objectives yet the community around Social Traffic grew stronger because of the caliber of people evangelizing us gained more faith in the cause and were more committed and trusting.  The testament for this is in who I was able to exclude from moving forward.

The catch here is that you are not in a position to exclude anyone for lack of commitment or respect for your time, until you enjoy a certain element of momentum and success. I have an announcement to make in the coming weeks that will blow the lid off any doubts anyone in the world has about Social media being a passing fad. What I have achieved through Social Media alone over the last 2.2 years without spending 1 cent on advertising is nothing short of incredible and it’s got nothing to do with selling widgets either.

So where does the line between; a- What I do, b- who Simon U Ford (the brand) is, and  c- the resources made available by EventsListed in terms of our journey (investment) over the past 2 years and d- the Social Traffic (1) community I started through my book launch; end... and the new Social Traffic (2) company begin leading into e- the social traffic (3) social media coaching company?

You can read the Social Traffic (1) book launch campaign here.

You can read the Social Traffic (2) social media marketing company start up  story here.

Let’s go into answering this question in my next post...

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

Visit my “event line blogs”

Social Traffic – The book

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