15 Oct 2007, 11:59PM PT
1 Oct 2007, 12:00AM PT
Closed: 15 Oct 2007, 11:59PM PT
Earn up to $425 for Insights on this case.
Telephony service provider JAJAH has launched a new application called JAJAH Buttons which allows users to integrate the ability to make a phone call into emails, websites, blogs or social network profiles.
1) Suggest creative viral ways to promote this service. How can JAJAH Buttons be made most appealing and spread to its worldwide audience in a viral manner? JAJAH is looking for more than just "Target young users on Facebook" -- but for truly effective ways to increase the adoption of JAJAH Buttons and JAJAH's service in general, and maintain a steady flow of new users.
2) More long term, what else can JAJAH offer users to produce useful telephony tools and help users to use JAJAH frequently? JAJAH already offers conference call services, scheduled call meetings, and SMS messages from PCs to mobile phones. What are some strategic offerings that JAJAH can provide to users that might expand the scope of online telephony use?
In order to test the service, JAJAH will pre-fund your account with free credits. To do this you must first sign up as a JAJAH user at www.jajah.com. Then, to request funding for a trial account, please email Techdirt(-at-)jajahbuttons.com, and provide them with the email address that you used to create your JAJAH account.
This is how it works from a JAJAH Button owner's perspective:
Register or log on to your JAJAH account. Create your own JAJAH Button. Paste a snippet of HTML code or a URL onto your website, blog or email signature -- and your friends, colleagues or clients can call you without any cost or registration steps on their end.
This is how Buttons work from a caller's perspective:
Initiating a call through a JAJAH Button is as easy as entering your own phone number and clicking "Call." All at absolutely no cost to the caller, JAJAH Buttons link people globally phone-to-phone, without any download, headset or contract.
14 Insights
This case has closed, so Insights are no longer being accepted.
We have seen this before, but it did not take off then, and it may be a good idea to ask why. Probably because the people who did it a few years ago (and yes, that was VoIP too, although not P2P - it does not matter) tried to bite over too much, and that should be a warning to Jajah. After all, which is better: To have 10 000 users who use your product several times every day, or to have a million users who use it once a year?
As usual, the key is to find ways to make peoples lives better, and that may mean doing rather boring stuff. For instance: Support centers could really benefit from being able to send people an email with a button that said "if you did not get it this time either, talk to a customer representative". And if you can email buttons around, you can set up conference calls by emailing them. Nifty.
But forget Facebook and stuff like that (maybe go to LinkedIn, but it is still doubtful). Telephony has two uses: To be social, and to work. And it is the latter one which makes money, and making money on work means making it more efficient. So how can you contribute to making people more efficient? As usual, this means finding a community which is underserved, and help them by giving them better tools (turns out auction goers online is not such a community, I would say). Also, the service would have to explain why it is different from Skype. Actually, doing some of the things Skype does badly better (ask their developers) would be one way of getting a jumpstart.
Spammers would of course love this ("If you want to talk to and Indian call center person about herbal Viagra to exorbitant international rates, click here") - so there are a number of traps to avoid too. While being viral may be good, viruses cause some rather nasty diseases. So you need to select the audience, and make sure that the product is not misappropriated.
If you want to make sure to find useful tools for the future, look at two things: What do people do on other services? And how would developers use them? A large and healthy 3rd party developer community is the key - why develop your own tools, if other people can do it for you? And even better: Try to appropriate someone elses community. There are many companies with active developer communities who would like this kind of stuff (Oracle just jumped to mind), so having such liaisons would probably not be a bad idea. That would also help finding out which tools are valuable enough to buy or steal from the developers. Because I have no clue on that.
Hope this helps
//Johan
1) Creative Promotions: Most people (end-user types -- individuals) don't want people they don't know calling them. This limits the viral marketing to organizations and people who do want strangers calling.
a. Give political campaigns free Jajah buttons for their bulk emailings. It should be ideal for recorded messages or contributions. In addition to the end-user exposure, you would also get some awareness inside political circles (the senders).
b. Get eBay and Craigslist to offer Jajah buttons to their sellers. This would be a lot more effective than marketing directly to the users because of all the noise in that market.
c. Jajah buttons could be pushed in singles / dating sites. Some privacy assurance would be necessary.
2) Enhancements:
a. People will want to click a button on a web site and automatically call using their PC microphone and speaker. This has the advantage of not typing in your phone number. Some people are reluctant to enter their number into a web site because of privacy concerns.
Jahjah Buttons
To start with, if you want to promote to bloggers and web2.0 users, you are on the right track. Intiatives like this will net you blogger to blogger publicity - the free testing credit was a good touch and shows that you "get" engagement. (though it didn't work on my account.) Further efforts to engage with the best read tech blogs would no doubt help, also, expanding the free test credit to any blogger who wants to test the product would get you over a large hurdle.
The buttons have some immediatly apperent strengths, especially as a CRM tool. I can, for example, see them working very well in an e-commerce / customer services environment. The question is does promoting the buttons idea to bloggers / social networks etc... get you anywhere nearer the people who are most likely to use a service like this? I'd say it probably doesn't.
Most people who commission websites are more bothered about what it does than how it does it, so actively targetting webdesign companies in some kind of business partnership approach could work well. The inquiry mentioned that you were looking for viral solutions - there's nothing more viral than actual word of mouth, a really good deal offered to webdesign firms e.g. a profit share arrangement or something similar could well start off some viral promotion.
Jahjah in General
The strengths of the product seem to be more focussed towards SME users, the vast majority of whom are not web natives, especially decision makers. They are however extremely financially literate and therein lies another of the product's strengths - cost. My uncle's company recently switched all their telephony to skype despite him being a complete luddite because the case was made to him on financial grounds, not technological.
There is a great appetite in the conventional paper media for interesting technological stories and I would suggest offline PR could be an effective tool if it was handled well.
In terms of potentially useful features, the ability to use a computer microphone / headset rather than just a phone would be good. The conference call feature is good but only deals with the telephony, what if people could share documents / media in an online meeting space at the same time that way would not only be cheaper than a standard conference call, it would also use the online nature of JahJah to enhance the process.
Spreading The Word For JAJAH And JAJAH Buttons by David Cassel
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 @ 3:08PM
1) ...creative viral ways to promote this service.
2.) ...useful telephony tools / help users to use JAJAH frequently.
You could snatch up lots of publicity business in one swoop by doing a deal with one of the major players.
Even if the businesses won't agree to a promotional deal, JAJAH could still promote its usefulness to users of these services.
But there's an even better way to ensure great tools using JAJAH telephony. And that is: release an API. If you believe in the power of brainstorming with web users about your technology, why not brainstorm with all of them? Jajah is very versatile, and its powerful capabilities would excite developers to create dozens of new applications.
In effect you get hundreds of developers all dreaming up the killer applications that you haven't even thought of.
Spreading The Word For JAJAH And JAJAH Buttons by David Deans
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 @ 3:29PM
Regarding objective #1, I suggest adopting a "cause" that is currently a high profile issue for your target audience -- specifically I recommend the Digital Freedom Campaign (http://www.digitalfreedom.org).
Propose a way to utilize JAJAH in a creative application that benefits the cause, makes the participants feel good about supporting the campaign, and feel good about themselves in the process.
As an example, create a voicemail box for an up-and-coming unsigned Indie band that wants to reach-out to its growing fan-base, and create a custom button. Invite participants to place the button on their social network profile page.
Or, have some fun, promote a global "Dis-DRM" rant-a-thon contest, and replay the funniest g-rated submissions from Indie music fans.
Or, another creative application that would demonstrate the more obvious benefits of JAJAH
Spreading The Word For JAJAH And JAJAH Buttons by James Durbin
Thursday, October 11th, 2007 @ 11:14PM
1) Suggest creative viral ways to promote this service. How can JAJAH Buttons be made most appealing and spread to its worldwide audience in a viral manner? JAJAH is looking for more than just "Target young users on Facebook" -- but for truly effective ways to increase the adoption of JAJAH Buttons and JAJAH's service in general, and maintain a steady flow of new users.
An interesting service. My first thought is that I've seen something like this for professional websites, namely in the recruiting world. Recruiters use click to call to generate instant interest in candidates. If they're ready to speak, a recruiter on the other end is ready to take the call.
The problem, for recruiters, is that most of them don't want people to call in randomly. The people who normally call in are not good candidates, and thus you're stuck paying for a call for someone that has no monetary value for you. I imagine this is the primary problem you'll experience with commercial clients who want people to call in with new business. Many business leads are poor, and creating a buffer between you and the client is often a good thing.
So in terms of creating a viral affinity for the service, you'd be looking for two kinds of users. Business, and Social. The social users will add heft to the Jajah numbers, including links for each Jajah button, while the business users will be the main source of revenue from the buttons.
BUSINESS USERS:
Your strategy works like this: Small businesses are the largest contingent of professional blog users. The ease of putting up a blog instead of paying for a website has given many small businesses the ability to pitch their product without the expense of a full website. The best sites network with other small business blogs and bloggers in general, generating both a community around their product and an influence that is larger than their actual size. For blog marketing, you're looking for three kinds of business blogs.
1) High Search Engine Rank:
A highly ranked blog (roughly anything ranked PR4 and above) that is willing to write about jajah is a good prospect. If you can build relationships with a list of influential small business blogs, you can deliver content to them that is interesting to their audience. The kind of content you're looking for is case studies of higher revenue, better leads, or just cool stories that arise from using the Jajah buttons. The manner in which you approach these blogs is key. It has to be one-to-one communication, and it has to be something of genuine interest to them.
2) High Traffic Blogs:
PageRank isn't everything. Targeting high-traffic sites is easier said than done, but if you are monitoring the blogosphere, you can look for places that jajah can have an impact. Look for contests, promotions, and anything that could use something "different." The goal here is to be a featured player in a community. If you understand a cluster of blogs, and why they deliver traffic to a few in that cluster, you can help the community with a jajah promotion.
3) High Revenue Blogs: Some businesses thrive off of internet leads. The question is how to discover and pitch businesses that want as many leads coming in as possible. Look for call centers, people who put their phone number on their site, and specialists who have a very niche business, and thus any lead is usually a good one. If you can find the people already looking to be contacted (a combination of online monitoring and asking the right people), you'll quickly find the profitable niche of users who could really use a product like the jajah button, and will serve as your testimonials and evangelists online.
They will be your bullhorn, and an ancillary benefit is if you can create a case study off of one of these blogs, small business marketing blogs will pick it up and broadcast your success to the entire small business blogosphere.
Internal Blogging Strategy:
You have a blog, but I don't see it linked on the site. And it's not really a blog - it's a press release and FAQ section. If you're just going to write about you, change the url to news.jajah.com. A business blog shouldn't actually be about you. It's about jajah users who are successful, or cool, or get noticed for what they are doing with your buttons. Celebrate your audience by writing about what small business needs most - better information on how to run a successful small business. An example is a site like http://situationalmarketing.com, which just started, and covers e-mail and mobile marketing. The site is written about the industry, and is sponsored by Blast Companies, but isn't really about Blast Companies.
if you want to market to bloggers, you have to be one. There's no understanding the online world unless you're in it, and simply having a blog isn't enough, especially when all it does it talk about jajah.
SOCIAL USERS:
This is where you get to have a lot of fun. The uses for a tool like Jajah are as limitless as your users imagination. You can start with all of the uses that Skype, GoogleTalk, and other messaging tools are used for. It's okay to copy, and it's not a bad thing. The real question of creativity comes in new ways you can suggest Jajah uses.
Community Maps:
Begin by targeting a group of five or six clusters of likely users. Your goal is to think of people who might use Jajah in a new way, and go out and find them, the same way that you found the small business bloggers. This is your viral strategy, which means you have to seed a lot of communities to get started.
Some Ideas
1) Networks of Job-seeker: Recruiters don't find jobs for people. They find people for jobs. Rather than having a business take calls, find a group of jobseekers (Yahoo Groups, NetShare, JibberJobber) who want to put the jajah button on their profile or online resume or blog, and have recruiters able to click to call them. In this case, candidates want to be called. Contact a network and offer the service to the users. An added bonus is these people may soon have jobs, and when they do, they'll be fans of jajah already.
2) Community Services: Campus help lines, women's shelters, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide hotlines are publicized on college campuses, but how many are on the internet. Is anyone going to the student center webpage to get the alcohol hotline? If you worked to set up a couple of college based hotlines on websites frequented by college students, you can generate goodwill, and also publicity, from local newspapers and of course, the college community.
3) The College Community: Party Central, baby! Back in college, my roommates and I had a house off campus called the Cabana. Our first phone number was 463-2222. Our second number was 464-5678. Girls would call us all the time to see what parties were happening, because our numbers were easy to remember. If you want a Facebook strategy, how about finding party organizers and putting jajah buttons on their sites so their friends can call and find out where the party is? Or to get the notes from class. Whichever works. Once the button is on their sites, the students will find new ways to use them.
4) Female Bloggers: The internet can be a scary place for women. Why not partner with BlogHer or Dickless Marketing to put Jajah buttons on female bloggers sites and women professionals' sites so they can't be hassled by internet readers. The hidden number here is a great feature, and can be pitched as a safety feature.
2) More long term, what else can JAJAH offer users to produce useful telephony tools and help users to use JAJAH frequently? JAJAH already offers conference call services, scheduled call meetings, and SMS messages from PCs to mobile phones. What are some strategic offerings that JAJAH can provide to users that might expand the scope of online telephony use?
This is a tough one, because the real question is whether people want more telephony services. Some business uses I can think of are verification buttons for e-commerce sites. If I'm the owner of an e-commerce site, it might behoove me to have a click to call or click to verify phone number on the site if people have problems with the site or want to make sure I'm real. Conference call services are nice, especially if you can set it up that I can forward a link to someone, and they can simply click the link, rather than punch in the conference line number and then a passcode. You'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, at the number of people who have difficulty setting up or attending conferences.
This might be too far forward, but working with video conferencing services and webinars are huge industries that are already worth billions. If you can figure out a variant of WebEx, you can drive more telephony use off a base that already likes you and knows how to use you.
You also might consider working with blognetworks to add jajah components to click to call ads. There's lot of money in it, and if someone is spending money on a 125x125 ad, or a video ad, a calling component makes a lot of sense.
It's a good product. I'm going to test it out, and will think of ways clients might use it.
-Jim Durbin
Website: DurbinMedia.com
Blog: Brandstorming.com
Spreading The Word For JAJAH And JAJAH Buttons by Luca Filigheddu
Friday, October 12th, 2007 @ 3:18PM
There are a couple of elements that I’d like to point out.
1) Target market: I presume that the target market of Jajah Buttons is the same of Jajah, right? If so, then there is a problem. Users that use Jajah are “consumers” that want to save money for long distance calls in a very easy way. Most of them want even get these calls for free, thanks to your promotion, widely advertised on your website. That said, why shoud they be willing to PAY for being called from their blog/website/social networks? If I place a button on my Facebook profile, I don’t want to pay for being called, but I suppose that if someone wants to call me is also willing to pay for that call. On the other hand, if I want to call at low cost or even for free my friends/family, I can use Jajah, I don’t need to use my friend’s button. Keep in mind that my company offered Sitòfono FOR FREE to selected bloggers to try it out. They are not businesses, they don’t really need it hence they wouldn’t have paid for it, neither if I was going to offer them this service with a prepaid model, I can assure this to you.
On the contrary, if you want to address a SMB market also, the model is, IMHO, wrong. In my experience selling click to call services in Italy and UK, we have seen that businesses, big or small, don’t want to deal with uncertain costs. They won’t deal with VARIABLE costs associated to a service they cannot keep under control at all. What about disturbing calls that they are going to pay for ? SMB and big enterprises WANT certain costs that they can keep under control, so if that is your target (I presume it can be, but mostly you target the consumer ), you must offer it at a flat monthly fee. Other models are not working.
Assumption: I assume that you want to do something like Jaxtr, that is spreading their widget all over social networks, with a huge success (because the FREE part of the story, of course...). The point is that Jaxtr users are using that widget as a tool to MAKE FREE CALLS, because they don’t have alternatives. In case of Jajah, the Jajah service itself is an alternative to Jajah buttons. So I don’t think the approach will work. Even with your attempt to push that button on ebay, you have to think that Skype is offering that service for free. In case of your buttons, a good approach would have been (if ebay would have permitted....) a deep integration with ebay, with your button as a value added service that users can pay per auction, like $x more if you want that capability (as if you want your auction highlighted, you pay a couple of $ more...). As soon as the auctions ends, the buttons stops working. As a acutioner, I wouldn’t ever install a tool that can consume my credit (even if I can limit it, that is a counter sense...) with the risk to make it unusable after a few hours, without having ever used it.
2) All that said, let’s move to Jajah. I gave a presentation at the VON Europe 2006 where I highlighted that web+voip can be a great success if only social networks would use it everywhere for their users. You understood this already with Plaxo and Iotum. That’s the point. VoiP should be everywhere, integrated into the web user experience of the final user. More deals with social networks are a must. The Jajah icon should appear everywhere, even thanks to extensions for the most popular browsers, that can modify the behaviour of the web pages. You already have it, but in my opinion you should push it much more.
Telephony tools: Do you think Jajah need more telephony tools? No, first and foremost users want to make very very cheap calls. And, for what I said above, most heavy users can deal with flat monthly rates. You risk, but it’s worth it. It’s certain that you increase revenues immediately. The only service I would add is IM. Think of a browser-integrated IM jabber-based that appears on the firefox sidebar. Users can always see it and interact each other. And, hopefully, call and send SMS. A “contact list” is something that I think you need at this time. Alternatively, and this can be a good alternative, develop plugins/extensions for the most popular IM clients. Add the Jajah-call capability to all of them, make it really pervasive. Users have to see your icon everywhere. And, if you want people to spread the word in a viral manner, make a new service/feature and enable it to users only if they get an invite. Others have experienced that the “invitation only” features/services are usually known faster than other “without-invite” services.
In conclusion, last but not least, prepaid calling cards. Spread the word to the masses that really need to save money, through a trusted channel to boost sales of cards. That will surely extend the scope of your service.
Hope this helps.
 Dream Catcher Mon Oct 15 12:15pm |
one item apparently not included upon submission. 4. include SIP users. they are really sticky kind of group and really knows how to spread news. |
|
Dream Catcher Sat Nov 17 12:53am |
interestingly, there're news going around that some sort of a tie up between jajah and jangl ! |
Spreading The Word For JAJAH And JAJAH Buttons by Mitch Brisebois
Monday, October 15th, 2007 @ 9:08AM
I think your two stated goals are related: By creating an easy to use platform for imbedding VoIp calling that offers innovative calling applications, JAJAH will spread virally, and could become a pillar in the new telecom.
What's holding it back? The JAJAH button is like any other imbedded "Call Me Now" button. What's to differentiate it? SiteBoy's blog is a good example - JAJAH is burried under Grand Central, Sitofono, and SightSpeed... The big problem is what these call buttons communicate to the reader of the blog. (or auction site, or whatever...) Why should I call this person?? The buttons don't provide me any real motivation to call - there's no stated expectation of what the call would accomplish.
I believe that the decline of telecom as a communication medium is partly due to the inability of the calling and called party to set expectations. VoIP in of itself doesn't fix this - and neither does imbedding a JAJAH button.
So how could JAJAH change the rules?
Allow the owners of the JAJAH buttons to set the expectations of their callers. Provide an interface to "frame" the use of the button. For example: "don't agree with this post? I'll be taking your calls from 1-2pm EST" - or "this eBay item isn't quite what you're looking for? Call me for a special request". How about an "agree with you button" and "disagree with you" call button? The called party would then be able to know the context of the call.
Future buttons could have mini-workflows built into them... capturing client information to route to appropriate call centers. Buttons could have specific themes or uses - like a scheduled conference call. After the conference the button disappears.
Another useful button style would be an audio comment collector - the call wouldn't actually be answered by the recipient - instead messages would be captured as sound files or podcasts to be used later.
Personalization of the call buttons based on a set of avatars would be very attractive - poarticularly to the gaming segment. What if I could have my Nintendo Mii on my JAJAH call button.
All of these ideas encourage viral marketing because the users are actively creating usage scenarios instead of using generic call me technology.
Spreading The Word For JAJAH And JAJAH Buttons by Frederik Hermann
Monday, October 15th, 2007 @ 5:46PM
This is an amazing product and after sending my button/button link to a couple of friends overseas who loved it I'm using it in my email signature, my blog and a bunch of my social networking profiles out there. The response is always more than positive because for the people using it it can't be easier.
My feedback:
- Making it easier/faster to set up a button from the button owner's perspective
- Making a 0900 version of it where consultants can charge fees for calls
- Making a non-Flash version with input field that works for people without Flash or platforms that don't allow Flash
- Making the button landing page more adaptable with own text, own icon and so on
- Adding voicemail capability
- Providing good descriptions to integrate into all networks
That's it so far, maybe I'll add some more ideas later.
It should be noted that this particular insight draws from the results of a small survey that was administered to students at Howard University in Washington, DC between 10/03/2007 and 10/10/2007. The purpose was to better associate any advice, viewpoints and/or perspectives given about methods to virally promote Jajah, to actual demands for easily accessible, telephony services. Each student was provided an explanation of how Jajah works from both the user and button owner perspective that was included in the Techdirt issue description, verbatim. Demographic details for this survey are as follows:
Total number of participants: 140
Gender percentages
Female: 55.7%
Male: 44.3%
Breakdown of student origin
Domestic students: 90
International students: 50
Countries represented: Nine (9) in total. Ghana, Haiti, St. Kitts, Barbados, Jamaica, Gambia, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, India and the United States of America
Age range: 18 – 24
Average age: 20.4 years old
Total number of student types
Full time: 113
Part time: 27
Below are the five questions which composed the survey. Included are the available answers as well as an approximate percentage of students that chose them.
Question #1 How useful would you say a click-to-call service, like Jajah, sounds?
Very useful [ 23%]
Somewhat useful [58%]
Barely useful [10 %]
Not useful at all [9%]
Question #2 Assuming price is a nominal concern how much would you use and/or advocate a service like Jajah?
All the time [18%]
Quite a bit [72%]
Sometimes [6%]
Rarely or not at all [4%]
Question #3 How much of your current online activities [email, blogging, IM, etc.] would benefit from association/integration with a click-to-call service, like Jajah?
All [44%]
Most [47%]
Some [9%]
None [0%]
Question# 4 As a student, how satisfied are you with the range of telephony infrastructure and services provided by the university?
Highly [8%]
Somewhat [17%]
Barely [63%]
Dissatisfied [12%]
Question#5 How often do you make international telephone calls
At least once a week [9%]
Once or twice a month [33%]
Several times a year [41%]
Rarely if at all [16%]
Note: 100% coverage across the entire survey audience was not achieved for each question.
Suggested Strategic Approaches
Look to target colleges + universities
While the survey data is by no means comprehensive enough to validate or invalidate any one strategy, it is a legitimate subset that portrays a shade of the potential interest by collegiate age, young adults. This specific demographic is compelling because they are old enough to have cultivated a circle of friends beyond their immediate geographic location but have yet to achieve a great deal of financial autonomy, overall. Obviously, Jajah will benefit greatly from developing appeal within this target market.
It might be feasible to consider offering discount rates and/or special packages to users who register with collegiate email addresses. One concept is to implement a referral system that enables users to invite others to Jajah and rewards them with credits for every accepted invitation. Another more ambitious possibility would be to look at grooming a direct connection with an institution of higher learning and Jajah use, a la Facebook, through the use of targeted messaging. Since the prospect of being able to save significantly on calls worldwide would be ideal for just about every international student across the world. For non-international students, the option of extending the use of landlines and cellular phones across the world through Jajah, for a fraction of what it would cost through a Telco is also appealing. A good pitch would be to position Jajah as a service that unshackles users from the expensive bonds of traditional country-to-country calling and provides a variety of “telephony unleashed.”
Integration, integration, integration
One of Jajah’s main value propositions is its ease of use. A simple button can be embedded in an email, a blog post or a web page which when clicked initiates a conversation. However, this ease of use needs to be encapsulated in platform specific widgets that make it nearly mindlessly easy to embed. Most bloggers, are much more likely to try out a ready made widget than they are to embed HTML code or an image on their blogs. Integration with web platforms that attract target users is a critical first step in gaining any traction in the attention economy. The survey data revealed that 9 out of 10 individuals felt that connecting telephony to their daily online activities was at least a respectable concept. That being the case, doing so should be entirely idiot proof and click-through simple. In essence, integration can never be too easy.
Tap into the world of API’s
It is becoming increasingly crucial for even extremely popular platforms to sport open interfaces as a matter of remaining relevant over the long haul. Companies from Google to Facebook to Yahoo have embraced the publishing of Application Programmer Interfaces (API) towards increasing engagement and utilization of their platforms. Jajah needs to remain active in terms of investigating how these published API’s can be creatively leveraged. For example, APIs could be used to create customizable mashups that integrate Jajah offerings like conference calls or scheduled call meetings into a single application. Developers would be enticed by exhibiting how using popular APIs can be augmented through the innovative introduction of a telephony service provider like Jajah.
Networks are the key!!!
For the segment of young users represented by the aforementioned survey as well as a larger crowd of techno-savvy adults, explosive relevancy is vital to establishing and maintaining healthy trends for end-user adoption. The term can best be compared to a state where an entity’s relevance exhibits not just exponential growth in terms of numbers but also in terms of to how many people is this remotely relevant. MySpace is insanely popular not only due to its number of users, i.e. in the United States there are far more non-MySpace users than there are MySpace users, but because it is relevant to so many who might not otherwise have a remote idea about it (see: the parents of children who are avid MySpace users).
In a similar vein the more people to whom Jajah can become relevant the better. Therefore, Jajah needs to explore methods of encouraging users to include Jajah within their various personal networks. At the core of these personal networks should be incentives that reward inclusions of Jajah. Connecting to existing networks/communities like MyBlogLog or LinkedIn is worth consideration ahead of a Jajah-specific network that would have to be built from the ground. Using the camera phone moblog community, TextAmerica.com as an example, Jajah could potentially attract users by aligning with the service by donating free credits for users who submit the most popular videos or images.
 Joseph Hunkins Fri Oct 19 10:33am |
Doing a survey - brilliant! For innovative new applications like this it's very hard to knowhow people will behave, so surveys and focus group data should be very valuable to JAJAH. |
Spreading The Word For JAJAH And JAJAH Buttons by Brent Lamphier
Monday, October 15th, 2007 @ 10:07PM
Around 30% of students at any given university do something every year....and the total number of students doing this thing has increased by 9% since last year, and increased 8% the year before. Those students re-discover instant messaging, often start their first blog, and spend a couple hundred dollars on phone cards and at internet cafes to communicate with family and friends back home.
Study abroad shoot students back 10 years communication wise, and students used to being 'connected' suddenly go dark, and buying a sim card and plan in a foreign country is often more of a hastle than it's worth. JaJah, and moreso JaJah buttons for ease of use on these students blogs, facebook pages (a must, an application to add a jajah button needs to be built), and myspace accounts are the perfect solution. Skype is a pain while abroad, and phone cards are annoying. Allowing a student to take their cell phone and talk on it for minuscule rates, that PARENTS can add time to, is a value proposition that a majority of them would sign on to. Even more so, you have huge crops of NEW students going abroad every single year, and the kids who went before tell them how easy jajah is.
Plus, many, many students maintain contact with people they meet in their home country, with their host family, and the ability to talk to them very cheaply rather than just conversing via email makes the world a little more flat.
So, roughly 20% of college students as NEW customers ever year...with obvious viral potential amongst schools, and potential global growth and movement as well (many, many australian and other travelers party with US study abroad kids regularly).
How to reach them:
1. Every school has a meeting that all study abroad students are required to go to. Pick some big schools off the top of this list: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/ webex/abroad_brief.php and then go to or sponsor that meeting.
2. Offer a study abroad scholarship at some of those schools for students to compete for AFTER they've already decided to study abroad (could be before hand too...but is harder). This will allow you to get in contact with each of the professors taking students abroad, and the professors themselves, happy to give students money, will spread the news to the students they're taking.
3. Have a campus marketing rep at a big University earn $10 per meeting meeting that they go and talk about jajah too (Each study abroad group meets the quarter BEFORE they go abroad, many meet once a week. If you need more info on how to do this email me. Professors will definitely allow a student to have a 10 minute pitch to students in their class, regardless of a scholarship or not (this is a good campaign to run even if you don't do the scholarship, this may be cheaper anyways)
4. Give the campus reps pamphlets about 'staying in touch while you're abroad' with lots of info about jajah, and lot of info about other things. I.e. Pick a popular destination (London) and, on your website and in the pamphlet, show the 10 most popular internet cafes, 10 cheapest etc, and offer students $10.00 free study abroad jajah dollars. Then, the kicker, TELL THEM THAT THEIR PARENTS CAN ADD MONEY TO THEIR ACCOUNT. PARENTS WILL ADD A LOT.
5. Partner with STA travel and other international travel companies that students use. Get those same pamphlets in those travel agencies stores, because that's where we go for travel info regardless of what country we're in.
Pt 2.
Future of JaJah:
As phones internet capabilities expand, I'd want to go to jajah.com, and with one touch be able to call someone through the internet on my phone without being anywhere near a desktop or laptop. Service provides would freak out but that's probably half the point. If I had an iphone, I could basically have pre-paid minutes on jajah, keep my costs down, and buy the cheapest at&t package avaliable just to use it for other features.
Pre-set contact list on jajah. As the internet expands with portals and what not, and I have a true homepage online, (i.e. google reader or netvibes in 5 years), one of my 'feeds' or areas should be my phone list. Basically, I want to come to page, and have a list of my contacts, by their name, so that I can just click on a name and call them. That's basically what my jajah page should be, a bunch of my contacts that I can come in, click a button, and call them through jajah, even if they haven't signed up for it.
Automatic voicemail through jajah. Someone wants to leave me a message...I allow them to through the site, particularly for my customer service, as I can't afford a customer service team, nor can I afford outsourcing, nor can I handle a bunch of phone calls. So, through jajah, I can let them leave customer service questions via jajah, and pick through them at my will, similar to how the iphone handles voicemail.
1) Suggest creative viral ways to promote this service. How can JAJAH Buttons be made most appealing and spread to its worldwide audience in a viral manner? JAJAH is looking for more than just "Target young users on Facebook" -- but for truly effective ways to increase the adoption of JAJAH Buttons and JAJAH's service in general, and maintain a steady flow of new users.
Spreading The Word For JAJAH And JAJAH Buttons by Joseph Hunkins
Monday, October 15th, 2007 @ 11:48PM
Suggest creative viral ways to promote JAJAH:
My top recommendation is to try to find a way to develop a JAJAH button as a Google Gadget. This would effectively "call enable" a users desktop in a very exciting and unique way. I would have to check more with my contacts there to see if this JAJAH use could be accommodated using the current Google approach because they usually cache content on their servers and the JAJAH button application is not the usual gadget fare. However the Gadget team leader is always looking for neat new uses of the technology and this would be a superb way to "call enable" the desktop for gadget users. Yahoo and Microsoft also have gadget/widget development platforms, but Google is the key target here for viral marketing because they have the largest user base, superb support for the platform, and a kick-ass team leader who understand the power of this technology in the business realm. Happy to provide full contact info on request.
Viral marketing can be a labor intensive process given the enormous number of social networking websites that can be used to springboard the viral program. Thus ideally you'll have interns or cheap labor available to create JAJAH profiles at all the major social networking sites and help spread the word without being obnoxious. The application is "sexy" and neat enough that this should be fairly easy to accomplish.
The key sites, in order of my estimate of their importance to your viral efforts adjusted by time needed to accomplish the goal. (ie Twitter won't have the impact of a Facebook JAJAH application, but it's much easier to to manage.
The JAJAH Blog: Targeted technology information blogs are now a key part of the foundation of any good organic SEO strategy. Post frequently and on a variety of topics relevant to telephony, but frequently mention and promote JAJAH.
Twitter: Participate actively, simply linking to information about JAJAH. Post twice per day with links to website information pages.
Time needed: 10 minutes per day. Ideally use an intern or team member to become "the face" of JAJAH and interact with prospective users and promoters. Perhaps this is unfortunate or offensive to some sensibilities, but an attractive female avatar will increase your "followers" at Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace *dramatically*. To avoid deception it is probably ideal to have females on your team lead the viral / social networking efforts. My apologies to Oprah and Gloria Steinhem for pointing this out.
Facebook. Develop a JAJAH button application. Have each JAJAH employee and all contacts and investors open a Facebook profile and discuss JAJAH - openly and without any deceit.
Myspace: In some ways a more likely demographic for the button application, but the Myspacer is less likely to become a paying user or business user. However Myspace, with 200,000,000 members, is larger than Facebook and clever viral marketing can have extraordinary results here. Thus considerable energy should be focused on creating buttons targeted to the young Myspace user, showcasing how "fun" it is to call your friends and family with simple inputs in the button. "Why IM when you can CALL ME NOW!"
Stumbleupon.com: Again, enlist your existing team to enhance the prescence on this exploding social network. Create a JAJAH profile and make sure others on the team are linking into it and participating.
Flickr: Flickr remains a powerful social network and might not be easy to "enter" because you don't want to appear to be manipulating these social spaces too commercially, but in cases like this simply have the intern or team folks post pictures but also reference JAJAH in the titles, tags, and comments of the photos. Viral marketing for new brands will be enhanced by simply getting people to recognize your service as a player in the phone space.
Google Orkut: Not popular in USA but big overseas, especially Brazil. If this is a target market set up a profile.
MyBlogLog. Yahoo's recent social networking aquisition is heavily used by many high level tech bloggers and has disproportionate influence. Make sure JAJAH is represented here, ideally by an individual who will pin her name on the product and interact with other bloggers and users.
Yahoo Mash: Still in beta - email me for an invitation.
Give your team some time and flexibility to manage these social profiles to help spread the word.
How can JAJAH Buttons be made most appealing and spread to its worldwide audience in a viral manner?
It is simply impossible to predict use patterns of any given design and therefore I'd urge you to create as many as 50-100 button designs to use in your initial marketing efforts, then scale this number down to the top performing buttons. One resource to use as a very cheap "focus group" would be Adbrite's new full page advertising, which allows advertisers to bid as low as 0.1 cents per full page advertisement / unique visitor. Although this traffic will be untargeted and probably low performing in terms of conversion, it's a way to see how an extremely large and diverse group of online users reacts to different buttons and text appeals.
The Adbrite campaign has two other important advantages. First, it will beef up unique visitor traffic to the website. Second, this is an extremely inexpensive way to begin to fuel the viral marketing campaigns and get the "buzz" going at a fraction of normal advertising costs.
What else can JAJAH offer users to produce useful telephony tools and help users to use JAJAH frequently? What are some strategic offerings that JAJAH can provide to users that might expand the scope of online telephony use?
More than providing additional services or functionality I think the key focus should be on the great advantages of the service, especially for overseas calling. Also always focus on improving *ease of use* and *ease of setup*. Whenever possible signups should simply require an email address - have prospects fill out the balance of the information later after they are "hooked" on the service. Sign up drop offs go up dramatically as you increase the amount of information the prospect must give initially. Setup appears very easy as does use, but even the slightest inconvenience to users is a barrier to adoption and nothing technological is ever "too easy".
Making this service "fun" is important to viral marketing, so perhaps consider contests and promotions that encourage use of the system to call people you normally would not call. At the blog feature the best stories of how JAJAH reconnected people with friends and family. Consider for Myspace a funny spoof of how calling friends with JAJAH leads to silly or funny circumstances.
Consider voice to text services for websites and blogs. Many bloggers would happily pay for a service where they could call in and have their voice turned to text or RSS feed and posted to a blog or feed service. Simply *offering* this service would lead to a lot of positive buzz among bloggers.
More general marketing ideas for JAJAH:
Consider a component of the marketing strategy that targets bloggers and tech websites and asks them to try the button application at their sites and blogs. Offer free calls to all bloggers. Postings about JAJAH are somewhat lacking online right now, but could be important part of product acceptance.
Given the reach of the Wordpress hosted community I'd urge JAJAH to work with Matt and WordPress to create a JAHJAH Widget for WP hosted blogs. It is important to make sure the JAJAH buttons are available via as many outlets and directories as possible to encourage widespread adoption by bloggers and websites.
Those involved with the public at social networking sites should be involved with JAJAH at some level. Also note that integration with *existing* social networks tends to be far more successful than trying to create separate social communities.
Search Engine Marketing: Organic search optimization and Pay Per Click advertising at search engines and targeted websites remain two of the most cost effective ways to deliver traffic to websites as well as obtain a dose of "free" branding because ads are not paid for if they are not clicked on. PPC can be especially effective for technical content like JAJAH buttons that can be targeted specifically to tech sites and highly targeted terms at Google, Yahoo, and MSN search.
Currently JAJAH appears to have marginal exposure in the Google organic listings. This can be improved with targeted blog postings and more online exposure, and a simple website review for basic SEO optimizing for phone related queries.
In general the website will benefit from more intensive use of relevant "keyword rich" text, more static HTM pages relating to phone themes, and more intense use of highly targeted title tags matching page content. Incoming hyperlinks with highly relevant anchor text remain a key consideration at Google and will improve organic rankings for JAJAH.
Pay Per Click may be too expensive given JAJAH's market. As a Telephony application you are competing with heavily funded players who can bid well outside of positive ROI range. For this reason the very inexpensive Adbrite campaigns and viral marketing may be the best approach. Adbrite has an extremely dynamic founder, programmer Phil Kaplan, who is always interested in unique promotions and obtaining positive ROI for clients. He normally does not get involved directly in campaigns, but getting positive ROI for the JAJAH effort might be something he'd work on. I see positive ROI as a challenge for a product as inexpensive as JAJAH, and believe you should look hard at the maximum customer aquisition costs that are acceptable to you. This will help determine how much to spend - if any - on online advertising. I would advise against spending *anything* on offline advertising given the product focus, potentially low revenues per customer, and the generally poor ROI from offline ad campaigns.
Thank you and good luck with the JAJAH project!
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