Widget Marketing

Widget Marketing:

Widget marketing is ~$40 million in 2008 according to eMarketer.
As the web deconstructs into bits of real estate, each with their own source of information, people will have the ability to completely customize their view of the world. This may explain why traffic to major brands continues to erode over the past 18 months even as total web traffic increases. Driving people to your site will be increasingly difficult over time.
Widget rules:
- Reach hunters not just grazers. (Presuming sales is the objective.)
- Make sure content or function is appropriate for both audience and action.
- Understand your core benefit/message before commissioning a widget.
- Don't bet the bank on it going 'viral'.
There are three reasons for using a widget meaning there are three types of widgets:
- Home or start pages must have utility
- Bloggers want to augment content
- Social networks usually focus on personal expression
Top media widgets from Larry Chase's Web Digest for Marketers: iLike (music), snap (view sites without going there), widgipedia (actually a gallery), triggit (ad network), and mediaForge (interactive ad).
Check out places like http://stickiwidgets.com/ and http://www.widgetslab.com/ for the latest and greatest on widgets.
Don't forget it is a three legged stool - the consumer, the brand and the publisher. Since it is hosted on the publisher's site her style guide may be more important than yours.
Nobody will know for certain what content mix will work; so experiment and tweak before deploying that idea from the corner office. (Disclosure - I have a corner office and usually have no clue what will actually work.) Content rules if it is useful to the audience on their terms and not self-serving. You will spend more time monitoring, tweaking and refreshing content than the cost to build it.