The Empty Party Scenario

At Brand Advance we have a steady stream of people that discuss their online ventures with us both from a marketing and web development perspective. A relatively large amount of these projects involve some sort of community or social aspect. When it comes to growing a community based site or social network I always caution those I speak to about not falling into the Empty Party Scenario.

What’s the Empty Party Scenario?

Well…One perfect example comes to mind:

When I was in college there was a party that several of my neighbors organized. They had been planning the party for some time and had the perfect set up, lighting and speaker system. However there was one major flaw…when people came rolling in there was hardly anybody there. In College, the “Party Industry” is a competitive landscape and if students walk into a party and see it doesn’t have a decent crowd they will turn right back around searching for the next one. When I talked to my neighbors I asked if they had a good turn out they said yes, but it was so fragmented that nobody stayed and the party didn’t gain traction. They were not happy with the way their party turned out.

The Empty Party Scenario is magnified 10 fold when you are referring to online ventures.  For example….Let’s say you have a concept for a social network tailored for Fishing that allow users to connect with other fisherman in their area. You’re very excited and get the best web-design and the standard features of a social site (discussion boards, groups, ability to friend, etc.  You plan on using social media to market your website and get a reasonable amount of sign-ups. All is well right….Nope

The users who have signed up are all in different cities and you built your concept around networking with local fisherman. Consequently you have a very fragmented userbase consisting of users in Long Island, Miami, LA, Portland, etc….Once your users have signed up and realize that there is hardly any people in their specific area or little activity on the site in general and they will leave and not come back.

How can the Empty Party Scenario be solved or prevented?

  1. Utilize the bowling pin strategy for Market Entry
    From a marketing perspective you are not able to boil the ocean all at one time.  You have to boil water in a small area first then open it up to a larger body of water and expand gradually.  The same premise is with the bowling pin analogy….You first have to knock down one pin, then two more, then three more, etc.  Facebook used this strategy to exxpand.  They first started at Harvard, then several other schools in the Ivy league, then all Ivy league then Northeast schools, etc.  This not only creates buzz, but enables you to get a very relevant and targeted audience.
  2. Make Your Venture/Party Sticky
    What do I mean about making a venture sticky?  Well going back to the party analogy if there was awesome food people would most likely stay.  As more and more people came in the party would seem better because people are staying.  This can be done for your online venture by providing a great tool or good food for thought in the form of content.  When planning GroupTable we constructed it in a way that if a small group of 3-5 went onto GroupTable they really don’t care if there are 10 people on the site or 10 million.  The group receives the same benefit regardless.
  3. Encourage Referrals (Incentives & Word of Mouth)
    When launching a business if you are able to offer incentives or referral perks to current customers your business can grow immensely.  Affiliate marketing is a great way to generate lots of referrals if it fits your business model.  The other side of this is that you should craft a product or design your party in the way that is worthy of a referral.  This could also include having a track record for throwing successful parties or launching successful ventures.

    You should also strive to make it very easy for others (your customers) to share their experiences with others.  Offering SWAG (or promotional items) is a great way to do this…providing a code for them to embed on their blog or website that promotes the event or venture is another.

  4. Develop a Captive Beta Audience (Private Party)
    When throwing a party it helps to have a nice crowd already there.  When launching an online social/community site don’t do a public launch or loud opening until you have everything in place and have a decent amount of people already there.    Stay in Beta for a period of time and get all the kinks worked out.  Thinking back to the party analogy invite a small amount of people first who can tell if the DJ is not good or if the food isn’t up to par.  Once everything is fixed up based on your findings and you have a decent amount of people you can then open it up to a wider audience.  Then when others come it will be a better party, not only because of what you fixed, but because there are others there.

  5. Find other Parties & Convince People to Leave
    One way to solve your empty party scenario is to find other parties or social settings and encourage people to leave to attend your party.  The same is true online.  You have to be very careful when you do this because you can position your brand in an unfavorable way as well as create some enemies.  Actively seeking out places where your target market interacts and sparking up communications I feel is the best way to do this.  One caution is that you don’t want to spam people.  You don’t want to go into a party and start bashing the party loudly the party your at to get people to go to yours.  I recommend talking about the party and seeing if people like it then mentioning there is another alternative that they may want to check out.  Focus on educating people on something new not selling.  This will spark people’s curiosity and if everything else is in order will bring you more people to your party/customers.

What are your thoughts about the Empty Party Scenario?  How else can this be prevented?  Do you have any other examples that you’ve personally experienced.

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166 Comments

  1. Good list, however –number 5 strikes me as odd.

    I think overall competition, especially friendly competition, is crucial to the game initself.

    So, I would encourage one to develop a friendly environment both outside your industry and from within –minimizing the cut-throat ways of yesterday, and making new ones for tomorrow.

  2. Good post David. Many people try to start social networking type websites without considering this situation. People are not going to stick around and spread the news about your party if few people are there already. This is why such sites need huge marketing budgets to really take off. The bowling pin strategy can work too, but you still have the initial problem of getting an ‘in’ with each target region.

  3. A college friend of mine actually went through a lot of this. He started what is now a well-known dating website. For it to be successful he needed to have lots of single people from his initial target areas. To start he focused a lot on select cities with various local marketing strategies. In time his site became viral and the word started spreading on its own.

  4. @Joel….I would agree with you in general. Competition keeps you on your toes and competitors are usually the best collaborators. Another phrase is that a Rising tide floats all boats….When I went to college outside of pittsburgh my first few years WVU had soooo much buzz as a party school so we many people would travel there helping all parties in the area. I don’t believe in ever bashing competition, however if your competitor has a target market similar to yours it can be a good source to find good customers. Whether your participating in a competitor site, mystery shopping, looking through their FB/twitter or collecting contact information from client profiles competitors sites can be a very valuable asset to your marketing intelligence.

  5. @Laptop Briefcases….I think having a large marketing budget definitely helps, but it’s not absolutely essential. If anything it definitely helps in speeding up user acquisition. If you have a sign up fee or have determined the value of each user (from a revenue stand-point) you can launch an affiliate marketing campaign and only payout online marketers for their work after a user per signs up. I also think there are a lot of targeting tools on social media people can use which don’t cost that much. ie: Monitter.com, finding FB groups, twitter lists, etc. Also developing strategic partners can help immensely in increasing user adoption. Find ones which have a large audience already and work out some sort of value add for partnering with your company/service offering. It can be challenging to do so, but if done right will definitely pay off.

    thanks for commenting

  6. What are the reasons behind the empty party either it’s the seen of before or after. Nice Reviews about the empty party and i don’t want that my party empty..

    Keep Posting

    Martin

  7. Great points david. Your 3rd points inspires me in increasing my referrals. Encouraging referals is really a great strategy to increase our reputation and sales.

    keep up david, will come again.

  8. I don’t believe in ever bashing competition, however if your competitor has a target market similar to yours it can be a good source to find good customers. Whether your participating in a competitor site, mystery shopping, looking through their FB/twitter or collecting contact information from client profiles competitors sites can be a very valuable asset to your marketing intelligence.

  9. It doesn’t always have to be money, someone can take the TIME to make something nice. that doesn’t take a lot of money. It takes time, which still lets the other person know how important they are to you.

  10. I also think there are a lot of targeting tools on social media people can use which don’t cost that much. ie: Monitter.com, finding FB groups, twitter lists, etc. Also developing strategic partners can help immensely in increasing user adoption.

  11. A charismatic self funded candidate, maybe from showbiz, or a billionaire, could pull off a reformist, centrist campaign. But they’d also have to be very intelligent, not crazy, and ‘get’ politics…unlike Perot. Unlike Bloomberg, they’d have to offer something new, and be more likeable. The bar is high.

  12. If one actually feels bad about not having the resources to be able to give a gift at a wedding, they surely don’t bring a GUEST. It’s nice to throw parties and celebrate with one’s family, but life isn’t for free and everyone has to understand that money gets shelled out to pay for everything.

  13. Good list.
    This is why such sites need huge marketing budgets to really take off. Nice Reviews about the empty party.
    Great post David.
    Thank you for sharing.

  14. My guess is that, in practice, this kind of threat gets used as a way to force GOP candidates to take stronger anti-immigrant stands during the primary. I doubt the trigger really ever gets pulled in the general.

  15. In that respect, I wouldn’t be surprised if the LD backed down from their PR stance and decide that they may be able to bury Labour, or force them into a Die Linke type party, back sticking with FPTP.

  16. You make some valid points here. Especially staying in Beta mode till you build a good base. I am not so sure about trying to convince people to leave one event and go to yours, I think you should make your even more attractive than others. They usually let you know whats going on at their event so make sure you have something bigger and better to attract them to your party and not theirs. Webmasterradio.fm does a good job at attracting people, take a look at what they do if your interested.

  17. In my future articles I shall try to include a diagrammatic view. When you speak of any message from the sender system – it is referred to as an outbound message, whereas when you speak of message being delivered to the target system (by XI) – it is referred to as an inbound message.

  18. There is “nothing of inherent value” in continuing the FED. Take a good look at their track record over the past 10 years. They have been wrong at every turn, and their actions/ decisions have wrecked our country.

  19. I think Al is right that there’s a potential for division in Democratic ranks as well. But I don’t think anyone’s underestimating that potential. You’ll notice that we’re not exactly leading with immigration at the top of our agenda.

  20. The real danger is collapse of the social order. The charlatans who made this mess are now doing their best to avoid that in the only way they know- extend and pretend. The growth, globalization, finance model lived an extra thirty years on consumer usury, stock market bubbles and a housing bubble. No one in authority today has a clue how any other model might work.

  21. Scenario my cousin who is 8 months older than me and we grew up together, but are not as close as we were when we were little, but we still do all the birthdays, party weddings.

  22. This is what I’ve been saying for years. Unless the Democrats come more mainstream they will never see an office again except maybe in california. Or where the big cities rule the roost.

  23. This putting of religious law above the law of the land is rather disturbing, not only from someone who claims to be a Libertarian, but especially from someone whose sworn duty would be to uphold the Constitution.

  24. The only real chance the Democrats have is to dump both the candidates in favor of somebody else. Edwards is obviously waiting in the wings for just this scenario, but losing VP candidates don’t make good POTUS candidates. They could turn to Gore, but I suspect Gore wouldn’t be able to expand beyond his monomania for global warming.

  25. The Vacation scenario illustrates that money itself isn’t a source of happiness. If you’re working all the time to the exclusion of having plenty of leisure time to share social experiences with other people.

  26. I followed the link back to your blog & was humbled by what I saw. I like how you’ve got twitter integrated into each post… mind if we borrow some ideas from you?

  27. I think you should make your even more attractive than others. They usually let you know whats going on at their event. Such parties give you the chance to learn more and grow more in your venture.

  28. I’m thinking a huge barbecue on a lake or river with lots of swell people like you all; good conversation, lots of laughing and prank-pulling, and of course a generous selection of beer and other spirits.

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  30. This formal post helped me a lot! Bookmarked your site, extremely great categories everywhere that I see here! I appreciate the info, thanks.

  31. Really! For it to be successful he needed to have lots of single people from his initial target areas. To start he focused a lot on select cities with various local marketing strategies.

  32. What’s Vince Cable’s interpretation of the budget? I’d rather have someone that knows what they’re talking about, talking- and that being the top-slot headline, rather than someone who hasn’t got a thing to say and is saying it very loudly, grabbing the headline space.

  33. This has got to be one of the worst things you could come across. It is important to get your party on everyone’s schedule. Especially if you are working a conference those parties can be gold mines.

  34. If they say don’t bring anything I don’t bring anything. People are easily offended if you bring something,it’s like saying what the cooked or bought isn’t good enough.

  35. This educational post assited me a lot! Saved the website, extremely excellent categories just about everywhere that I read here! I really like the info, thank you.

  36. The charlatans who made this mess are now doing their best to avoid that in the only way they know- extend and pretend. The growth, globalization, finance model lived an extra thirty years on consumer usury, stock market bubbles and a housing bubble.thanks..

  37. This is why such sites need huge marketing budgets to really take off. The bowling pin strategy can work too, but you still have the initial problem of getting an ‘in’ with each target region.thanks..

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