Viral Marketing

[Chatmaster]

According to marketingterms.com Viral Marketing is defined as “Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.” Although this is a very good definition I would like to summarize it in 3 words, “Creating a buzz”.

Viral marketing is probably one of the oldest forms of marketing. Creating a buzz has been one of the key strategies for the growth and existence of business from the early days. There was no media, news stations, magazines or any form of mass advertising available and businesses relied largely on referrals from customers to grow their own businesses. I can only imagine what it must have been like in the streets of Jerusalem 1000’s of years ago, with street vendors telling everyone that they had this unique and wonderful vegetables or maybe oils that took years of your face if you rubbed it on. I can only imagine how many consumers discussed these products over dinner at night and during social gatherings. Yes they did viral marketing, their livelihoods depended on it!

Even today it is still being practiced by businesses. Ironically people get completely confused when they hear the term Viral Marketing and despite having done it before themselves probably for other businesses they seem to steer away from this “unknown” marketing strategy.

Every time I go to the café where I buy my daily requirements like bread and milk I am being tasked with doing viral marketing. Gabriel, the café owner always has something that is the freshest or best in the area. Just this afternoon he showed me these large potatoes that he sold for much less than anybody else in my town. If anyone would ask me where to buy good potatoes, I will certainly refer them to Gabriel.

But viral marketing has grown much more complex and in a sense easier than in the beginning of the marketing days. Viral marketing can now be passed on much faster and with a much bigger buzz than ever before.

One of the first and biggest viral marketing techniques used online must have been Hotmail. Within less than 6 months after it’s launch on the 4th of July 1996 Hotmail had more than 1 million subscribers! Everyone was talking about Hotmail! What made Hotmail such a wonderful idea was that people sent email to others using their Hotmail address distributing the name globally. The company was sold to Microsoft 18 months later for the tidy sum of $400 million!

This exact same technique was used by Google when they launched Gmail, they just added a very important feature, exclusivity. For a couple of year, only Gmail members were able to refer Gmail to friends and so forth. This made it exclusive and unique, causing everyone to want it.

Another recent famous guy that built his entire reputation and brand around viral marketing has to be theRichJerk.com. Being anonym this guy have no fear and most people probably talk about theRichJerk just because of his arrogance and because he is a selfish bastard! Yes that he is, there is more descriptive words for him, but let me explain by allowing him to do the talking himself, I quote from one of his newsletters he sent to me…

Dear Loser,

I've sent out two emails in the past few days with some groundbreaking
news:

a) I'm holding a live 2 day event.

b) I'm releasing some killer software.

c) I have video proof that I'm ****ing awesome.

If you missed my shocking video, go to
LINK

In response to the above I received over 20,000 replies.
In the email marketing world, that's a tremendous response.

And more than 10,000 of those replies were from people who told me to
fu*k off, die a slow death, go to Hell, wait for a hitman, prepare for a broken jaw, blah blah blah.

In other words, the same ole' stuff I always get.

But people are EXTRA pissed at me this time, because they never took me
seriously before. But I just shoved video proof UP THEIR ASSES. And now
they're angry, because there's no denying it now - how legit I am, and
how truly pathetic they are.
***SNIP***

I know, this is far from my kind of language, but think about it! This guy is getting everyone talking just because he has this complete arrogance about him. He is probably this pimple faced teenager sitting in his little bedroom at his parents home, but who cares, he even has pictures of “him” and some famous people to proof that he is rich and handsome. His entire marketing strategy, brand and business is designed around viral marketing.

In my opinion Seth Godin wrote an entire book about viral marketing but called it “Purple Cow”, this book is worth a read btw, if you want a good foundation for viral marketing. Locally we also have a number of companies that been using viral marketing successfully in their conventional marketing process. I would like to mention one that stood out through the years and that company has to be Nando’s. They have been in the news several times for being challenged legally for their insensitive ads. Everybody remembers the ad with the blind lady? Well very few of us actually saw it, but it was in the news all over the place.

The Internet brings viral marketing into a complete new level of performance however. But also with many more options. Although the discussion requires much more detail I will highlight a few points to plan a viral campaign.

What are your goals

Knowing your goals is the foundation of a viral campaign. Your objective determines the style and functionality of your viral campaign. Here are a couple of examples and how it determines your strategy.

Brand building – This kind of campaign doesn’t require much functionality and relies mostly on utilizing a distribution network like Facebook and YouTube to distribute your campaign. It normally contains qualities of humor, shock or controversy.
Data mining – Normally requires some technical abilities to obtain data of the visitor to allow access.

From the two examples above you can probably see the role your goals or objectives has to play in a viral campaign.

Determine your marketing angle

Your marketing angle will not only affect the success of your campaign but will also determine the lifetime of the campaign. Normally a viral campaign has a fairly long lifetime as it gets sent to and from friends all over the web over the years. However, if you simply make an advert this will not be the case, a simple advert will die a certain death very quickly. Your marketing angle should be built around two factors.

· The problem
· The unique solution

By highlighting the problem in a humorous video and then showing your product as the unique solution to the problem has been proven to be a success over the years.

Therefore you need to understand the consumer and their needs first. Then you have to understand your competitors and the main features that make your product unique from theirs. This can be anything from service to specific product features.

Now you need to focus on these features to come up with a sales dialogue that will be used in your viral campaign. This can either be a online flash game or even a scenario on video. The sales dialogue is the crux of the campaign as it will determine the success of the campaign not only in terms of lifetime and response but also in terms of reaching the target market as the solution to their problem.

The framework design

Many companies have done viral campaigns for pure branding exercises. I feel that it is strange to do that purely for branding if there is so much more you can do utilizing the web today, some might disagree… I am thinking here about the Reebok videos with Terry Tate for example. The campaign was regarded as such a success by Reebok that they made 2 more that I know of. But little do they know it was a miserable failure. Sure the campaign was successful as far as people really enjoying it and distributing it, but many people still wonder who Fletchers and son’s are and I have heard many people talking about the Terry Tate Nike videos. The videos itself had nothing to do with their brand or their company, nor did it have a theme remotely associated with their products. A further mistake was that they didn’t have any kind of data mining associated with the campaign and therefore they simply entertained the world for a while.

One of the biggest advantages of having a successful viral campaign is building a database of prospects that you can later target with special promotions and literature. Even better is if the campaign targets prospects that in line with the demographics of your product or service.