Viral Marketing
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Viral Marketing?

Almost everyone in their lives will get a virus of some kind; there are millions out there, from the simple flu virus to its more deadly and exotic relatives. A virus has common characteristics:

  • It replicates itself
  • Its uses its host resources
  • It spreads itself to other hosts


But how can a virus help us with marketing?
If you apply the same principles as above to a marketing campaign, you get a rather ingenious way of getting your message across – a marketing campaign that:

  • Replicates itself – leaflets, posters etc are expensive to reproduce, a viral marketing campaign doesn’t cost any more than the initial set up
  • A viral campaign uses the host resources of the user viewing it, i.e., their email inboxes
  • It spreads itself, propels itself through cyberspace with very little maintenance from the marketing team.


So Viral marketing is a new and wonderful phenomenon?
Nope, it’s been around for ages but to this day has only been used successfully on a small number of occasions. No one is quite sure who first coined the term ‘viral marketing’ but one of its first uses was from Microsoft in its hotmail program. At the bottom of every email sent from a hotmail account was a small tagline: "Get your private, free email at hotmail.com". When people saw this, they then may have decided to get their own hotmail account. Every email then sent from theses new accounts would have included that line too. Microsoft did very little to spread the word, there was no huge multi million television advertising campaign, they relied upon web users in a ‘word of mouth’ way.

Why have I never heard of it before ?
The best viral marketing campaigns are ideas that the user develops themselves, take the Blair Witch Project for example, although I thought the film was pretty mediocre, the marketing and hype involved was phenomenal, the makers created a web site about the ‘Legend of the Blair Witch’, not stating whether it was fiction or not, simply planted an idea in the minds of the audience. They then elaborated slightly more saying that there were videos found of people who had gone missing in the woods, etc. Before long, the media were involved and the film was one of the biggest box office hits of the year round the world. Accident? No, a carefully planned viral marketing campaign, like the virus, the marketing team behind this used the media, word of mouth, rumour mills to spread the word, other resources.

Roughly, only 10% of all viral marketing campaigns will have success, why?
Because they need to follow a number of rules. If someone sends you an email selling a product or service, you may be interested, you may not, its highly unlikely you will send it on to your contact list, yet if someone sends you something humorous or a fantastic offer, you are likely to pass it on, spreading the word yourself so to speak.

So what makes a good viral marketing project?
  1. Gives away products or services – There have to be a reason why people want to tell others about your campaign. If people think they are getting something for nothing, they will tell their friends. People will not forward an email that has no benefit to them or others.
  2. Provides for effortless transfer to others – Chain letters always died, as the host would have to actually do some physical work, rewriting addresses, purchasing stamps etc. Now, with the Internet as the communication medium, very little is needed to transfer the message, its as simple as a few clicks of the mouse button to forward an email.
  3. Scales easily from small to very large – A viral campaign spreads exponentially. If every person that receives it forwards it to 10 of their contacts, you’ve reached a thousand people only 4 steps down the line. This can cause problems sometimes (read below)
  4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors - Greed drives humans, so does popularity and the thought of being loved. A successful campaign will use these motivations.
  5. Utilizes existing communication networks – Human networks should be used to the advantage of the marketing campaign. Research has proven that most people have a close relationship with approximately 8 people although their networks can stretch to thousands. Imagine someone working in a bar, they may come into contact with hundreds of people over the course of a week.
  6. Takes advantage of others' resources – Using other resources (inbox space, links from others web sites), to spread the word with little or no effort on the part of the marketing team.


This sounds easy, what’s the catch?
There is none. Simply put, a viral campaign is doomed from the start if the item or service has no ‘viral value’. For instance, a company selling carpets mails a thousand people with a simple email explaining about their new colour range. How many of this thousand will forward the email on to others? Very few and the email will soon die. Too many marketing campaigns have tried viral marketing and failed due to the fact that it didn’t suit their services, like a flu virus, some just don’t catch it.

Another major problem is the growth of a successful campaign. If a viral email is created and forwarded, a few steps down the chain, it has reached over 100,000 people. If this email is pointing to a website, can it cope with 100,000 hits in a short period or will it go down? If the website ‘dies’, the emails are next to useless.

The viral email is a distant cousin of spam according to some ‘experts’. Although different approaches are used, it can be looked upon disapprovingly from some people although its doubtful, it can ever be traced back to one person.

This article is based upon viral marketing over the Internet but there are a lot more forms such as pyramid selling schemes that may be worth checking out.

Bruce
Razormedia
Boardroom Moderator

also posted in upcoming newsletter and on actionscript.com