Viral Marketing Basics

“Going viral” is a buzz term used to describe the electronic version of word-of-mouth advertising. Therefore, “Viral marketing” is the act of promoting a product or service by different means that facilitate its viral growth online.

A viral marketing campaign, however, is not easy to accomplish. It needs to be carefully planned and then executed with surgical precision to avoid puncturing the thin veil of trust of internet folk.

There are plenty of examples where viral marketing campaigns have not only failed… but back-fired and created a real PR nightmare for the company that tried to outsmart the global community (like the infamous Edelmal-Walmart fiasco or the CAA-LonelyGirl-YouTube debacle.)

Studies show that a customer, when satisfied with your product or service, will usually tell two or three friends about it. On the other hand, an unhappy customer will tell as many as 11 people if they do not like your product or service. Obviously you want viral marketing to work in your favor and not have a virtual army of naysayers out there spreading negative words about your business.

Therefore, if you want to “go viral” online, you need to begin with a high quality product and, above all, superior customer service.

Hotmail is a classic, well-known example of viral marketing. It was one of the first free e-mail programs (which gave it a good advantage). But the real key to its viral success was this: When someone signed up for an account, a one-line signature file promoting the service was automatically inserted at the bottom of all their outgoing e-mails.

That little sig-file was what spurred Hotmail’s massive growth… and allowed geek-gone-millionare Sabeer Bhatia to sell Hotmail to Microsoft for a very cool $400 million dollars just a few years later.

Sometimes businesses are launched as a result of viral marketing and you don’t have to be a business person to benefit. In the summer of 2007 a mother of a large family listed some Pokémon cards for sale on eBay. She wrote a long and compelling story about how she purchased the cards (which weren’t worth anything) during a trip to the grocery store with all her young kids.

Because the eBay listing was so unusual, people bookmarked it on Stumbleupon, Digg and other social news sites. And it was eventually brought to the attention of internet marketer Ed Dale during his Thirty Day Challenge, which increased the traffic all the more. As a result, the cards sold for a lot more than they were worth. This also prompted local radio stations to interview her and there was even discussion of a book deal on her story.

There is no formula for making something viral, but I’ll share with you a few tips and pointers that could help:

• Create a high-quality product that effectively solves a common problem and is useful to people. Then give it away for free (this can be a pdf, a podcast, a video, etc).
• Create a piece of honestly entertaining content that appeals your audience.
• Other things you can create include: Tools, Quizzes, Contests, Awards, etc (Be creative)
• Build something that creates or encourages community.
• Figure out how to push the emotional hot-buttons of your audience.
• Facilitate the distribution of your product or content piece in the social web.
• Submit it to high-profile bloggers and other influential people in your niche. If they pick it up and talk about it, things will speed dramatically up for you.
• Don’t be self-centered in your viral marketing efforts.
• Try to be cool, or controversial, or entertaining, or shocking.

That’s a start, but there are a LOT of different ways to make a business go viral. Share your own in the comments section and let’s make this a good resource for all of us to consult in the future!

· Topic: Internet Marketing  · Tags: internet marketing, linkbait, viral marketing