Can you tell me what Viral Marketing is?

You know those buzz-words that people toss around in meetings and day-to day-life?  Those little phrases that get a very serious reaction from the world at large (read: lots of head nodding).  The ones that if you actually stop and think for a minute, you quickly realize you can’t really pin-point a clear definition for them (or for that matter be a 100% certain that you’re using them in the correct context).  I’m talking about terms like “Actionable”, “Leveraging Knowledge Capital”, “Information Touch-Point”, so on, so forth (FYI –“Actionable” is an adjective). Let’s be honest with each other here, if someone asked you for the definition of the word “Self-Liquidating”, do you really think you’d be able to offer up a concrete definition within 10 seconds or less? Exactly!

I find that the concept of viral marketing is a lot like this.  For the most part, anyone who does anything online has a broad understanding of what viral marketing is. They can definitely name a few examples of how to do it: blogging, viral videos-Susan Boyle anyone?  They can easily state a few companies who have made it work for them: PayPal, One Red Paper Clip, Hotmail (the classic). BUT they struggle to clearly and concisely define the concept itself, or more importantly turn this ambiguous idea into a usable business strategy.

In my most recent web-browsing adventures I came across an interesting (and very well-known) article on viral marketing.  In “The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing”, Dr. Ralph F. Wilson does a fabulous job of explaining viral marketing, with real-world examples.  Admittedly this article is a lot older than my usual picks, but I like to think of it as an oldie, but a goodie. 

Getting into the meat of the subject, Dr. Wilson describes Viral marketing as:
“…Any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence”.

Okay fair enough, but how does one encourage this growth? Because the one caveat to viral marketing is that much like a real virus, a campaign that’s gone truly viral takes on a life of its own.  The marketer/business owner no longer drives the push to the target audience. Rather the target audience takes the reins and passes your message on to everyone else. The implications of these types of campaigns is that while you, the business owner, can take certain actions to make something more likely to turn into a viral campaign, the audience (who you do not control) makes the final call on whether the campaign will fly or flop.

The point I’m trying to get across is that while you can’t truly drive a viral campaign the same way you can a normal marketing effort, you can consider several strategies to ensure your ads/marketing efforts are more likely to be picked up by your audience and passed on.

According to Dr. Wilson an effective Viral Marketing Strategy:

• Gives away products or services – people like free stuff, it’s noticeable, it’s attention grabbing and you can get them in the door (at which point you sell them stuff)
• Provides for effortless transfer to others – Your message should be simple so it transmits easily from person to person without losing its meaning.  
• Scales easily from very small to very large-if your campaign takes off make sure you can manage the influx of customers, you’ll do more harm than good to your brand if you make a promise and can’t deliver on it
• Exploits common motivations and behaviours – People as a rule want to be cool, make money, fit in - design a marketing strategy that targets these behaviours and you’re more likely to have people pass it on to others.
• Utilizes existing communication networks – Find a place where your target audience goes to socialize (chat rooms, Facebook, MySpace, favourite websites) and make sure your message can be found there.
• Takes advantage of others’ resources – Get other people to spread your word, give away free links to your content or copy so other people will do the work for you.  It’s a heck of a lot easier to have 1 million people each send out a single message, than to have 1 person send out 1 million messages (if they can even find 1 million people to send it to).

(Wilson also mentions that while you don’t need to include all of these elements to have a successful campaign, the more elements one can include the more powerful it is likely to be.)

So what can we learn from this:

1. When trying to create a viral strategy be sure to consider your target audience, the media you can use to best reach this audience (twitter, Facebook, news releases articles etc), your marketing message and how you’ll measures your success.  Then go crazy! Try it out and see what sticks!
2. If you follow our Shoptalk blog regularly you’ll remember a post called “It's Free!”. Viral marketing harnesses the idea of Free, and if effective, capitalizes on it to bring in revenue. Read the post and see how it can work for you.

P.S. -A self liquidating expense is an expense that also carries with it the means to its own repayment.

Read “The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing” by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant