Filed Under: Viral Marketing
Now that I’m a nominee for the SEMMY 2008, I suppose it’s time for my bi-annual post:) This is by no means an ultimate guide to viral marketing, but I’ll cover some of the strategic considerations and the process behind planning a viral campaign — and perhaps introduce an idea or two.
This post is not heavy in theory; There are books for that — linked to in this post. I believe they are quite essential if you want to be successful.
I must confess there’s a lot that I don’t know about this subject, but as always, the more you read about any given subject, the more you realize you don’t know. At least that’s how it is for me.
And — the minute you start relying on actual individuals — you know those egocentric swellheads that only care about themselves (aka visitors) — performing the task for you, you’re in deep shit already.
But the benefits of a well planned and well executed viral marketing campaign can be tremendous, both in terms of links and traffic, direct or indirect sales, branding, reputation management and much, much more.
Building a social strategy
Building a social strategy simply means putting together the objectives of a campaign, with an understanding of an audience, and identifying an outcome that you would like to achieve, and then pinpointing the appropriate tactics that will get you there.
The strategy represent the contemplation of the bigger picture — the high-level objectives while the tactics represent the different building blocks that will take you there.
What you want to do is to is to increase your odds for getting people to do what you want, and to do that, you need to get to know these people; what’s their passion, what’s driving them, what’s their community and friends like, who are the top dogs in the community, do these have a massive ego (and how can you stroke it) etc.
The better you know them, the more accurately you’ll be able to influence them into doing what you want them to do. Who your target audience should be depends on a lot of things, and I’m not even gonna try to go in-depth on this one here.
When it comes to literature, I would recommend reading a few books from Seth Godin, namely Purple Cow (no aff) and Unleashing the Idea Virus (no aff). Both books will give you a better understanding of what it takes to stand out and to make people talk about your stuff - ie your campaign.
Identifying the target audience - Not to be sneezed at
In “Unleashing the Idea Virus”, Seth used an interesting analogy; He referred to the people passing on ideas as “sneezers”. If someone sneeze on you, you’re infected with the virus, and you’ll start sneezing on others, which in turn will do the same.
But as he points out, a virus need a strong host to survive. The virus also need a host that know a lot of people - the more people the host of the virus knows, the more people will be sneezed on, and will in turn start sneezing on their friends.
A weak host with few friends, and the virus will not spread very far very fast and eventually die.
In essence, you want as many people as possible to pass along your stuff to as many people as possible, and you want this process to repeat itself over and over again and as fast as possible.
In reality, though, this is usually way to broad - you need to narrow things down a bit.
Matching your campaign tactics with your audience
Jennifer Laycock points out: The viral idea is designed for your customers, not for your marketing department
This is probably the biggest mistake I see companies of all sizes making when it comes to viral marketing. Companies put together a standard advertising or marketing campaign and then call up a viral consultant with the request to “make” the campaign go viral.
What these companies fail to understand is the nature of the viral message. While it’s possible to orchestrate a viral campaign, there’s never a guarantee of success. (As opposed to something like email marketing where marketers can generally say “we generally have an x% response rate to this offer.”) Viral marketing campaign development is more about taking the time to understand and research the passion points of a target audience than it is about crafting a careful message designed to get point x, y and z across.
What’s your broad match target audience? Within this broad match, is there one or more type(s) that is particularly passionate about something? If so, what? And when you know “what” - is this something you can use to your advantage?
If there is indeed people that are passionate about something you do, then there will be web-sites, blogs and fora about these subjects. These may very well become your seeders(or sneezers if you like) if you play your cards right.
In the case of a passionate audience, it’s usually related to a certain skill or interest, like cars, computers, design and so on - the list is too long to mention all. Either way, a skill based contest may be a good bet.
In the case of a skill based contest, chances are the campaign will be hitting the nail on the head when it comes to the target audience for the product you’re trying to promote, but it’ll usually also result in a niche campaign.
As always, the more focused a campaign is, the higher conversion rate you’ll get, so attracting the eyeballs from a niche doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
There are ways to broaden the reach of a niche campaign, but more about that later on.
Imagine a computer store having a “Computer Case Modding Contest”, an auto parts dealer having a “Badass Car of the Year Award” or a photography equipment store having a “Beach Babe Photography Contest” (or perhaps even Beach Hunk to grab the attention of the female shoppers?).
But what if the audience doesn’t possess a particular skill? What if your product really is for “everyone”?
Burger King’s Subservient Chicken proved watching a man dressed as a chicken dance in a living room helped promote their chicken sandwiches, something as mundane as uploading your own or someone else’s photo to a site can become viral — like the Carmex Kiss campaign, MyHeritage’s Celebrity Lookalike, or as Tamar Weinberg suggested, the Gillette Manquarium.
Tamar Weinberg, one of the 2008 Viral Marketing SEMMY finalists, has a post called Top 6 Ideas for Incredible Viral Content, where she shares quite a few good examples.
I must say, though, that I believe many of the examples in her list are not viral campaigns, but rather great link bait examples.
As Jeremy Luebke pointed out “Most viral campaigns are linkbait but very few pieces of linkbait can be considered viral campaigns.”
Tactics for broadening the campaign audience
Even if your core campaign is designed for a particular niche, it’s possible to increase the spread by adding elements to the campaign.
Only hard-core computer case modders and overclockers are likely to actually enter a computer case modding contest, however, many skill based contests can become visual.
Images are much more accessible, thus by adding and actively promoting an image gallery with the sickest computer case mods and cooling devices, you’ll grab the attention not just from the hard-core niche, but also anyone who’s somewhat interested in computers.
Your viral campaign possibly just increased its reach by 90% — or more.
Barriers and speed bumps limiting the effect
Every campaign must be free to enter, however some campaigns by its very nature require the visitors to add their personal information, be it the good ol’ Top 10 Score Board, Send to a Friend or if there’s a prize involved.
The minute you start asking for personal details, the conversion rate will drop. Think long and hard about how much information you really need to even be able to do the campaign, not how much information you want. If you don’t have a bloody good reason for asking for a specific piece of info, leave it be.
As with any sign-up process, the more information you demand, the fewer people will actually sign up.
If there’s a prize involved, the absolute minimum is their name and email address. If the prize is good enough, and it should be if you want to be remarkable (No lame t-shirts or mugs with your company logo!!!), it may serve as an incentive to give you more - but be very careful.
You also need to know a lot about landing page design and usability. This is a campaign, and the design of the page can greatly reduce or improve the over-all efficiency of it. Employ best practices, test and revise.
Great sources for more information about usability could be Malcom Gladwell’s Blink! (no aff), Designing the Obvious by Robert Hoekman Jr. (no aff) and Don’t make me think by Steve Krug (no aff).
Final words
There is so much more to say about this subject, but it cannot be covered in one single blog post — I haven’t even touched upon the process of seeding and actually executing a campaign, however, I hope you’ve gotten some ideas on how to approach the creation of a campaign. And finally, I’d like to thank Bill Slawski for input and ideas for this post.
What do you think about this post? Please do share your own tips or ideas! And if you’re going to SES in London this February, I’m always open for a chat there.
Look for a dude with long hair and glasses or send me a message on Facebook 
Sverre Sjøthun
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