Week Five: Developing a Successful Viral Marketing Campaign

The purpose of viral marketing is to develop a message which instills the recipeint to feel compelled to pass the message on like a virus. One reason this type of advertising has proven to be successful is that it relies heavily on word of mouth. Consumers are typically more trusting and responsive to WOM advertising, as it is based on the opinions of their peers. However, simply devising a viral campaign is not enough to ensure success. In order to maximize the effectiveness of a viral campaign, the following steps should be followed:

 

1. Develop Creative Material

There are a few things to consider when developing a viral campaign. In relation to the actual content of a campaign, it is often better to keep it simple. With the numerous technological advances available to marketers these days, it is hard to resist the urge to utiitze these features when developing an ad; however, if the material is interesting and deemed controversial, the message can often be made at a low cost. A great example of an inexpensive viral campaign is Apple’s iBand. The video was made to try and generate buzz about new features offered on the iPhone, and is simply three users who have used their phones to create a song. The video is low budget, but was interesting enough to warrant 1.2 million views on You Tube, along with 10,000 comments, 11,000 ratings, and 13,000 bookmarks. There are also numerous response videos to the iBand clip featured on You Tube, which is further indication of the campaigns growing success. Providing giveaways, or promoting contests can also help to drive a viral campaign, but it should be noted that without drafting interesting content, it is unlikely that a campaign will reach optimum success.

2. Seeding

Developing interesting content is merely the first step in developing a successful campaign. Viral marketers must also take into consideration who to deliver the message to. This requires that the marketer establish who the best “influencers” would be to send the message to. In order to choose the best mix of recipients, marketers must first determine who the target audience is for the message. Once that has been established, they must next decide who is most likely to spread the word within that market segment. One good choice would be sending the message to a blogger who writes about your insudtry. Bloggers already have a built in forum to discuss your viral campaign, and would be sharing opinions with users who are also interested in similar material. Other choices could include Webmasters, or Presidents of Associations who would perhaps be interested in your campaign. It is important to try and target those who will be more prone to passing on content, rather than creating a blanket email campaign hoping to drum up controversy. Seeding also requires that marketers distinguish what channel of communication they will use. If targeting younger users, social media may be a better choice; however older users are not as involved with social networking and may be better targeted through an email message.

3. Tracking

The final element that needs to be considered in a viral campaign is tracking effectiveness. In order to do this, marketers must first decide what sort of web metrics they will be using to track success. The measurement chosen will also be impacted by which communication channel the message is being delivered through. For example, if the viral message was sent out via email, marketers could track the amount of emails they distributed, and how may clicked the message to forward to a friend. This will determine how many initial influencers felt the urge to pass it on. If posting a viral video on a social networking site, marketers could look at the widgets, or code installed on a profile page, which are then forwarded on to friends. By tracking these measures, a marketer can better gauge success of a campaign in terms of return on investment. In determining how many users viewed the viral content, a company can determine if money spent on the campaign was worthwhile.

One final note in developing a viral campaign, is that marketers must be prepared for a large increase in traffic hitting their site. Therefore, server scalability is extremely important, as a campaign can not be successful if your server goes down due to volume increases.

The following is an example of a successful viral marketing campaign. Success was garnered due to strict adherence to the rules previously mentioned. Enjoy…and remember, pass it on!