Viral Marketing: Making Your Message Multiply
Not A Deadly Disease
Viral marketing sounds like a disease no one wants to catch. In reality, the outcome for a business can be healthy. Similar to how the flu spreads, viral marketing spreads a company’s message quickly as hundreds or even millions of people become exposed to the business’s brand. Viral marketing uses the power of one customer’s recommendation to another to help spread the word about a product or company. “It’s using social networks to create exponential increases,” said David Hopkins, managing director of the Carlson Brand Enterprise in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. “People prefer a recommendation rather than an advertisement.” Still, companies aren’t spending millions of dollars to touch those potential customers.
Instead, viral marketing depends largely on the customers who voluntarily pass on a company’s message to their friends and family. Common mediums for a viral campaign are online social networks such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. Those social networks are typically free for companies to use. An example of one of the first successful viral marketing campaigns revolves around Hotmail, a webmail service. When Hotmail was launched in 1996, every e-mail sent through the Hotmail system had a tag line at the end, “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com.” The tag line is unobtrusive to the e-mail recipient and gets a message across in a simple way. Hotmail became an instant hit. Within 30 months of its launch in 1996, it had 30 million members (by 1999), according to Microsoft. Today, it has more than 300 million accounts worldwide. “It’s getting your audience to do your marketing for you. The focus is spreading the message,” Hopkins said.
Bring in the ‘wow’ factor
Not every company’s message can be viral. A key is to find what would make a customer voluntarily pass along the message. “The main thing is understanding the audience and how to stimulate that audience to make the virus spread,” Hopkins said. With viral marketing, a message is passed on quickly and can affect many people. But marketers need to make sure their message can be passed on easily. “You have to figure out a message that people care about,” Hopkins said. “It’s really hard to create it. Everyone wants to do it, but not everyone succeeds at it.” At Sartell e-service marketing company W3i, a recent viral marketing campaign focused on Mother’s Day flowers. It gave out free virtual “bouquet” wallpaper that can be sent to anyone through e-mail. The mission for the 13-person marketing team was to make sure the idea was creative and easy to use. It takes less than four clicks to get the wallpaper on the desktop. “If your grandma can do it, everybody can,” said Lisa Nistler, senior marketing director of W3i. “You have to build for that lowest common denominator.” W3i’s revenue comes from advertising dollars. Users can accept or decline advertising offers during the installation process. Companies are finding that creating a Web site costs little to nothing, but it takes time and creativity to develop a message worth passing on. It took W3i about two months to develop the marketing and to target an audience for its Mother’s Day campaign. It only took about an hour of software development to put logistics of the campaign online. “We focus on captivating content that the user is going to want to share,” Nistler said.
Not every company’s message can be viral. A key is to find what would make a customer voluntarily pass along the message. “The main thing is understanding the audience and how to stimulate that audience to make the virus spread,” Hopkins said. With viral marketing, a message is passed on quickly and can affect many people. But marketers need to make sure their message can be passed on easily. “You have to figure out a message that people care about,” Hopkins said. “It’s really hard to create it. Everyone wants to do it, but not everyone succeeds at it.” At Sartell e-service marketing company W3i, a recent viral marketing campaign focused on Mother’s Day flowers. It gave out free virtual “bouquet” wallpaper that can be sent to anyone through e-mail. The mission for the 13-person marketing team was to make sure the idea was creative and easy to use. It takes less than four clicks to get the wallpaper on the desktop. “If your grandma can do it, everybody can,” said Lisa Nistler, senior marketing director of W3i. “You have to build for that lowest common denominator.” W3i’s revenue comes from advertising dollars. Users can accept or decline advertising offers during the installation process. Companies are finding that creating a Web site costs little to nothing, but it takes time and creativity to develop a message worth passing on. It took W3i about two months to develop the marketing and to target an audience for its Mother’s Day campaign. It only took about an hour of software development to put logistics of the campaign online. “We focus on captivating content that the user is going to want to share,” Nistler said.
Getting customers to work for you
Although not a requirement, it has been proven that giving something away encourages people to pass on a marketing message, Hopkins said. That free item could range from food to a newsletter full of information. “It’s like a first date, an introduction,” Nistler said. “You are building a relationship with them.” Companies have to study their demographics to see what would appeal to those audiences and make them want to pass a message on. Although the rewards can be great, there are also risks with a viral campaign. A good idea can spread like wildfire. So can a bad one. “The main concern (about viral) is the negative,” said Michael Liebelt, marketing manager at W3i. “It can be very positive, but it can also can do the exact opposite.” As much as people may like the message of a viral campaign, they might not like the content. That could cause unfavorable exponential growth, Hopkins said. Companies have to figure out what distinguishes them from competition.
A shift in media mix
Viral marketing has changed how companies look at spending their marketing dollars. “The shift in advertising in traditional media to online or other marketing tools stems from the younger generation,” Nistler said. There is a need to come up with new marketing techniques to cater to an ad-blind generation that grew up with cereal commercials during Saturday morning cartoons and billboards at every street corner. “They know when they are being advertised to and they are saying ‘Enough, I don’t believe you anymore,’ ” Nistler said.
A national presence
Viral campaigns are becoming a common tool in a marketeer’s tool box. Viral marketing is always changing because of new mediums created to pass along messages and the creativity of the messages, experts say. But it is now a permanent tool worth trying. A viral campaign eventually dies out. Companies always have to be looking forward and ahead to the next campaign. But what might be considered a good viral campaign recipe now may be different in a few years. Part of the reason viral marketing is so successful is because it’s unique and considered cutting-edge, experts said. And like television ads or billboards, people tend to get immune to ad clutter, which makes it a challenge for marketers to come up with the next big campaign. “It’s always changing, morphing, becoming something different,” Nistler said.
For the full version of this article, click here. Article written by Amy Trang, ROI Central Minnesota Magazine.
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