Holy Grail of Marketing: Creating Viral Marketing Campaigns
Social Networking is all the buzz these days. Big corporations and small business owners are wading in and trying to leverage social networking sites to create viral marketing campaigns. Many mistakenly view “viral marketing” as merely another form of word of mouth advertising.
Seth Godin writes in “Is Viral Marketing the Same as Word of Mouth“:
Viral marketing [does not equal] word of mouth. Here’s why:
Word of mouth is a decaying function. A marketer does something and a consumer tells five or ten friends. And that’s it. It amplifies the marketing action and then fades, usually quickly. A lousy flight on United Airlines is word of mouth. A great meal at Momofuku is word of mouth.
Viral marketing is a compounding function. A marketer does something and then a consumer tells five or ten people. Then then they tell five or ten people. And it repeats. And grows and grows. Like a virus spreading through a population. The marketer doesn’t have to actually do anything else. (They can help by making it easier for the word to spread, but in the classic examples, the marketer is out of the loop.)
So it’s easy to see why a viral marketing campaign would be the holy grail for most marketing professionals or business owners. Imagine… creating an ad campaign that you don’t have to pay to have delivered…instead it’s carried by your customers to their friends… and their friends carry the message to their friends. All this is done without any promise of renumeration.
Viral Marketing is indeed the pinnacle of marketing success…the problem is that most attempts at launching “viral marketing campaigns” land FLAT! For every successful one launched, there are hundreds that fail to engage and deliver.
In 7 tricks to Viral Web Marketing Thomas Baekdal writes for tip #3:
Do not try to make advertisements (that sucks)
One of the biggest mistake companies make is when they think viral marketing is just advertisements that people share - it is not. Traditional marketing is about promoting your product, showing how good it is, giving it center stage - and generally being incredibly selfish (and possibly using supermodels or movie stars). But guess what, nobody cares about you!
Viral marketing is all about a good story. When BMW put out BMW Films, the main ingredient was not the cars, but the story. Replace the car with another one, and it would still be great. When Sony made their Bravia TV ads, the product was not even seen - yet everyone remembers it.
So, in true paradoxical fashion… setting out to create a “viral” marketing campaign is the wrong approach. Instead, seek to engage and interact with your customer. CONNECT!!!!
Visitor Attraction Tool: Create Your Own Award
Links are what makes the web world go round! Lots of incoming links to your web site or blog means lots of bread crumb trails for visitors to follow to find your site, not to mention increased respect from the search engines which can also lead to more visitors.
So, incoming links are a great way to attract new visitors and a GREAT link attraction tool is to create your own Web Site Awards.
Dean Hunt has created such a tool. He’s created a "doesn’t suck" button to display on your web site.
When you place the "doesn’t suck" button on your web site, you are creating a link to HIS web site (in this case a blog.)
I maintain a very successful dog site which frequently gets "awards" with the hope that I’ll display the award on my web site that ranks #1 on several highly competitive terms. Displaying those awards means a link from my site to theirs. I get to "boost" my web site’s credibillity by displaying these awards and they get a link from an established and successful web site. It’s a win/win for everyone involved.
So if you’re looking for a way to attract links and the visitors that follow them, create your very own web site award.
Attracting Visitors with Great Gagets and Gimmicks
Dane Carlson was inspired by the recent sale of Weblogs to AOL to create an application to determine how much your blog is worth. The tool takes your Technorati ranking and applies a formula derived by the Web Blog sale to AOL.
Adding tools like this is a GREAT way to attract visitors to your web site or blog! You don’t have start from scratch. Eric Harshbarger created an Applet Depot. Many have a copyright date of 1998, but you can see variations of these applets in use today (especially on myspace.com).
Another great gimmick to use is to create a quiz for visitors on your web site or blog. Remember, anything you can do to attract attention is good! People are MUCH more likely to send friends/family/colleagues to something fun or interesting.
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