4 Viral Marketing Triggers

2008 October 24

by Urbain

For those new to Internet marketing, you’ve probably heard the phrase “viral marketing.” But what in the world does that mean?

In a nutshell, viral marketing refers to “word of mouth” marketing. That is, people tell others about your product or service.

In 2001, BusinessWeek discussed viral marketing:

“The prognosis for many of these campaigns isn’t good. Sure, there are some high-profile viral success stories. Take Hotmail. By simply sending e-mail, consumers hawked the service because every message contained a Hotmail ad. That helped it grow to 12 million accounts in its first year, 1996. The 1999 hit film The Blair Witch Project benefited from similar contagion. On Web sites and in chat rooms, the film’s promoters hinted that the fictional tale was really a documentary and let the bug run wild. I had never been to a Blair Witch site, but by the time the movie opened even I had heard that it was a true story. I’d been bitten.”

In my opinion, another example of tremendous viral marketing was the release of The Secret. For almost a year before the release of the DVD, people were sending emails giving a link to the pre-release video that was online. The video was impressive, but did not really say what “The Secret” was, other than creating a lot of intrigue. After viewing the video, you could sign up to be on the announcement list and could forward the video to other emails.

4 Viral Marketing Triggers

As the BusinessWeek article alludes, not all viral marketing campaigns are successful and in fact, they might be annoying. Here’s my take on what creates a great viral marketing campaign that people will gladly spread around:

Your product is valuable and will benefit others, but you’re giving it away or selling it for next to nothing.
The marketing message creates a sense of intrigue or mystery, and everyone is curious to find out what it is about.
The message is very funny.
The ad is shocking.

The problem is, will your ad be so clever that it’s only the ad that is circulated and not the product recommendation? The “value” component seems to me to be the one that will translate into the most customers or leads. The rest may drive a lot of traffic to your site, but it’s unclear whether this traffic will result in leads or sales unless you have a lead capture system in place.

Some Fun Examples from YouTube

Here are some examples of advertisements that have gone viral:

Be prepared - this one for Channel No. 5 is very shocking. After seeing this one, I don’t think I’ll be inclined to buy the perfume!

Another cute one from Nike:

And who can forget these? Long before the Internet, I remember most of my relatives “waiting” for the next Wendy’s commercial because they thought the “Where’s the Beef” lady was so funny: