Tactic or Strategy…hmmm?
I’ve seen quite a few tweets, posts and discussion lately about the use of social media, viral marketing and the like. Here is an excerpt from my book “42 Rules of Marketing” - what do you think? What about Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and other social media sites. Agree? Disagree?
Rule 23: Viral Marketing is a Tactic In terms of demand generation – viral marketing is a fascinating topic. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal that talked about the changing face of marketing, and how the internet and viral elements have changed the nature of marketing forever. The Journal is right.
Viral marketing is a relative to search engine marketing, blogs and email marketing. It is really just an online version of good old-fashioned “word of mouth.” The major difference, of course, is that it now takes seconds for an idea to spread versus days, weeks or months using the traditional “she tells two friends, and so on, and so on” method made famous by Breck shampoo commercials. The objective of viral marketing is to seed your idea or message with key influencers in an online community with the hope that they will have good things to say about your product, service, company, etc. And you hope that they will spread the good news for you, like a virus.
A few years ago we were using the internet to push info to customers and were enabling customers to find information about our products/services by publishing our info on the web – we thought this was a huge change. We didn’t have a clue what was coming. Today – customers are publishing their own information about our products/services. User-generated content, social networking and online communities have turned everything inside-out. You are no longer in control of the messages. You can start the ball rolling, but once it’s out there and customers begin to talk about you, it becomes a matter of influence not control. Targeting influencers who will (hopefully) comment positively on your product or service is an age-old strategy. Blogs, email, chat rooms and online communities it faster, and allow it to grow bigger due to the reach of the internet.
The reason viral marketing works is based on human emotion. The things that typically take off are either tragically sad or hilariously funny. During the holiday selling season in 2006, a cute little site called “Go Elf Yourself” appeared. You could “elf yourself” by uploading a photo (of yourself or an unsuspecting friend or colleague), recording a short message and showing off with a funny little elf dance. The site was the brainchild of Office Max and was created as part of a multi-phased viral campaign that ended in January 2007 with a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal. Office Depot apologized for their little game causing such a significant drop in productivity and invited businesses everywhere to come to Office Depot and stock up on productivity items. As far as results go, in mid-December 2006 the site was averaging 200 unique visitors per second; people were creating 8 new elves per second. That’s a lot of elfs.
The elfs certainly didn’t change the world. But the idea behind the it certainly could.
