Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is another area where lots of new buzzwords have developed with the emergence of the internet, despite it being one of the oldest forms of marketing.

Phrases such as Word of Mouth Marketing, Buzz Marketing, Member‑get‑Member on Steroids and such, have been used to describe the accelerated form of referral generation over the internet.

Steve Jorgensen is regarded as the inventor of the term ‘Viral Marketing’ when he invested in Hotmail and it grew exponentially on the back of simple advertisements on each e‑mail message that read "Get Your Private, free e‑mail from Hotmail at www.hotmail.com".

If you'd like to know more, there's a whole chapter on viral marketing in Malcolm Auld's book, E‑mail Marketing Made Easy. MAD conducted some of the first viral campaigns in Australia in 1998 — those were the days when you could forward attachments in the form of Flash animated games and not have your messages blocked by spam filters.

Most viral marketing is viral lite

Unfortunately, most viral marketing is what we at MAD call viral lite marketing. It consists of advertisements designed for television being viewed via a link to a website. And the reason lots of people watch the commercial is because it's new and it probably has humour so it can cross cultures and demographics.

But just because thousands or millions of people watch an advertisement on a website doesn't make it successful. The opportunity to really succeed with this type of campaign is to capture data from the people who view the commercial, then use this data to grow your business.

You don't need to capture much: name and contact details, maybe whether or not they are a user of the brand, or a competitive brand, where they buy the brand and other useful data. You can even incentivise response for better quality data.

If for example you run a viral campaign for a beer brand, then at least capture name, e‑mail, address or postcode, local pub and current brands drunk. Then you can make an offer to try the advertised brand at a local pub and research what the punters think of the beer and whether they'll give up their current brand for the advertised one.

Online games are an excellent way to engage customers and create new ones and they can be promoted by your customers forwarding them to colleagues and thus create a ‘viral effect’. Try our latest viral game Marketing Buzzwords Bingo by clicking here. Feel free to pass to pass it on.

If you'd like a viral marketing strategy that works or an online game for your brand, call or e‑mail Malcolm Auld or Paul Anderson on +61 2 9976 0900 or inquiry@madmail.com.au.