Viral Marketing

According to About.com, "Statistics, extrapolations and counting by Radicati Group from the first quarter of 2006 estimate the number of emails sent per day to be around 171 billion." What does this have to do with viral marketing you may ask? Viral marketing is simply another way of saying word or mouth advertising. The increase in online users and those who use email frequently has made word of mouth advertising phenomenally inexpensive and effective. Comedy, intrigue, unique value and satire for example all provide great starting points for campaigns that will be "forwarded" amongst friends and online communities. The goal is to generate a BUZZ about a product or service you are offering.

The Campaign Framework

So what constitutes the ideal viral marketing campaign and what are the best mediums? Some strong campaigns have used video as a means of distributing the marketing message. Do you recall Burger King's subservient chicken campaign? I remember receiving a link to this site in an email forwarded from a friend and then passing the link along to my network of friends. The folks at JibJab do a brilliant job of combining video and flash to create funny and timely pieces that really get passed along within networks of friends.

But just how successful can these referalls be? In an iMedia Connection article, Josh Linkner, CEO of ePrize, states that “We are seeing on average a referral rate of 3.5 referrals per user when tied to the chance to win. Of those, we're seeing about one-third of the referees come back to register. In other words, if you have one million original users, the word is then spread to 3.5 million more people. About one million will then come back to register, so you have effectively DOUBLED the registration rates.” Clearly the ability to greatly increase your leads database is available through the crafty use of a viral marketing campaign.

Successful viral marketing doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive or grandiose in scale. A good idea distributed to the right audience can play a key role in your marketing arsenal. Give us a call today to discuss your needs. 970-946-5387.