Commentary

The Truth about Viral Marketing

You can't go anywhere in online media circles without someone bringing up viral marketing. For the last year or so now, everyone in the marketing departments of every dotcom is looking for a silver bullet viral marketing solution. Viral marketing is the way of the online advertising future. Viral marketing is what will yield the most efficient cost per acquisition when compared to the overall marketing mix. Viral marketing is what will build a customer base with little or no capitol outlay from the advertiser.

Examples of successful viral marketing efforts include the eTour (www.etour.com) and Mahir phenomenon, the Budweiser (www.budweiser.com) "Wassup?!" effort, the Blair Witch Project WOM (word of mouth) explosion, and of course the granddaddy of them all, Hotmail (www.hotmail.com).

But before you think that tacking on a cool .exe to an email and spamming everyone in your contact database is a viable viral marketing tactic, think again.

It isn't easy creating something that is going to "take" with a given audience. One of the appeals of that which gets termed viral marketing is the authenticity of the expression. Most of us are all pretty media savvy these days, but those of us on the web, and particularly younger people on the web, are savvier than could have been imagined just 5 years ago.

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What appeals now is perceived honesty, warts and all, in the message being offered. That's why humor is so pervasive in most of the advertising we see anymore. Humor is just the truth in a palatable presentation; "Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals," as Agnes Repplier once wrote. Authenticity is what the people will accept. Viral marketing actually needs to rely heavily on that.

Usually effective viral strategic themes need to demonstrate things with intrinsic "value" to the target audience. They need to be consistent with self-expression. Also, themes can include: * Entertainment - the unit has entertainment value * Utility - what can I do with this? * Palpable reward - instant gratification * "Weird" - Wow, I've never seen anything like this... hey, check it out!

Viral marketing may be further classified as either "frictionless" or "active." Frictionless viral marketing is when the audience spreads the word of a product or service merely by using the product or service. An example would be of course Hotmail. Or also the electronic greeting cards sites, where a link to the site accompanies every asset sent.

Active virality requires participation of a customer in recruiting new customers, for instance AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, and affiliate programs.

When you get right down to it, though, successful viral marketing efforts are what I call "Happy Accidents." Kind of like real viruses, no one really means to give them and no one really means to get them. They kind of just happen. Certainly the "frictionless" forms of viral marketing have a certain deliberate intention behind t

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