• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, September 6, 2006

I wanted to point out a stat I read this week that had me thinking. According to a study from Jupiter Research, 20 percent of all marketers "plan to use viral marketing" next year.

According to the same study, 69 percent of users do not trust product information they find on social media such as blogs and social networks.

Hmmmmm... I don't know about you, but I see an issue here. If 20 percent of marketers are planning on using viral efforts and just shy of 70 percent of consumers don't trust this kind of marketing, then approximately 80 percent of the companies surveyed are aware of the trouble with using viral marketing--and 30 percent of the consumers are lying. That being said, if these are the numbers we're working with, we might as well dive into what it means to truly develop a viral campaign. First of all, you can't really "plan" on using viral marketing--but there are some things you can do to try.

Viral marketing is a phenomenon that occurs when the creative message you're trying to convey resonates deeply with the audience you're speaking to. If you're doing your homework and adequately planning the right messaging, with some incentive that clearly benefits the consumer, then viral marketing occurs. It's a confluence of research that results in pass-along and forwarding.

Much of what people see on YouTube is viral because it resonates with users, who can then think of someone who it also might resonate with (most likely for humorous or educational reasons). You've heard me speak about tribal marketing, where you identify the social groups your target audience may be involved with, and you provide them with a message that resonates within that tribe. If they succeed, then the members of the Tribe will relay the message to someone else they share an affinity with, but who may be a member of another tribe. Once your message begins to spread beyond one to two degrees of tribal interaction, then you've begun a viral effort.

So the question then arises, how do you "plan" for a viral effort? Well, you can't really plan on something being viral without first doing a deep analysis of the psychographics of the consumers you're speaking to. You have to get into their psyche and identify the tribes they belong to. Determine if they are into fine dining or comic books, or mountain biking or rock climbing. Identify the types of people they spend their time with, and gauge the level of social interaction within these tribal pastimes.

If the level of social interaction is high, then you have a better chance of getting your message to gain traction among different tribal groups. If the action itself isn't inherently social, then identify if there are digital communities around this type of activity. For example, reading books is not a very social activity, but book clubs are--and there are many online and offline book clubs and related activities. If you've done your homework and identified the opportunities for social interaction and you've come to understand the types of messages that might resonate within the minds of your targets, then you might be able to hypothesize which messages might incentivize your audience to share. That being said, there's no guarantee that your message will become viral.

To be honest, there's still a fair amount of luck tied to that, as well. So the bottom line is this; you can say you're planning to use viral marketing in your campaigns this year, but better yet you should plan on doing your homework by getting into the mind of your audience. The deeper you are in their psyche, the more you will know what motivates them--and the more chances your message might actually become viral.