Viral Marketing - Have you tried it?

PHONiC.ie

Hi Guys

I'm currently looking into some Viral marketing and was wondering if there is much of it floating around the Irish Market that has become successful? Have you been using it, or testing the waters in any way, no matter how small? If so, what success have you had, if any?

Thanks

PHONiC.ie

fergalfrog

I have done over 70 viral campaigns most of which were outside the Irish market.

Some got just a few hundred hits while others got 500 unique users in the space of a week. I would say the biggest factor is the incentive for the user - the more they are to get out of it the more viral it becomes. Hence perhaps you look cooler if you send someone a funny video - on another level you might get a voucher or an entry to a competition if you pass the message on. In both cases there is an incentive and in my experience the bigger the incentive the more viral it becomes. Note I have no marketing credentials - this is purely from a web developer point of view.

NathanKingerlee

I'm definitely not a marketing expert, however over the past three years viral marketing has worked well for my business - website; blog; twitter; facebook; youtube - all intergrated and working together, linking back to each other at all times and encouraging the final sale.

Personally I think the thing with viral marketing is to get great advice, then spend time not money on it. A limited amount of time each day though, otherwise it's scary how much time you can waste poking facebook friends and watching your youtube hits!

Damien Mulley has some great blog posts on this:
http://mulley.ie/blog/2010/01/some-quick-bits-to-read-about-social-media/

nuttlys

NathanKingerlee wrote: »

... over the past three years viral marketing has worked well for my business - website; blog; twitter; facebook; youtube - all intergrated and working together, linking back to each other at all times and encouraging the final sale.

Surely that is not viral and just integrated marcoms? the term viral in marketing refers to a generation of word of mouth. Having the above is good but by no means can they produce buzz on their own (or even together for that matter)

Buceph

nuttlys wrote: »

Surely that is not viral and just integrated marcoms? the term viral in marketing refers to a generation of word of mouth. Having the above is good but by no means can they produce buzz on their own (or even together for that matter)

That would be my opinion on it as well. Although those are the media you would use, generally, to launch something with the hope it goes viral. A lot of people seem to think that internet = viral. And it doesn't. Viral is just how the communication is spread. You can start it off yourself but in the end it's up to the recipient as to whether or not it will travel.

You may be able to tailor something to go viral. So far it's been mainly humour that has spread, and controversial humour at that. One of the most successful bits of viral media wasn't even made by the product's company. The Volkswagen Terrorist ad was made as a showreel piece by two guys. It hit he internet, and that spread virally. It has been seen and passed on by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. But Volkswagen consider it so damaging to their public face that they plan on suing the creators of it.

Just look at what's at the top of youtube at the moment, anything with 100,000s of views has been big enough to spread. You need to be that talented, or that tapped into a demographic to be able to produce something that spreads like that.

There could also be a backlash if people feel they've been manipulated. Posing something as a video from young talented creative types, when it's actually come from a monstrous global corporation can inspire people to reject the product. You have to maintain a level of honesty with it, and be prepared to see the humourous side if people alter or change your intended tagline, as is very likely if people feel they're being manipulated.

asomeday

can you really make viral though?
is it not just born & loved?

some recent viral i've seen has been very contrived looking

nuttlys

for me viral = buzz. and the best source i've come across on buzz is a book called Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes. I suggest anyone actually interested in understanding how people/firms can leverage viral read this first.

markfinney

I guess if it's an amazingly cool gig then it'll have people talkin.

I really help someone out the other day as a freebie with his problem that was a piece of cake for me and he gave me a great testimonial... i was thinking - how do you turn that into viral... what's the tipping point and all that.

Maybe I'm on a different thread to you... (I'm new here).

PHONiC.ie wrote: »

Hi Guys

I'm currently looking into some Viral marketing and was wondering if there is much of it floating around the Irish Market that has become successful? Have you been using it, or testing the waters in any way, no matter how small? If so, what success have you had, if any?

Thanks

PHONiC.ie

El Camino

There can be legal issues if you are seen to incentivise another person to SPAM third parties, in other words, you could be deemed to be facilitating SPAM. This seems to be the case if you are incentivising them to do so.

Instances of this nature are generally frowned upon by the Data Protection Commisioner unless consent to market can be proved... which is very hard to do for a truly viral marketing campaign.