This new strategy would not have worked just ten years ago when marketing was simpler.  That was when marketing was considered a function of your organization and managing your message was an art.  The traditional marketing tools were "visible" methods such as printed materials, printed press releases, printed ads, TV, and radio spots.  These tools were used to build brand awareness and generate sales leads.  Unfortunately, the majority of these tools were expensive and wasteful.  As the old adage went, "50% of the marketing was wasted, we just didn't know which half."

Today marketing has become more complex and more personalized.  Instead of being an "art" as in days of old, today's marketing relies on more "invisible" science and technology.  Technology has pushed past lead generation into participating in conversations with consumers.  It's now an "act" of an organization and more of an interactive experience.  This is why "viral marketing" has rapidly replaced traditional marketing methods and become the next strain of marketing.

Driven by consumers, viral marketing is rapidly gaining momentum and acceptance as a credible marketing strategy for the mainstream business world. Businesses are using viral marketing as a customer relationship tool for branding reinforcement, product testing, customer loyalty, and for creating public relations buzz on a budget.

Early adopter organizations are realizing the power the Web has to target the right consumers with the right message.  They have realized that 50% of the marketing budget no longer has to be wasted.  These organizations have come to understand that their customers want three things: segmentation (talk to my group), personalization (in a way that I understand), and conversation (let me have a say) and have shifted their marketing dollars online and to other non-traditional marketing venues such as viral marketing.

What is viral marketing?

Have you ever visited a website and found an article, a coupon, a special offer, or something else that impressed you so much that you immediately sent an email to a friend about it?  If you have, you've experienced "viral marketing".

Viral marketing is a new term to describe a low cost, highly effective way to "bug your customers" by marketing your products or services using web based technology.  The term viral marketing was originally coined by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's email practice of adding advertising for themselves to outgoing mail from their users.  The strategy was simple. On the bottom of each and every Hotmail email was the phrase, "Get your free private email at www.hotmail.com." According to Jurvetson, this simple sentence helped to make Hotmail the largest email provider in India despite never having spent a dime in that market.

Viral marketing campaigns are used to generate awareness or to stimulate specific action.  By harnessing the network effect of the Internet, viral marketing can reach large numbers of people rapidly.  This "word of mouse" method is like a bug or flu virus in humans.  Instead of replicating and propagating itself by human contact, it does so by computer contact (in a good way).  One minute no one's heard of a product or service, next minute, it's everywhere.

Viral marketing is used by reputable companies trying to promote reputable products.  A viral campaign does not use spam or programs that force people to see or do things they do not want.  It is effective because it capitalizes on referrals from an unbiased third party-your consumer.  Let just one of your customers catch your "marketing bug" and they will happily "sneeze it" (spread it) to everyone they know.  Not only can viral marketing campaigns have a long life expectancy but they are usually much more cost effective than other marketing methods since your "sneezers" take it upon themselves to market you for free.  It's important to remember that the exposure you get from a viral campaign MAY raise sales or otherwise help your company name recognition, but that's actually the by-product.

Building the Bug

A critical component of viral marketing is the focus.  A viral marketing campaign should focus on something you do, NOT on who you are.  A viral campaign is something that is so cool, so exciting, or so creative that it gets people very excited; they can't wait to share it with others.  Often the ultimate goal of viral marketing campaigns is to generate media coverage via "offbeat" stories worth many times more than the campaigning company's advertising budget.

"Bob" an animated character created by Elk Mountain Ski Resort in Pennsylvania is a great example of a concept that "went viral" due to its broad appeal and loyal following.  "Bob" came to life on the web in January 2006.  According to Gregg Confer, General Manager for the area, "Bob is just an ordinary guy doing an extraordinary job... especially for an animated character."  Customers love Bob.  They can't get enough of Bob.  That's why Bob will soon be appearing in the resort's coloring books, new clothing line, and on employee uniforms. The Bob concept was developed to appeal to consumers in a fresh and entertaining way that differentiated them from their competition and wouldn't cost a fortune.  For about $3,000 in development and implementation costs, "Bob" helped drive the resort website visits up 92% over a three month time span during the 2005/06 season.  To see how cool Bob is for yourself go to www.elkskier.com.

Making the bug cool

Viral marketing is enticing because of the ease of executing the marketing campaign, relative low-cost (compared to direct mail), good targeting, and the high and rapid response rate.  Despite (or perhaps because of) viral marketing still being relatively new most organizations are confused about what viral campaigns are and how they work.  The method is still evolving.  However, viral marketing can be categorized three ways: word-of-mouth, pass-it-on, and virtual tools.

1. Word of Mouth. Involves integrated web technology that encourages you to  "Tell a Friend," "Send this coupon to a friend," or "Recommend this website to a friend."

Killington Resort, VT has done a great job of word of mouth viral marketing with their weekly email newsletter "The Drift".  Unlike traditional and boring newsletters, this one is off-beat and promotes a personal writing style that caters to Killington insiders.  Besides the entertaining content, there's also a contest in every issue.  Named,  "Gimme, Gimme" the questions keep readers coming back for more.  A recent "Gimme, Gimme" question asked, "If you weren't planning to go skiing or riding on a given weekend, what could a resort do for you to get you motivated (hint, hint, wink, wink, and a nudge)?  Free tickets and a foot of snow are not acceptable answers only because I can control neither."  Respondents could win two 2 Day lift tickets for the rest of the season.

Nick Polumbus, Killington's Marketing Brand Manager, (whose name you will see at the bottom of every "Drift" issue) had this to say about the popularity of this viral email marketing program, "our email subscriber list has stayed pretty consistent for the past 3-4 years.  We've worked hard to deliver content, give-a-ways, and cool new things such as podcasting to keep our subscribers reading and hopefully coming to Killington."  Although Nick was not able to share their in-house subscribers numbers, he did mention they receive an average 600-900 email responses to every "Gimme, Gimme" contest.  Considering the only cost involved is a bit of creativity, that's viral!

To get your own copy of The Drift go to http://www.killington.com

2. Pass-It-On. A January 2006 study by Sharpe Partners revealed that 9 out of 10 adult Internet users in America share content with others via email.  Pass-it-on viral marketing relies on social networking where the receiver is encouraged to "pass on" an article, cool tool, funny video, chain letter, etc through email to a friend, family member, or associate.

One of the more unique examples of pass-it-on viral marketing is being utilized by Echo Mountain, CO.  The Resort decided to tap into the social networking power of Myspace.com to reach their more unique and extreme market of snowboarders and freestyle skiers.  MySpace.com is a social networking website offering a plethora of instant viral marketing tools including music & photo sharing, blog creation, anonymous matchmaking (match people of similar interests), community group space, and an internal email system to send messages to other MySpace.com friends. According to Alexa's web report in March 2006, MySpace is the world's fifth most popular English-language website.  Although popular with youth, MySpace.com has recently been criticized by the media due to some members posting indecent pictures, high levels of profanity, and some advertising that stretches the bounds of appropriateness.

According to Eric Pettit, Marketing Director for Echo Mountain, "we chose to build a page on Myspace.com after listening to recommendations from our interns who are closest in age to our target market.  It made sense for us to go where there's already a [freestyle skier and snowboard] community interacting online.  The fact that it's free didn't hurt either."  When asked how Echo Mountain deals with the controversy that surrounds Myspace, Eric responded, "People are going to talk to their buds online.  We can either join in and help lead the conversation or let it go on without us.  We just try to watch what WE say."

Their viral thinking has paid off.  Just a few weeks after creating their page on Myspace.com they had already gathered hundreds of "friends", comments and pictures.  The best part?  Their network of sneezers continues to grow, all without spending once single penny.  To see it online http://www.myspace.com/echomtnpark

3. Virtual tool. Usually product or service based.  A viral tool is used online and embedded with a marketing message, like Hotmail's free emails.

In January of 2004, Vail launched "Snowmate," a downloadable computer program that website visitors and resort guests could leave on their desktop to get up to the minute information on weather, snow conditions, video clips, and travel offers.  What made this virtual viral tool successful was that it encouraged users to seek information in a fun, unique, and playful way.  It even provided entertainment through the use of "Trevvor" an animated cartoon character and animations such as piles of snow on the computer screen when it was snowing at Vail.  Vail included "tell-a'friend" tools in the program that made it easy for users to email others favorite images or deals.  download here http://downldcl.adtoolsinc.com/dl.asp?CM=20106&FI=782

Although this type of viral tool is on the more expensive scope of campaigns, it produced significant gains.  According to Kam Rope, director of Online Marketing and Sales for Vail Resorts, there were 55,000 downloads in the first five months and over $200,000 in measurable revenue from click-throughs (users who used their mouse to click on a link in the program to visit a website or get additional information).  The 2006/07 season will be the third generation of the application.  Vail's goal-find ways to make the viral tool more compelling for the user and more rewarding for Vail Resorts.

Spreading the Bug

Coming up with a cool concept that people will embrace and share with others is not easy.  So, it stands to reason that if you get your "sneezers" involved in building the concepts they will be more like to spread your bug.  That's just what Snow Trails Ski Area in Ohio did this past season.

According to Nate Wolleson, Snow Trails Marketing Manager, "For less than $1,000 we were able to excite a target market that is normally very hard to reach and generate ten times our investment in sponsor money and prizes.  The Wanted Video Contest not only generated a 12% increase in visitors on snowtrails.com during the campaign but also spiked an 18% jump people that spent two  or more minutes on the site.  And, as you know, the longer they hang around, the longer they are thinking about Snow Trails."

The Snow Trails, "Wanted Video Contest" focused on creating a place where terrain park enthusiasts could show off their best video tricks to all their friends.  Snow Trails created a micro-site on their website that allowed registered contestants to upload personal video for "fame and prizes".  What made this viral was not only that it was cool for the iPod oriented generations but that the contestants had to engage their network of friends to visit snowtrails.com and vote for their videos.  By having "tell a friend" and "voting system" software integrated into the micro-site it was fun and easy for contestants to "spread the word" about their video and the Snow Trails brand as well.  The contest ended in February 2006.

How to Keep from Getting Sick

With increasing pressure to jump on the viral marketing bandwagon, many marketers may be tempted to throw together a viral campaign. Unfortunately, most will fail for one simple reason: lameness.

If the email, website, application, or video being shared is not unique, informative and/or entertaining, or doesn't create a definite value by solving a problem, it will never become viral. If it doesn't appear to originate from a credible entity (i.e., a relevant organization or individual to the sneezer), it can be mistaken as blatant advertising and immediately discredited. Finally, if the leave-behind message doesn't resonate with the target/intended audience, or provide a meaningful call to action, it's a waste of time and money.

Spreading your own Bug

One of the most exciting things about viral marketing is the fact that anyone can do it.  No matter if you are a small business or a large one.  The only thing you need (besides an open mind) is to create something that people WANT to share with others.  Otherwise, forget about virus: you're left with a common cold.

Ready to spread your own bug?  Just follow the top 10 best practices.

Viral Marketing Best Practices:

1. Know your audience
Knowing something relevant about your sneezers will go a long way to understanding what gets their attention and what gets them to act. Understanding and delivering what your sneezers want is the key to "going viral".  Including going to where they are (Echo Mountain and Myspace.com) and speaking their language (Killington's, The Drift).

2. Remember who you are
The tone and personality of your viral campaign will either build long-term relationships  or destroy them.  A fun and friendly viral campaign (Elk Mountain's, "Bob") will reinforce how your customers see your Resort.   A borrowed campaign that is not aligned with your overall marketing objectives, will always backfire.

3. Keep it short and sweet - 'K.I.S.S'
Always keep your content short, to the point and highly relevant. Your sneezers will give your campaign 7 seconds to make an impression on them.  Your content has to offer exactly what your reader wants within that time frame. Keep information and sentences short and easy to absorb using bullet points or short paragraphs.

4. Layout and design
Since viral campaigns are delivered over the web the look and style can play a major role in making your viral campaign a success. Build your viral tool around the niche group you are trying to attract.  Keep in mind that not everyone has broadband.  Readability and quick on-screen reading should be number one priorities.  For those that do have broadband and are web savvy, exploit it (Snow Trails, Wanted Video Contest).

5. Covertly embed promotional concepts into your viral tools.

Encourage people to visit your website more often by offering the things that appeal to them the most such as coupons, e-specials, contests, and fresh content (Vail's, SnowMate).

6. Be unique.

Do things that are unique and grab attention.  Be subtle, not forceful.

7. Call to Action.

Provide a call to action by telling people what you want them to do.  Make it simple.  Make it intuitive.  Make it easy.  Vail encourages visitors to download the application and start having fun.

8. Offer an incentive.

Greed is the most common motivator.  Use it to encourage your sneezers to act on your behalf: "Tell a friend and be included in a drawing for ..."  Then, leverage, leverage, leverage!  "Tell five friends and get a free ..."  Snow Trails let contestants work for their prizes by creating a video and getting them to get their friends to come to the snowtrails.com website to vote it "best video".

9.  Trust no one...

...because no one trusts you or what you will do.  Have your privacy policy posted.  Have opt-out options.  Most people won't consider giving out an email unless they know what you plan to do with it and can remove themselves if they so choose.  Killington includes contact information and subscription information at the bottom of every email.

10. Too much of a good thing.

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interactive marketing  viral marketing  word of mouth