Is Viral for Everyone?

There's an interesting article over at MediaPost today in which Laurie Peterson writes about the advertising industry's perspective about online viral marketing. Peterson explores whether or not agencies believe that every site is capable of marketing virally or whether viral marketing is simply a fad that will pass in time. The results might surprise you.

While I'm one of the first in the room to start ranting about how over-hyped viral marketing and social media marketing are, my perspective comes from the fact that so many people are talking about the NEED to tackle these two mediums without taking the time to offer up advice about HOW to tackle them. I think this article contains a little bit of backlash from the fact that viral is over-hyped and under-taught.

For example, Nyhan seems to to think that in order to go viral, a campaign must be "outrageous, new and funny." That's simply not the case. Sure, the outrageous and funny tend to spread the fastest and the furthest, but who says only the top ten viral campaigns each year get counted as being successful? A successful viral marketing campaign is much like ANY successful advertising campaign. It's a campaign that ends up gaining you more in customers and increased sales than it cost you in ad dollars.

Stormhoek wine is an example that I often use to drive this point home. By sending out a free bottle of wine to about 200 European bloggers, the small South African winery put itself on the map and doubled sales in a little over a year. Why? Because most of those two hundred bloggers wrote reviews of the product on their blog. Word spread from there. Other bloggers pointed to the reviews, marketers began talking about Stormhoek as a case study and wine critics took note of the increased buzz and tried the wine for themselves.

Stormhoek's campaign was neither funny, outrageous or new. It was just common sense. Get people to talk about you and hey...the people they tell might then tell someone else. It's viral marketing at it's most basic level.

Is viral a fad? Well the name might be, but the concept is as old as time. As I've often reminded people, viral is simply the word given to the online version of "word-of-mouth." Any good marketer knows that word-of-mouth dates back to the day when Eve tried to sell Adam on the idea of eating the "fruit of life." It wasn't long before knights were sharing tales about who the best blacksmith was and peasants were discussing where to find the loveliest filth.

So if you're looking for a quick way to put yourself ahead of about half of all marketers out there, realize that viral marketing doesn't require hip, funny, outrageous campaigns in order to work. Get busy implementing send-to-friend features, offering up great products at affordable prices and encouraging people to share their good experiences with others. When your company reaps the benefits, you can just smile and say "oh, we don't use viral marketing, we focus on encouraging word-of-mouth."

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