Effective viral marketing, an integrated approach - part 1

Since the media theorist Rushkoff described a new concept of how the marketing message could be spread over Internet, viral marketing (VM) or “Going Viral” becomes a phenomenon. But what it is, and more important, how to use it most effectively are not always clear, even to many marketers. Everybody knows that the cost per reach of traditional mass media, including TV, radio and news paper become more costly, but is it really true that viral marketing could help to bring that number down?



In fact, viral marketing’s objectives are not just to create a wave of awareness, or a buzz, but also could be used to tell PR stories, brand participation, direct sales and capture customers information or sometimes just to entertain customers. In another word, marketers now have a tool that they could interact with customer in real time, from everywhere. It is argued that the marketers are not always visible in the communication process. Well, think again.

They way that viral marketing message being transfer is ripple effect. Imaging that you throw a stone into water, the wave keep spreading out from the centre. Nodes on the spreading zone will keep passing on and on. However, like the spider-web, the spider, or the marketer, is always stay right at the middle. At the end of the day, you need a stone to throw in the water, don't you?

Ripple effect of viral marketing

The middle point is where marketers should plan carefully before consider "go viral". There are two things should be consider here: the message, and the mean. Do you expect people to introduce to their friends a dumb advertising message, or a 12 pages press release? But how to prepare the marketing message?

Back to the concept of "media virus", the message actually contents 2 parts: the core and the shell. Biological virus need to hidden its core inside an innocent shell to trick the defence system. The similar concept apply here. The message is the brand/product/service, which is implicit or explicit encoded into something could catch interest of viewers: videos, jokes, music, podcast, freebies, etc. They are made by specialist, creative people just to lure people to watch it, re-tweet it, digg it, blog about it, or just simply mention about it with friend. At the end of the they, the brand/product/service/promotion will be imprinted into viewer mind and become influence factor for their decision making process.

As you can see, the design of shell is almost decisive factor for a successful viral marketing campaign. It should be designed to not only entertain viewer, but appeal to their cognitive system and stimuli the after-view action. Remember "Best Job in the world" just few months ago? more than 30.000 of people try to apply it, plus million of viewers and articles written about it in a long period. The campaign to promote tourism still attract people to go back and check updates from the winders. And what next? most of them will go there for the next holiday.

Other campaigns go more directly. Well, print out a coupon and receive a free burger, Yippi, wait, I must let my friends know about this, and voilà, the ripple effect starts. Some go reverse way, "got 1 million votes then i will show the movie". Well, i voted for it before, now i want to see it. There is no limit and rule to design the shell. Just ask yourself, and ask people around, is it attractive? is it stimulate curious? if yes, you have a good start.