Viral Marketing, Igniting the Buzz

How to Ignite a Killer Viral Marketing Campaign

Sallie Burnett , President, Customer Insight Group

Jason Billingsley , VP of Innovation, Elastic Path

Bill Hanekamp , CEO, The Well, Inc.

Chase Norlin , CEO, Pixsy

How to Ignite a Killer Viral Marketing Campaign

Why Are We Here Today?

89% of US adult Internet users share content with friends, family and associates by email, and do so often.

63% of respondents share content at least once a week, and 25% share daily or almost daily.

The emails are usually shared with more than one person, with 75% of respondents forwarding content to up to six other people.

Source: eMarketer Inc. 2008

Defining Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is consumer to consumer marketing that goes beyond just word of mouth.

Viral marketing is about spreading your message through networks. Meetings, social networks, family gatherings, community groups, phone calls, peer pressure, media, email and blogs. Successful viral marketing is by persistence, passion and purpose.

TYPES OF VIRAL CONTENT What do the people want to see?

Word of Mouth does not = Viral

WORD OF MOUTH

Loses momentum (Ripple)

Ongoing

Mostly Unplanned

VIRAL

Gains Momentum (Tsunami)

Sporadic

Often Planned

Humour Office Max: Penny Pranks

Passion Winelibrary: Gary Vee on WLTV

Shock/Disbelief Blendtec: Will It Blend?

Instructional Folica: Hair How-to’s

Fun Office Max: Elf Yourself

Remarkable Zappos: Customer condolence

Emotional 1-800-Flowers: Mother’s Day Video

Opportunistic Ice.com: Mr.Cupid

ALWAYS REMEMBER!

It does not have to cost a lot

It has to have an angle

Tie-in your brand or message

Proper seeding is often essential

Have FUN!

BTW – is it repeatable?

Those funny-sounding Web 2.0 names can seriously lower your marketing budget. You have killer content. Now what?

10-100 new Web 2.0 companies daily

Why social media?

Rule #1: Not predictive

We don’t see what failed. We only see the tip of the iceberg. The very few that succeeded. Since we don’t see the ones that failed, we really don’t know why the few were successful. If we did, we could predict future successes. Which we can’t.

Rule #2: Experiment. A lot.

Step #1: Blog It

Free software

Comment

Subscribe (RSS)

Share

Blog as Newsletter

Comment on Others

Step #2: Post to Facebook

Step #2: Post to Facebook Post to other appropriate sites (don’t forget niche sites):

Step #3: Post to YouTube

Step #4: Twitter It

Step #5: Share It

Step #6: Track It search.twitter.com

Summary Rule #1: Not Predictive Rule #2: Experiment Step #1: Blog it. Participate in other blogs. Step #2: Post it (Facebook, YouTube) Step #3: Twitter it Step #4: Share it Step #5: Track it

Igniting a Killer Viral Marketing Campaign

Optimizing for Video Search Engines =

Free traffic

Content exposure

Ad revenue

How Do I Show Up Here?

Get Discovered!

Add rich metadata

(most video search today still based on metadata)

Push out RSS/MRSS and update frequently

Contact and submit to video search engines

Got a Site? Run Video Search on it!

Private Label Video Search =

More searches

More pageviews

More ad revenue

More pages for Google to crawl

Thank You! Please be sure to fill out your evaluation form and turn it into the room monitor or a staff member. Thank you. Chase Norlin, CEO Pixsy [email_address] Bill Hanekamp, Co-founder & CEO The Well, Inc. [email_address] Jason Billingsley, Co-founder & VP Innovation Elastic Path Software [email_address] Sallie Burnett, President Customer Insight Group, Inc. [email_address]