Anatomy of Viral Marketing

There is no shortage of examples of viral marketing in action – any time you learn about a website by word of mouth, through a blog entry, or through a genuine link on another website, you are participating in viral marketing. With all these examples of viral marketing, it becomes fairly easy to breakdown several aspects that seem to make web pages ‘buzz-worthy’.

There was a popular hairspray commercial in the 70s and 80s that used the slogan, “You tell friends, they tell two friends, and they tell two friends.” The ideas was that the hairspray was so good that you would want to tell your friends and so will they. I don’t know if it worked for them but I still remember the commercial and I know this kind of buzz marketing works. There is more than one way to create that kind of buzz, however. Don’t trust anyone who tries to make you think that their way is the only way – or the best way – to do so.

Buzz-worthy Sites Stroke People’s Egos

Everyone likes to be ‘in the know’, to be a first adopter of a product that everyone eventually comes to love. If you know some of the first adopters of Apple’s iTunes system, you know what it is like to know a first adopter and how much pride they take in being able to spot a winner before anyone else.

Buzz-worthy sites, like Google’s Gmail, create an exclusive club that both affirms its members and creates a stronger demand. They create news, create conversations, and create envy on the part of those who are not so beneficial to be a part of the first adopters.

Being one of the first to discover something that everyone will enjoy or find useful, or being one of the first to be invited to an invitation-only club, is an honor. It strokes our ego, and if you want to get people interested in you, stroking their ego is a great start.

Can’t argue with that. People are stuck on themselves. Those who capitalize on that fact get rich. Those that don’t get left behind.

Still, let’s state the difference between “buzz marketing” aka “viral marketing” and long-standing principles.

Marketing works. Word of mouth, television, radio, newspapers, Internet, it all works. If they didn’t, no one would do them. People advertise through various mediums because it works. Some works better than others but all advertising, to some degree, works. What medium you use for communicating your message depends on more than just one factor. Any company that relies on just one method of marketing is shooting itself in the foot before the race begins.

One principle of marketing that is effective in driving traffic to your business is curiosity. Make people curious about what you have to offer and they’ll stick to you like flies on flypaper. Don’t spark their curiosity and they’ll leave like the last train. Principle.

The great thing about principles is that they work no matter what method or technique you employ. You can create curiosity through television advertising, newspapers, Internet, word of mouth, or any other marketing medium. So don’t get stuck on techniques. Stick to principles.

Buzz-worthy Sites Promise to Amaze

If you want to create an initial buzz about your website, you need to get people excited enough to talk about your website. The only way you can do this is to promise real amazement, real insight, real controversy, real humor, or any mix of these attributes. The Xbox 360 was touted to be the first in the line of several releases of the next generation of game boxes. Gmail was promised to be an email system like none we had ever seen (and with more space than ever offered). Viral videos promise to show you something that you have never seen before, and that will either make you laugh, cringe, or shake your head in amazement.

Buzz worthy sites need to stand out from the crowd of competing sites. There are millions of websites all asking for our attention, but those that get the attention are able to create a message that is unique, useful, appealing, and attractive.

This suggestion is really saying, “Talk up your hype.” What most people call viral marketing is just snake oil in a different bottle. I just call it hype.

Of course you want people talking about you. Of course you want your friends to tell their friends and their friends to tell their friends. Of course, you want everyone everywhere doing business with you all the time. But that’s not realistic.

Creating a buzz among the wrong crowd won’t make you any more sales than not creating a buzz at all. You’ve just spent a lot of energy (and probably money) and all you’ve done is start an annoying whirring sound of buzzing in your neighborhood. Your neighbors will thank you.

What you really want to do is target your message to the right audience. When you do that successfully, if you have something they want they will talk about you. That’s buzz, and it’s viral.

Buzz-worthy Sites are Original

In order to be buzz-worthy, you must first create something that people are going to feel as if they ‘discovered’. No one is going to talk about something which has already been discovered or which everyone knows about. People talk about things which they have never seen before, things which are particularly useful, particularly funny, or particularly insightful.

The Xbox 360 is the first of the new gaming consoles. Gmail was the first to offer a full gigabyte of disk space.

Buzz requires that people see something for the first time, are promised amazement, are amazed, and get the ego-stroking feeling that they have just discovered something great.

Considering Buzz for Your Business

Practically applying buzz to your website is not easy. Although viral marketing is by far the most powerful form of marketing available to website owners, it is not an easy thing to create. Even if you devise the most buzz-worthy creation, you may find that in practice it just does not seem to resonate with the general public.

You may also decide that viral marketing is not the best thing for your business. Viral marketing, unlike other marketing which is fairly easy to control, can quickly grow out of control. If you happen to be successful with viral marketing, you may find that you are not able to meet the new demand that you see for your products or services. Viral marketing, once released, becomes its own beast outside of your control.

Those concerns aside, most businesses would love to have a viral aspect to their website. Consider today what you could create that would create a buzz in your industry. Is there a tool that you could offer for free that no one else is offering? Is there an opinion that you have that is original and insightful? Is there a free service that you are willing to offer?

Viral marketing is, ultimately, the greatest form of marketing. Not only does it produce incredible results, it is also an affirmation that what you are doing is worthy of praise – enough praise that people are willing to talk about you to others.

First, viral marketing is the most powerful form of advertising. What is the most powerful form of advertising is the advertising that works for you. Does it reach your target audience? Does it get your target audience to do business with you? Does it encourage them to tell their friends? That’s good because those are the people you want to do business with.

Good marketing starts with identifying you target. Who is your perfect customer? Create a profile. Don’t just talk up a lot of hype. Get to know your ideal customer. Know their needs, their desires. Understand them from the inside out. This is one of those timeless principles you need to always have on the front of your mind, no matter what kind of marketing you employ.

Instead of spending your time trying to think up some gimmick that will get people to link to your website or send their friends to your website to download the next great Whosawatchit, spend some time SEOing your website to near perfection. Study your competition. Capitalize on their weaknesses. And make your site sticky with rich, original content that your target can’t find anywhere else. If you do it right, the buzz will create itself.

About The Author
Mark Daoust is the former owner of Site-Reference.com. This article was originally published at www.site-reference.com/articles/Internet-Marketing/Marketing-More-Powerful-Than-SEO.html

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