By now you will almost certainly have heard of viral marketing, a technique that uses social networks to help spread a marketing message, usually by means of short video clips. And if you’re involved on any level with getting people to buy things, then you will know (or should) that viral has become increasingly important as the world moves away from broadcast media and towards the collaborative media of the web.
It stands to reason that the more control people have over the content they watch, and the easier it becomes for them to avoid advertising, the more important it is to convince those people not just to pay attention to your marketing message, but to want to tell other people about it. At The Viral Factory we know this to be the case, because our work has been seen by more than 1.5 billion people, all because they shared it with each other.
The general consensus on using viral marketing is that it sounds great, but it’s actually down to luck, and nigh on impossible to achieve on demand. Wrong. I’m going to give you a handy how-to guide for anyone who wants to give it a go but doesn’t want to shell out for an expert like, er, me to do it for them.
The first point to make is that while it’s certainly possible to create an advert that people want to share with others, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do so. You’re trying to get a large number of people who are generally resistant to marketing, and who have a number of ways to avoid watching ads, to stop watching entertaining clips of cats and start watching your ad instead. Which brings me neatly to rule No.1.
Rule No.1 Respect your audience
Advertising has an unfortunate tendency to treat people like idiots, which probably explains why so many of us hate and resent it. Remember that online, people can and will talk back to you, through blog posts, comments, and the like. Remember also that the internet audience is enormous, and they communicate and collaborate as if with a hive mind, which is potentially very scary. That brings us to:
Rule No.2 Audience first, marketing second
In the world of broadcast media you pay for your audience’s attention, and so it makes sense to squeeze every bit of value out of your media dollars by marketing as hard as possible. With viral, you have to earn that audience’s attention, and that means giving them something they want to watch. So think about what they want first, and when you’ve come up with something that feels right (and/or tests well) then figure out how to get your marketing message in there, without ruining whatever it was that was good about the idea in the first place.
The list of things that people find entertaining isn’t actually that long, as Hollywood has known for 80 years. People like to laugh, they like romance, they like watching people in jeopardy, they like sex, they like heroes, they like cute things and they like things that make them go WOW! You probably can’t use all of the above every time, unless you’re James Cameron, so pick one or two and go from there.
Rule No.3 Get rid of barriers
Easy one, this. If you want people to share what you’ve created, then make it easy, and if possible fun for them to do so. There are lots of content-sharing tools and platforms already out there such as YouTube, Flickr, Blogger and the rest, and people already know how to use them. Don’t spend time and money creating your own, even if someone tells you that you’ll have more control over your campaign and get better data as a result. They’re probably right, but it will be at the expense of what you set out to do in the first place: getting people to engage with and share your message. Trust me on this.
Rule No.4 Promote your viral
This should be done shamelessly and relentlessly, especially in the first two weeks after release. The internet is like a massive Top 100 of everything and content at the top of the chart does disproportionately well just by being there. The appetite for great content is huge, but so is the amount of great content, and you’re competing with all of it. Do everything you can to get noticed by the right (meaning influential) people, even down to offering them money to plug your viral (though check that’s legal — it’s already not in some countries).
That’s enough rules for now, and by the way feel free to break any one of them. They’re really more suggestions than rules — except the one about respecting the audience.
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