Newsstand

July 7, 2011
How to Increase Your Chance of Success in a Viral Marketing Campaign [DMA11]

At DMA2011 Conference & Exhibition this October, you will have the opportunity to meet with hundreds of experts and talk face to face with marketers from all over the world. You’ll be able to participate in marketing workshops that run the gamut from search engine marketing to social media damage control. One of the topics you can find out more about at the DMA2011 is social viral marketing.

Social and viral marketing can be accomplished through a variety of different means and mediums. But regardless of whether your chosen method is video, audio, image or text, there are some rules that you should follow. These rules won’t guarantee a social viral marketing success. The fact is, nothing can. But they will give your effort the greatest chance of succeeding.

1. Don’t oversell. Sometimes you look at cleverly created advertisements or online campaigns that, by all rights, should have gone viral—they certainly have broad appeal—but fell flat instead. One of the reasons this happens, apart from the fact that it’s difficult to catch lightning in a bottle or predict what everyone will go crazy for tomorrow, is the fault of marketing that’s way too obvious. If you get people’s attention with a funny video and suddenly shove a product in their face, they’ll resent it. The net result: your viral campaign is a flop.
2. Drag it out. Suspense sells, and people are suckers for sequels. One look at the box office top 10 on any given day of the year will reveal that there are more sequels and remakes than there rightfully ought to be. But the fact is, people like familiarity, and people enjoy being told a story. If you create a viral campaign that does that and isn’t just some random silly video that for some reason has captured everyone’s, be sure not to reveal any conclusion too early. Sometimes, milking out the punch line will bring you bigger laughs.
3. Go for the combo punch. There’s a reason that the saying “Don’t put all your eggs into one basket” is so popular—and now’s not the time to question the validity of the idiom. When you start your campaign of distribution, use all formats available to you. Cater your viral campaign so that it can be spread easily via any means: email, social media, and even word of mouth. This last bit indicates that you should make your campaign something that can easily be translated into a few brief words. Think: “The Most Interesting Man in the World” and you’re right on target.

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