5 Tips for strating a Viral Marketing Campaign

Till now, I think you have read certain examples about viral marketing and obtain a clearly picture of it. However, you should know that the marketplace is changing day by day. Those marco and micro environmental changes will influence the effectiveness of the viral marketing campaign.

Therefore, let me share 5 tips with you for planning a viral marketing campaign.

1. Ensure your web site or e-newsletter are easy forwarding
If your message isn't easily forwarded, or it loses its structure in-route, your message will get lost in the tangle then your viral campaign just fizzled.


2. Offer an incentive, entertainment or service they can use
The consumers will only pay attention to the message that is perceived as beneficial to them.

3.Honesty and authenticity

Be sure your message is realistic and truthful. People will only forward the mail they believe is worthwhile.

4.Personalize the referral emails

When your message is forwarded, ensure the subject line is personalized. It is more appropriate if the subject line contain the name of the customer.

5.Continually promote friendly referrals
Every time you send something out, study your incentive success and repeat it with a slight twist to mix it up.

Viral marketing is perceived as an art instead of a science. The beauty is in the minimal costs can reap huge rewards if handled properly.

Latest trend of Viral Marketing - Twitter

Twitter is now not only a microbloging but also a useful utility for keeping in touch with the news and trendy topics. The biggest revolution of Twitter is its capacity to change nature of search and create demand for real-time search engines. The followings are some of the latest Twitter trends explored by marketers.

Real-Time Search Engines
Twitter has exceptionally created demand for the real time search but fails to organize real time information into useful bites of information. To fill this gap left by Twitter, there are many companies trying their innovative ways to tackle the organization of link and content in different manners. OneRiot and Tweetmeme are the most noticeable Twitter search engines which provide aggregate data in real search environment and are widely used by brands and professionals for tracking online conversations.

Verified Accounts
With a limited verification to celebrities, musicians, athletes, actors and public officials, Twitter has started its Verified Accounts program. It would decrease liability on Twitter and would make social network more responsive. Moreover, Verified accounts for businesses are pending as they would provide seal of authenticity from Twitter. As Twitter is under process for developing paid business, it is reserving verification under this category.

Trending Twitter Giveaways
Use of hashtag # for Square Space or any other company is creating a great trend over Twitter. Square Space topped the Twitter trends with iPhone 3G S giveaways as they were offering gift cards. Artists, musician and fame loving person is trying his bit using hashtag # to come up on the top position on Twitter.

Sponsored Tweets
Sponsored conversations on Twitter have started taking shape. There are different types of sponsored tweets visible through Twitter and some of them are legitimate to monetize Twitter stream. Companies like Magpie, TwittAd and adCause have developed Twitter as networks so that advertisers and Twitterers can find each other.

Twitter Chat
Twitter now has developed into a powerful communication platform, and luring sites like Justin.tv and Ustream (ustream). It upgrades their standard chat features to make it employable for bigger audiences on Twitter.

Justin.tv
Justin.tv has integrated with Twitter to let video viewers to view all the tweets diverted from Twitter users in the channel. So, tweets about the video appear in the chat area. Ustream fully designed Twitter chat functionality enables Twitterers to participate in a Twitter stream with other viewers in an additional chat area on Ustream

Six Principles of Viral Marketing vs Hotmail.com - 3

5) Utilizes existing communication networks
People sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then telling to their close network of friends, family, and associate. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships.

6) Takes advantage of others' resources
Some viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out, such as affiliate programs, Hotmail.com give away free Web e-mail service propels the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Carefully to design the viral marketing strategy it's the powerful way to increase increase your business exponentially.

Reference: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm

Six Principles of Viral Marketing vs Hotmail.com - 2

2) Provides for effortless transfer to others
Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com". A short and clear message can be easily to transmit without degradation.

3) Scales easily from small to very large
Message spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. Hotmail.com used this element to attract netizen to use this free e-mail service, then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates.

4) Exploits common motivations and behaviors
Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, hotmail.com targeted "Who see the message" and encourage netizen to forward their e-mail to others for attracting use.

Reference: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm

Six Principles of Viral Marketing vs Hotmail.com - 1

What is virus? What does a virus have to do with marketing? It is because virus doesn't even have to mate, it just replicates, again and again with geometrically increasing power, doubling with each iteration, in a few short generations, a virus population can explode.

With refer to my first post: The Classic Viral Marketing – Hotmail.com, it can show how successful the viral marketing strategies used. Briefly, we can see in the six basic elements as below:

1) Gives away products or services
"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Hotmail.com is the first Web-based e-mail services which away free e-mail addresses and services. "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will usually do it much faster. They may not profit today, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit "soon and for the rest of their lives".

Reference: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm

What/Why companies use Viral Marketing?

"Viral Marketing" has become a very trendy method to promote different brand products/services of a company or organization. Many companies are now using this strategy to get their message out. Through videos is one of the most effective methods of implementing a viral marketing campaign. Many major companies are using videos to attract wide audience. These videos can be seen on various social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc. Due to the evolution and success of viral videos as a marketing technique, this approach has been used more and more.

The below are listed out some major brands that using viral marketing videos.

Nike - Nike is one of the better users of using viral marketing videos.

Ray Ban - The video shows how two men can catch Ray Ban sunglasses perfectly on their faces when thrown at them, from all angles, so Ray Ban viral video is one of the successful example

Blendtec - is a viral marketing campaign consisting of a series of infomercials demonstrating the Blendtec line of blenders, especially the Total Blender.

G.O.D (Goods of desire) - To promote their new fashion collection - Delay No More, G.O.D use the social media youtube to promote their products.

Based on these examples, we can see that there are many benefits to making viral marketing videos and these companies obviously have capitalized. By using the internet to market, it can be less expensive than placing ads on TV.

Why there is a need that viral marketing tools need to mix with other traditional media.

Here is one of the examples that integrating viral marketing tools with traditional media like TV and magazine promote their event, When Polymuso want to promote their event : 'POLYMUSO annual performance', they used many viral marketing tools like a group in facebook, xanga and a promotion video which post on youtube.

In fact, it is very success to target the teenagers, who love band sound. As we know teenagers like using those social media to share their information. However, if they want to attract some one who never join this event before, it is hard to achieve this objective. Most of the group members only invite their friends, who also interested in band music, it is hard to extend and promote this activity to more people in Hong Kong.

Therefore, it also has an advertisement on 'milk' magazine and people can watch the show on TVB Music channel. Through this kind of media, they can let more people to aware this event and indie band in HK. Finally, they sold out all the tickets before the show.

Polymuso xanga
http://polymuso.xanga.com/

Polymuso Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/polymuso