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For my first post, I am going to give you 17 tips on Viral Marketing.

What is viral marketing?

Viral marketing is a marketing technique that uses pre-existing social networks to achieve brand awareness, and other goals (such as increased sales), through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses.
–Wikipedia

Viral Marketing is a buzzword encompassing a whole plethora of stuff. A better way to define viral marketing is by example. If a company gives away something for free, be it software, information, t-shirts, etc, it can be considered viral marketing. A great example is Skype. Skype gives away great voice/video chat software for free. To use the software to call real phones, or accept incoming calls however, costs the user money, and that’s where they profit. By giving the basic software/service away for free, they can insure that their customer and prospect base will be extremely large. If the Skype software was not free, Skype would most like not exist today.

The Elements of a Viral Marketing Campaign

Not every viral marketing campaign is going to work as well Skype, obviously, but by ensuring your campaign has the six elements of every viral marketing campaign/strategy.

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for easy transfer to others
3. Easily scalable
4. Takes advantage of common motivations & behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of available resources

Let’s examine each of these elements.

1. Gives away valuable products or services
   “Free” is the most powerful word in marketing. Most successful viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free email, free information, and free software are all great examples. “Cheap,” “bargain,” “sale,” or “inexpensive” may generate a wave of interest, but “Free” will generate a Tsunami. Although giving something away for free may not initially generate profit, Viral Marketers practice delayed gratification. Eventually the profit will come, and when it does, it will be much greater than traditional marketing.
2. Provides easy transfers to others
   Viruses only spread when they are easy to transmit. The medium in which your message travels must be easy to transfer and replicate. Good forms are: email, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works best in the digital age because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format makes copying simple. For most messages, shorter is better.
3. Easily scalable
   Viruses can spread fast than wildfire. Ensure that when developing your strategy that you have planned for what will happen if your idea goes big. And its a good idea, just in case, to plan for it going real big. Think Facebook.
4. Takes advantage of common motivations & behaviors
   There are tons of drives behind people’s decisions. Things like greed, the desire to be cool, the desire to communicate, the urge to be loved, understood, etc. This might be the one thing that you can actually apply your knowledge from Marketing 101 to when it comes to viral marketing.
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
   Most people are social, and are constantly communicating through different means. Learn to place your message into these communication networks for true success in your viral marketing strategy. Great places to start are social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. In a future post I will elaborate more on social media, and how you can tap into it.
6. Takes advantage of available resources
   Many of the successful viral marketing campaigns use existing resources to get noticed. Examples are press releases, affiliate programs, and placing your message on aggregator sites. A great example is, if you make a free web design theme, put it on a website that hosts other themes.

Now that you’ve get an idea of viral marketing, here are some tips to help you get started

1. Don’t Sell
   Although this may go against every practice, ideology, etc, you learned in a marketing or business class, Viral Marketing is different. Viral marketing doesn’t give you sales by the actual thing you are giving away, but rather it greatly increases brand awareness, and therefore increases sales. As soon as you begin to sell, it will not bring in customers, but rather drive them away. The key is to make sure that what you are selling/distributing is something users will want, and want to spread/talk about.
2. Tell People
   This might sound simple, but many people are afraid to get the word out personally. If you are giving something away for free, tell people you know to begin with. If it is something valuable enough to them, and they tell other people, you have already started the wildfire.
3. Make Sure You Have a Strong Web Presence
   The internet is the main way that people find things today. If you are giving away a product or service for free, ensure you have a nice, functional website to tell people about it. If you can’t design a website yourself, hire a company to do it. My company, EnsoWorks Creative, for example, provides not only web design services, but marketing, and graphic/print design as well.
4. Do Something Original
   For viral marketing to really work, it has to be something that people haven’t seen before. If it is something others have done, make sure you tell people why it is different/better in some way. If it is not original, it’s most likely not going to get noticed.
5. Make it suck
   Yeah I said it. You have “pull” rather than “push.” What I mean is that instead of “pushing” information at users, you have to “pull” them by allowing them to actively seek what you are saying. A great article about making websites that “suck” is over at sitepoint.
6. Create a Story
   A great viral marketing tactic is to come up with some kind of story, and then release bits and pieces through various channels. A great example was the movie Cloverfield. Before the movie was in theaters, there were all kinds of websites runs by the production company that were part of the story. They all fit a piece of the puzzle.
7. Ask for Feedback
   The best advice you can get for your new offering will come from your users. Too many campaigns fail because they don’t listen to the people that are actually using what they have to offer. Easy ways to do this are to provide a feedback, or contact us page on a website.
8. Mix It
   Mix your viral marketing campaign with your tradition marketing campaign. Sometimes the perfect mix works out better then one or the other. An example of this would be Skype. Maybe their traditional marketing campaign is to sell their VOIP software to enterprises, so they release it for free for personal use. Then they wait until they are noticed, and then market the software saying “Is your company thinking about switching to VOIP? Skype is the most popular VOIP software on the planet.”
9. Give bits and pieces over time
   Make your offerings a mystery. Instead of giving everything away at once, give away bits and pieces over time. For example, upload small websites that each give a little bit of information for your authoring, and then a big one when the brand, product, etc is launched
10. Make ‘em want it
    Make your users want something bad. For example when Facebook came out, it was invite only, then eventually it became public, and the signups skyrocketed. By making it secretive/making people want it, their strategy worked out.