Viral Marketing is where your message spreads like a virus from person to person.

I could tell you about what tools will enhance Viral Marketing, but let me begin by telling you what people do not like to hear.

Viral Marketing is often natural and an outcome from a really great product or service that people want to talk about.

You cannot easily do viral marketing with something that does not have a wow factor.

If something does have a wow factor, it can be enhanced in a number of ways.

• Social Media makes it easier for people to tell other people.
• A good article can generate millions of readers
• A simple email can spread via forwarding
• Widgets and embedding – if you post something like a YouTube video and it is great, people will embed the script in their website and their visitors will see you.  Call this viral embedding.
• Simple word of mouth – don’t assume it has to be online.  Word of mouth is very powerful.

Buzz Marketing and Viral Marketing are great ways to drive traffic.  However, they are hit and miss strategies that will sometimes under produce and sometimes explode your visibility.

Many people I talk to think that Buzz Marketing and Viral Marketing are the answer to their problems.  This is very far from the truth – because you have to know what you want people to do before you try to get their attention.  You might not get two shots.

So you have to work backwards.  Start with the outcome that you want.  Probably it is lead generation and/or online sales.  If this is the case, spend your time perfecting your lead generation tools online before you worry about viral marketing or Buzz Marketing Campaigns.

You may even have to go back further.  Have you done the proper market research?  Do you know what the real problem your potential customers want solutions for?  You do not want to sell what you want to sell, you want to sell what people want to buy.

If you have a lead generation process online and you know that it is converting at 5% or 10% or 20% …. then you are ready to explore how to increase targeted traffic to your website.    If you are trying to do viral and buzz activities, this may take a few trys, but you know that when one of your viral marketing campaigns hits big, it will actually create customers and revenue.

If you skip this step and hit big with a viral marketing campaign, you might feel good about the great traffic, but without converting some of those to dollars what good did it really do?

This post is my personal opinion on the differences between Buzz Marketing, WOM – Word of Mouth Marketing and Viral Marketing.

There is so much overlap, that some people think that it is all just word of mouth marketing. Some people think Viral Marketing takes place only on the internet. Some people think Buzz Marketing is when you go out and pay people to fake buzz.

WOM – Word of Mouth – Word of mouth is really people recommending something to someone they know or writing about something in a public place, like the internet. Referrals from a friend are very likely to trigger a purchase, and this is the goal.

Viral Marketing – Making something viral does not necessarily mean someone is willfully recommending the product or service, as in word of mouth marketing. It could be that the message attaches itself to something that someone does, such as an email footer for hotmail, and spreads. Or it could be something that is easy to spread and people enjoy spreading it. Viral marketing spreads very quickly and with little effort once the marketing virus is released.

Buzz Marketing – Buzz Marketing I refer to as word of mouth marketing with the volume turned up. It is the art of getting more people to talk about you more often. Word of Mouth Marketing experts are often trying to do the same thing, but buzz has a stronger focus on increasing volume and passion about the topic.

Good Internet Marketers will use all of these to be successful on the web. Their Internet Marketing Strategy will include:

• Word of Mouth Internet Strategies such as a Refer a Friend website feature
• Viral Marketing Internet Strategies such as a video that is funny or options to easily Digg a page.
• Buzz Marketing Internet Strategies such as creating more content and connections that get people to link to them, write about them, reference them and email about them. One way is to be controversial or exciting, another way to achieve this is with volume of smaller buzz efforts.

With Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing, we prefer a disciplined approach to creating consistently more buzz over the long term with your existing advocates. My  book will address how to do this on a limited budget.

Your message could go viral and it is not always something you plan.  Viral marketing is when a message starts spreading from person to person rapidly and uncontrollably.  This could be a message you craft to be funny or extremely informative.  Or it could be something that just happens by accident and spreads quickly.

One important note about emails and viral marketing is that the viral and interesting part of the message does not have to be in the email itself.  Your email could just be a way to point someone to something of interest, and they will forward it to a friend.  Or the opposite could happen.  Your email may not go viral, but it might trigger other forms of viral messages that take off.

My Best 5 Minutes of Marketing

The latter happened to us a few weeks after we launched a new company called Buzzoodle.  I am a fan of Seth Godin’s work and just before going home from lunch I decided to send him an email letting him know about our company.  I’d never communicated with him before, and I really did not expect a reply, but I figured there was no down side.

The email was 2-3 sentences long with a link to the Buzzoodle website.  When I came back from lunch, the tech group said the server was either down or there was a DNS attack on the server.  After further investigation, it turned out Seth had added a comment on his blog about the email message and thousands of people were hitting the site in the first hour.  He has one of the top rated blogs on marketing.

Within a week, we had clients in 17 countries and over a year later, I still get hits from the posts on his blog.  That one email has paid huge dividends without ever being forwarded.

It was the best 5 minutes of marketing I ever did, and it did not seem that special when I sent it out.

How to use Email for Viral Marketing

Email can be used in several different ways to create a buzz.

1. Get people to visit a website
   If you create a funny or interesting thing on the Internet, email is the most effective way to get people to tell other people where it is.  For example, you could post a video on uTube and in a few hours it could have 1000’s of visitors that all started with just a couple email messages.
2. Get people to pass on the message
   If you have a message that really interests people, they are likely to want to share it with friends.  Let people know in your email that it is not an exclusive offer and they can forward the message.  If you are sending out a crazy sale or truly remarkable offer, encourage them to send it along.  If your message is funny or information that is very valuable to people, it will also be forwarded, probably with or without permission.
3. Distribute an eBook or other media
   Notice the word mail in email.  Email is also a way to deliver something.  Consider creating an attachment in a trusted format, such as a PDF, and allowing people to deliver it to all their friends via a forward.  A health care agency or insurance company may want to create a “Annual Family Health Checklist” and send it to all of their clients.  In the email let them know they can forward the valuable worksheet to anyone they care for.  Just be sure that the PDF is properly branded and has a clear way to contact you on it.

Remember that email is often a permanent message.  Be careful you do not say something negative or critical that could also go viral and damage your reputation or the reputation of your company.  It is simply too easy to forward it on.

Email is a powerful tool for creating a buzz and getting your message out. Your message is not always going to go viral and triple your sales, but don’t let that stop you. If you are careful with your message, respect people’s privacy and keep reminding them you exist, you are going to have a better relationship with your customers and you increase the odds that one of your messages will end up generating incredible interest and be seen by millions.

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral Marketing is when something is created and released in the hopes of it being passed along in an exponential pattern, growing and spreading from person to person.  This is more powerful today because it is so easy to do with email and internet techniques.

There are certain things that will make a product or message a viral success.

The product or message should:
1. Be easy to spread
2. Be extraordinary and interesting
3. Make the host doing the viral spreading look cool or smart
4. Have a wide appeal

A successful viral marketing campaign will grow its audience with every touch.  Each person that gets it should pass it on to at least two more people, until it reaches millions.

Viral Marketing can fizzle when it does not make a strong enough impact, when it is ordinary, when it is not backed up with great customer service or when it is not sticky enough to engage the contact.

Viral Marketing Example One:
Free eBook that is interesting and new.  If it has a wide enough appeal, it could spread to many readers.

Viral Marketing Example Two:
Funny video on the web that can easily be forwarded by email.

Viral Marketing Example Three:
Cool electronic gadget that people see other people using and ask about and want.

Viral Marketing Example Four:
Discounting multiple copies of something so that the buyer can give some as gifts.

These are just some of the ways Viral Marketing has been used to spread the message through the customers themselves.

For a very insightful blog post about Viral Marketing and the ideaVirus, visit Seth Godin’s Blog