SBM Unleashed: The Beauty of Viral Marketing

By Chris Crum - Thu, 04/24/2008 - 8:47am.

It's cheap and others basically do it for you...

Welcome back for another round of helpful marketing insight from the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference.

Jennifer Laycock, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Guide, spoke at the Viral Marketing workshop.

Viral marketing is marketing through content that is designed to build buzz.

"The good thing about viral marketing is that it's cheap," says Laycock.

The cost lies within your idea because coming up with an effective viral campaign is a challenge.

Viral Campaigns work because:

A. People distrust ads

B . People trust their friends and

C. People trust strangers (through online communities)

This is why as Jennifer says, "Any idea won't do, [it] must be something worth talking about."

With a good viral marketing campaign, you are creating "brand evangelists", because you are giving them reason to talk about your product, giving them a sense of importance, and increasing credibility.

The beauty of the viral campaign is that people tend to share them with others.

Jennifer laid out some stats on sharing:

- 89% sharing via email

- 24% business or personal finance info shared

- 63% share content at least once a week

- 25% share content daily

"Ideas spread because they are important to the spreader not the originator," Jennifer said.

There is definitely some truth to that. The campaign is definitely important to the originator, but the spreader is what keeps the campaign alive.

You also want to make sure that you are trying to spread your campaign in the right places.

"You have to know where your target market is hanging out," says Jennifer. "Familiarize yourself with their haunts email lists, discussion forums, etc."

Different types of viral campaigns that Laycock touched upon include: humor, breaking news, debate, attack (though she advised against this one), being a resource, fear, freebies, and ego.

If you have had success with viral marketing campaigns, we would love to hear about it. Please share in the comments.

Also, stay tuned to SmallBusinessNewz for more coverage on workshops from the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference.

Video anchor Abby Prince contributed to this report. Check out Abby's video interview with Jennifer Laycock here.

News Tags: Marketing, eBusiness, online business, Small Business Marketing Unleashed, Conferences, Jennifer Laycock, viral marketing

About the author:
Chris is a content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz and the iEntry Network. Subscribe to SmallBusinessNewz RSS Feeds.

Comments

By Brad McGovern (SBN reader) - Sat, 05/03/2008 - 5:51pm.

Viral Article Marketing

Hey Chris,

Of all the methods out there to promote a business successfully and consistantly, viral article marketing has to be at or near the top of the list. It works for several reasons I believe:

Web surfers are on the Internet for basically two reasons - credible information and entertainment. If you combine both in your content, they will follow you home for more.
No one likes commercials. Think about it - when was the last time you sat down in front of the TV with snacks and a cool drink and switched to the commercial channel to be entertained and enlightened for the evening?
People dislike being affronted with hard sales tactics everywhere they turn and seek safe havens from it. Online these frequently take the form of blogs, forums and content distribution sites.
Viral article marketing gets your content in front of targeted eyes and not just any eyes. One million eyes on your content about Blue Fuzzy Widgets doesn't amount to much in conversions if the brunt of them have 110% no interest in Blue Fuzzy Widgets.
While viral article marketing may not have the quick zing to it other methods possess, it has an effect for years to come by continuously creeping further across cyberspace.
It is very cost-effective. Even people without a lot of disposable funds have time; that is the major component of creating content. Even if you can't write yourself, you can hire a ghostwriter to do it for you at modest prices.

One of the biggest challenges faced as professionals in viral article marketing is with clients who want to distribute sales copy in lieu of informational content. Once they get past that hurdle and begin to see long-term results, they are fine with the whole concept of article marketing.

Marketers must sell with their content; just not products and services. They must sell themselves as an expert in their field which in turn "sells the click" on their link in the authors resourse box at the bottom of the piece.

One of the best features of viral article marketing is that it is distributed based on keyword oriented specific categories and only reaches those publishers and webmasters with a predisposed interest in that topic. When they post the content in directories, on blogs/sites or send it out in emails or newsletters, it's targeted to readers who have opted- in to get those types of content pieces.

You may not get your piece read by as many people as broad distribution garners, but the ones who do read it are targeted by interest alone. It doesn't get any closer to 100% effective than that.

The gravy on top of it all are relevant backlinks you receive from every posting of your content across the Internet. The pieces find their way to forums, blogs and websites that are topically relevant to your area of expertise. The spiders just love it and it eases your SERP's up along the way.

Viral article marketing: a cost effective, conversion inducing, white-hat marketing strategy that belongs in the tool box of all who tend to business online. Just my thoughts on it for what they're worth.

Best,

Brad McGovern

Article Marketer Blog

SmallBusinessNewz