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A Cure for the Common Viral Marketing Program
According to a recent Nielsen Internet survey, 78 percent of consumers say they trust other consumer’s recommendation over all advertising/marketing avenues. Marketers these days seem to be chomping at the bit to encourage word of mouth and viral marketing. But do they work? So far, the answer is disappointing.
New research from JupiterResearch published in today's issue of 1to1 Weekly shows that only 15 percent of viral marketing efforts of the past year actually succeeded in getting consumers to spread positive word of mouth. For every subservient chicken, there are many more well-intentioned initiatives that sputter out before making an impact. The problem isn't with the campaigns necessarily, but with the ability to tie back the initiatives to actual results. It seems like everything comes down to metrics, doesn't it?
What do you think? Does viral marketing really work?
1to1's case study of Capt' Star should tell us all we need: viral marketing works wonders on the generation searching for their 1st career. Most of us have clients that are a bit older... so why are we trying to reach 45 year olds like we do 15-25 year olds? The purpose of viral marketing is reaching an audience that will - in the next 5-10 years! - be our primary clients. So consider this period of viral marketing ramp up time - especially if your current market is over 40.
While marketers have not had much success "operationalizing" word of mouth customers have. They now know that companies take word of mouth seriously so it can therefore be used against them. The positive side is that customer experience is likely to improve as a result of this knowledge because companies do not want to be bad mouthed. A perfect example of the law of unintended consequences kicking in.
Will companies ever learn that customers are generally far less interested in their products than the company believes they are or should be.
I wrote this manifesto a couple years back and it has been downloaded 10s of thousands of times.
Viral works if it is worthy!
I consider guerilla marketing, and viral marketing, as alternative channels for message propagation. That’s it. It’s not a panacea; like any cure it works better in some places and situations than in others. It takes understanding and some foundation of knowledge to make it work well, or to decide it won’t work with the current conditions for your product or services. Proceed without consumer knowledge and evaluations of progress, and it can waste a client’s time and effort as well as any other misguided pursuit.
We’ve got a marketing industry that can self-propagate “buzz” without careful basis, and that’s a situation where folks like you help.
Spreading a word of mouth should come natural and being enough authentic. Blind pushing is of no help here. 15% of success as the JupiterResearch revealed is of little success at all for recent viral marketing projects. The trouble isn't with viral marketing per se but its implementation effort. If you push for references too hard or excessively straightforward igniting a feeling of being sold, it would be hard to swallow the results from your audience. Pitches like "Refer a friend" or "Email to a friend" bear little intelligence flavour loosing their meaning and hardly work these days. Instead, viral marketers should instil sort of gaming environment activating influencers like in Sephora's case. You give them a motive under some socializing umbrella, and they start working for you producing references. These individuals are driven by a passion to the product and their vibrant influencing ego. They set new preference stereotypes and people follow. Peer-to-peer referrals are immensely powerful as people en masse tend to imitate a new thing coming from a small portion of peer-influencers or trend-setters who share their positive experiences with a product. In Sephora case, referrals give 3x lift in response vs. impersonal advertising like banner ads. So, viral marketing still does good things. The real question is how to put it in action.
We wrote an article in our sister publication, The Marketing Xfactor, last week about the rise of "Social Media Optimization." Perhaps if companies really look viral marketing as a strategic initiative, it may make more of an impact. First decide if it is a good marketing avenue, then devise a clear plan of and metrics to reflect success. To Roy and Chris's point, not everything is worth talking about.
I agree with all of your opinion but, how could we have success in the process of convertion? which practice is the best to convert people?
The only way authentic word-of-mouth marketing will work is after the product delivers on its promises and does so extremely well. Once that happens, then companies can encourage customers to spread the word.
Simply because the technology exists does not mean that people will use it successfully. It is akin to the problem of "irrational exuberance" related to the stock market we experienced earlier this decade. Inexperienced marketers want a technological magic bullet so badly they become delusional.
It's time to start focusing on producing quality products with excellent service at a reasonable price. Brand-building does not happen overnight. It is a marathon, not a sprint.
The reason for the disparity (consumers say that they trust friends but viral marketing initiatives don't work) is that the companies are doing it wrong. If consumers trust their friends, that doesn't mean they trust the company blog.
I don't understand why companies think that if they put company information on a blog it would have any greater influence than that same company information on a blog. This is just so typical of fad-ism. Companies are worse than lemmings when it comes to tech marketing ideas.
Viral marketing will work depending on the product and target audience. We are in the construction equipment business. Viral marketing is key to being a leader. These customers talk to each other as it is a major investment and they value the opinion of their peers.
I believe we need to take one more step back, beyond talking about the metrics. When it comes to viral marketing, we as marketers need to give our clients the bad news that not everything is worth talking about. Word of mouth will spread quickly if the product/brand/service is something that is actually relevant in our lives and motivates us to tell a freind about it; a new song, a new movie, a new beer, a new digital product by Apple--even a new titanium bike frame. But an "exciting" new toner cartridge, feature to a legacy software, or paint thinner? Sorry folks but it aint gonna work!
You're right, Elizabeth. It does boil down to metrics. Campaigns that build buzz are important, but campaigns that drive action are even better. There's no reason why you shouldn't strive for both. Part of the problem with most interactive campaigns is that they're very good at tracking clicks, but often fail to capture any offline action.
Having the ability to track and convert leads across channels should be an essential part to any campaign.