Computer viruses.  They’re bad, right?  That is why we spend money setting up firewalls, getting email scanners, and we all religiously avoid opening suspect looking attachments.

But do you know that there is a certain type of computer “virus” that can make you money?  Let me reassure you that I am not going to advocate any “black hat” practises, or weird conspiracy theories about Microsoft and virus propagation.

I was at a marketing presentation the other week, and we asked the audience, a group of fellow small business owners, what they would most like to see covered in our Newsletter.  There were a couple of answers to that question, one of them was, ‘I want to know how I can get my information to spread across the internet as an email attachment’ (apologies to I.P. for my rewording of his question).

The answer to this question is “Viral Marketing”.  The use of the words “viral” and “virus” in the IT world have in the past had negative connotations. The term “virus” is used to describe these programmes, because of their ability to multiply themselves across the internet, much as a real medical virus multiplies in our cells and spreads across our bodies.

So what then is viral marketing?  It is a marketing campaign that multiplies itself across the internet.  It is not a paid marketing campaign based on ad placement, it spreads from one internet user to the next. It does not do it by taking control of your address book and hijacking you, a viral marketing “ad” is replicated when one person LIKES the ad, and sends it on.  Unlike a chain letter, a successful viral marketing campaign is anything but lame and annoying, it is entertaining.

Do you remember back around 2000, 2001 there was a Budweiser ad that every one was emailing around (WASSUP??)  It was entertaining, so people sent it on to their friends.  But at the same time it raised every body’s awareness of the Budweiser product.

So how can you get yourself a successful viral marketing campaign? 

Firstly, you need to decide who your audience is and what kind of viral ‘genre’ they are going to respond to AND want to share with their friends.

A couple of genres are:

1.  Inspirational – can often be a slide show of lovely pictures with inspirational sayings.  Appeals to people because it affirms their values.

2. Humorous – can be one funny picture, a slide show of funny pictures, a funny written piece of work or, increasingly, a video.

Successful viral marketing rarely talks about product benefits.  It often seeks to create an emotion (ie happiness) and then attach its product to that emotion.  Its main aim is to raise brand awareness.  That doesn’t mean that you can’t sell benefits.  But don’t become boring.

Once you have picked a market, and decided what kind of media they might respond to, you need to get your piece of media organised.  Either slide show, simple email, video, audio etc, bearing in mind that although video has most impact, some people still cannot down load it very fast and therefore may not watch it.

Then you need to mail it to people.

Who?  Well your database of customers is a great start.  They should be people who do not mind receiving emails from you.

They will then hopefully forward it to their friends.  Once you have sent the email, it is out of your hands and it is up to the piece of media to be compelling enough that they send it on.

Sending a whole heap of emails can be time consuming, and can also get you black listed as a spammer, so if you are uncertain about how to go about it, drop us an email.  There are easy ways to manage it.