There are people who will tell you that it is possible to create a viral campaign that will certainly be a hit, and there are agencies specializing in taking money and making promises.
But I’ve noticed that when organizations (and their agencies) set out to go viral, the vast majority of their campaigns fail. It is virtually impossible to create a Web marketing program that is guaranteed to go viral; it requires a huge amount of luck and timing. That’s an important point to remember as you work on viral marketing ideas, because it’s unlike the old-rules, numbers-based marketing techniques you’re probably used to. Consider a direct mail campaign: You could always count on a direct mail piece to generate a known number of responses, say 2 percent. So if you needed to have 100 people respond, you sent out 5,000 mailers. Easy, right?
Viral marketing is much different. You just can’t count on numbers in the same way. Many efforts fail miserably, and there are countless Web sites, e-books, and videos that only their creators’ mothers and bosses have seen. However, tomorrow those same marketers might get lucky and get a million people to view their content, driving tens of thousands of people’s interest in their products and services.
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However, this importance of timing and luck shouldn’t discourage you from using viral marketing techniques; you just need to learn how to turn the odds in your favor.
Have you achieved viral status with one of your campaigns? Tell us about it!
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