How To Make Your Campaign Go Viral

I gave a viral campaign about a 0.0001% chance success to get you earned media in my last post,.

This is not a very good rate but does this discount the idea or value of a viral campaign?

Or is their simply another way to do it that is more effective? Is there a way to create very effective earned media?

Yes, we think there is. But first we need to see the flaw.

The biggest viral mistake marketers make?

They want to go big, huge, and far and wide as possible. This is how marketers are trained.

They put a big budget, big idea, big advertising marketing campaign together and hope that we get the return? We want to get the word out to as many people as possible. We want to have the widest reach and the highest possible frequency.

And why not. It’s worked in the past so why should it not continue to work. Above the line was very successful for a long time and successfully built many brands.

But big is not the answer anymore.

Focus, not big, is the key

Kevin Kelly wrote an article that an artist only needs 1000 true fans to be successful. They do not need a huge audience but rather an audience that can sustain them and keep them in paint.

The reality with the new digital space is that a niche is now a sustainable business and that we can make a very comfortable living from a niche. The idea of a niche has been transformed to mean a sustainable quantity.

Yet is this true offline as well?

We all know about the 80/20 rule. It applies to your customers as well. If you had to do analysis of your customer base you would find that about 80 % of your profits come from 20 % of your customer – or there about. If you had a large product range you would find the same true.  80% of your revenue would come from 20% of your products.

I know this from experience when I was in industrial marketing. I was tasked to cull some products and through my analysis I found that I could comfortably kill about 5000 products out of 7000. Of course the sales guys fought me all the way. They would tell me each product has strategic value and was a loss leaser. The only problem was we were making a loss and the factory was under huge pressure to perform.

Back to communication

So if we take this idea and look at our communication strategy, how many people do you need to reach for your communication to work? Not as many as you think you need. The big scatter gun approach is not very effective.

Focus on Loyalty, not the big idea

By segmenting your customer base into promoter, passive and detractor customers you are already ahead of the game. These categories that were developed by the net promoter.

Now focus on your promoters

One of the key attributes of the promoter is word of mouth (or earned media).  This is your viral campaign foundation. They will talk about you, tell their friends and come back for more. And what makes them come back for more? The customer experience.

The customer experience will drive your viral campaign

When your customer experience works, is compelling and makes a difference, then you will win. You will start to build incrementally and start to turn detractors into promoters. They will start to bring their friends and profits will increase. You will get earned media.

When you are looking to do a viral campaign here are some guidelines:

• Just cos you can does not mean you should
• Target who’s relevant to you rather than the whole world (i.e. I won’t know about cos I am irrelevant to your bottom line)
• Build incrementally and allow it to become self sustaining
• Practice what you preach and make sure you deliver

What makes this hard is that the customer experience is really about change. If it sucks right now this means you have to do it differently. This means you have to change how you do things, which become s a people issue.

The customer experience makes this a deep process rather than a publicity stunt. And if you can manage it from that perspective you should do ok.