Viral Marketing – The Mystical Phenomenon

Successful viral marketing campaigns may seem like an urban legend — stories other companies tell you to throw you off their marketing trail– but actually the he-said-she-said mystery surrounding viral marketing is a huge proponent of its appeal and success.

Because the seemingly mythical beast of viral marketing has a lot of aspects to explore, I will be breaking this topic up into three blog posts touching these topics:

1. What is Viral Marketing

2. Who has Viral Marketing worked/not worked for

3. Tips for implementing your own viral marketing strategy.

Part One: Viral Marketing The Beast — In Theory

In the case of viral marketing, the egg came before the monster by the means of individual content on the Internet, such as the home video Charlie Bit My Finger, unintentionally going viral.

This accidental popularity on the Internet created a cultural phenomenon that needed to be identified. In the mid 90′s the term “viral” was coined to refer to any content that gets passed around via the Internet at an exponential rate. This term was chosen because the media’s method of spreading is akin to the method in which a virus passes on from one individual to the next resulting in a pandemic. In this case, it’s a pandemic of content in the form of videos, images and messages.

If harnessed this viral effect could be a marketer’s dream tool — known as viral marketing. The only challenge with adopting it as a reliable marketing campaign tool lay in predicting whether or not Internet users would pick up their content. Early adopters quickly realized the phenomenon can be pretty difficult to replicate.

At first, it seemed going viral happened sporadically and with no explanation. However, over a decade later, success stories seem to keep mystically popping out of no where. Perhaps the beast can be tamed. In my next blog post, I will discuss some successful and some not so successful viral marketing campaigns.