Viral Marketing And Search Marketing – Perfect Companions

Strong content leading to natural links have long been touted as the ethical way to build website rankings in the main search engines.  One of the accepted best practices of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to encourage clients to expand and optimize the content on their site in order to achieve the holy grail “authority site” status.

Over the years I've found that great content can also create a buzz and that that buzz can be used to virally market your site or a specific product or service.  I've also observed that the fringe benefit of content that spreads virally is an increase in natural links.   This type of content is now referred to as linkbait.  Good linkbait uses content to influence people, either for branding purposes or to generate leads and sales.

Viral Marketing and Linkbait

If you read about search marketing on a regular basis, it’s inevitable that you will have seen the terms viral marketing and linkbait.
Viral marketing describes any strategies that encourage individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, thus creating the potential of exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. These strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to a large audience.
Viral marketing is also referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," and "network marketing."  Regardless of the term used, you can see that viral marketing is a powerful tool.

Linkbait refers to a compelling feature on a website that attracts attention from visitors and encourages them to link to it.  These features can include games, tools and applications, videos, unique information, the very latest news or gossip, incendiary opinions, or other types of sensational information.  Because this type of information can spread virally, it can attract a large amount of inbound links to the originating website as well as increasing traffic and brand exposure.  Often social media news sites, such as Digg, are used to spread the word.  These types of sites are frequented by people who like to share information.

Often the terms viral marketing and linkbait are used to explain the same basic concept.  However, the difference is on where the emphasis is placed.  Viral puts the emphasis on the marketing message.  Linkbait, as the name suggests, focuses on link building.

How do companies break through to generate online destinations that create buzz, encourage word of mouth, and establish relationships with potential buyers?

Develop Communications with your Community

A recent Nielsen Global Survey of over 26,000 people found that nearly 78% of respondents trusted "recommendations from consumers.”   This total was 15% higher than the second-most credible source, newspapers. More and more, consumers are sharing these recommendations online.

With the development of what we now refer to as social media (including blogs, forums, and social networking communities), there has been a shift in consumer behavior.  Customers are driving the marketing message and virally passing their opinions on to others on these sites.  This social interaction has led to the development of a breed of consumers called brand evangelists.
 
Brand evangelists are enthusiasts who are actively involved in spreading positive word of mouth about a brand or product.  They may have a blog devoted to a brand with a large readership or host a forum where users share experiences and tips.  They are key influencers and can do wonders in developing brand exposure.  Companies now recognize the worth of these individuals and target them for access to information and exclusive privileges.  This may take the form of upcoming news, advance screening of new products, new product testing etc.  So brand evangelists are a perfect platform to launch a viral campaign.

Individuals with a passion for your brand can pass along your marketing message voluntarily.  For example, a person sees an amusing video ad and sends this ad to some friends; then these people forward it to different friends, and so on.   On average, one person tells three people about a product or service.

For a viral campaign to succeed, marketers must work to recognize individuals within the particular community with high social networking potential. They then create viral messages that attract this segment of influential people, increasing the probability that the message will get passed along.

Tips for Viral Marketing

How do you get a viral campaign off the ground?  Here are some things you can do to encourage viral promotion of your site in social networks:

•    Find out hot topics of interest within your client's community.
•    Determine what is relevant and buzzworthy and will get the audience talking.
•    Encourage people to forward your client's content to their network and related networks.
•    Make it easy for people to email website information to their network.
•    Allow visitors to email content, such as e-cards, directly from your client's website.
•    Create free downloads from the site, e.g. tools, games, etc.  These should carry a marketing message that increases brand awareness.

Track Results

Once the campaign is active, you will want to track its effectiveness.  Review the rankings, traffic, conversions, and sales.  Also determine how many links have been influenced.  These figures will not necessarily be hard and fast.  Look for trends over the time of the campaign.

Conclusions

Viral marketing can help your search marketing efforts.  By passing compelling content on to members of a community associated with a client, you encourage them to then refer it to others.  Ideally, this will increase brand awareness as well as develop links to the site.  All of which can be beneficial to your search marketing campaign and, ultimately, your client's business.