Manhattan Marketing Maven

Small Viral Campaigns Can Work Well

When viral marketing comes up everyone fantasizes about creating the next global sensation. But viral marketing works very nicely without trying to swing for the fences. There are singles, doubles and triples to be had by mounting smaller viral campaigns.

Why? Because the simplest viral effort begins with selective psycho-demographic targeting amped up by credible delivery from trusted sources. The secret sauce of pass-along marketing is launching the message into an arena by seeding it with the right people who can share it broadly by directing and steering it for you. This requires the sender and the passer-along to have a pre-existing relationship that encourages the parties to help each other.

Consider two recent minor successes:

Talent Recruiting. We needed to find 30 poker players to be extras in several direct response TV commercials. We wanted attractive people who knew how to play Texas Hold 'Em and who would look and react on camera the same way they do when they play in Vegas, AC or in their friend's homes. We were unable to pay the rates or accept the work rules to hire union actors. So we sent personal e-mails to friends asking them to pass along the casting call notice which offered a chance to play hooky from work on a summer Monday, $500 bucks, free lunch, transportation to and from the studio in Long Island and wearable swag.

Four principals pinged 200+ friends. As best we can tell, the e-mails probably reached about 1000 people in the metro New York City area, based on the degrees of separation evidenced by the final cast members. We got 60 interested people in 18 hours. We easily filled the room without having to be too selective or brutal in casting and the final product (see it next week on NBC's "Poker After Dark") is great.

Focus Group Recruiting. For a professional services client we wanted to try out a parlor meeting pitch. We found a well-connected couple known for their robust network of friends, family and business acquaintances and asked them to invite people who were members of the sandwich generation -- raising kids and caring for aging parents-- to their home on a random Wednesday night. The host couple sent personal e-mails to 12 couples and 8 single friends giving them 3 weeks advance notice. In 12 hours, 18 people agreed to come and on the appointed night 14 showed up. The conversation resonated especially well because the hosts pre-sorted the list and zeroed in one people they knew would have a strong emotional and intellectual connection with the subject matter. 

So what does it all mean?

1. A small viral effort can work well and accomplish your goals.

2. You don't necessarily have to create the next must-see video.

3. It's all about targeting.

4. Using personal lists and "From" addresses means greater deliver-ability and opens

5. The more personal the appeal -- the better. The extra spin is a by-product of personal emotional connections.   

Linked In But Lonely

In a week I doubled my LinkedIn network by using very cool tools they've developed to scoop up your contacts from Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo and match them with the membership database. With a few clicks I invited my pals to formally connect with me on LinkedIn.

Now we're linked but leery.

This exercise in trying to figure out if I'm the right demographic to take advantage of the social networking phenomenon prompted a bunch of interesting reactions. Roughly 20 percent of the people I pinged asked me why I was linking to them. They expressed doubt about the value of connecting ourselves on this formal network.Many said they were members of a club that they couldn't explain and didn't see any value from.

Another 25 percent sent me e-mails outside the system asking questions or catching me up on business or personal details. It taught me that the true value of a network lies in its use. Who cares that you know a lot of people? If they aren't engaged with you and if they can't be quickly mobilized to help you they are just names on a list. Incidentally I asked 20 friends to look at a prototype web site the week before. Fifteen  and 15 of them commented thoughtfully within 36 hours without logging into the infrastructure of a social network.

I routinely ask people I know for stuff --- advice, contributions to charity, introductions to their friends, research questions for my clients, travel and restaurant recommendations and job leads for friends and family. I don't use anything more sophisticated than my contacts list. And when I did use LinkedIn recently I drew a blank.

I contacted a former colleague in Germany who I knew worked with the Director of Business Development at LinkedIn. I targeted LinkedIn as a potential partner for one of my clients so I pinged my guy and asked for an introduction to his guy. He did it. And the friend-of-my-friend agreed to talk to me and gave me his e-mail address. I wrote him and then --- radio silence. I got the same result on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th tries too.

So I'm LinkedIn but lonely. The network's value proposition is to extend my business reach and influence and to accelerate my ability to connect with others. But so far I've supplied the only energy in the mix and the only thing I've extended is the list of names attached to mine which doesn't thrill any of us.   

Vying for Online Video Viewers

If you post it, they will not necessarily watch. That's what I'm learning as I test a viral marketing effort on YouTube, LiveVideo and other video networking and community sites.

The emergence of limitless user and brand generated online video content has attracted widespread comment and a land rush by content owners and creators to meet or intersect potential friends and customers on these sites. But the use of this channel to achieve marketing objectives is as beguiling as it is intriguing.

I'm astounded at the sheer quantity of material that ranges from stupid cat tricks to TV bootlegs to endless confessions to well produced material created specifically for web viewing and downloads. Overnight we've become a nation of film directors and videographers committed to the notion that a picture is worth a thousand words and a moving picture is exponentially better.

David Parmet, an online PR expert, argues in his "Marketing Begins At Home" blog that "social media are not sales channels, they are conversation channels." So marketers should "think of yourselves as conversationalists" and emphasize the connection by listening and reacting rather than robotically trumpeting the product message. And while we think that we can intersect with and begin a conversation with prospective customers using this "infotainment" or "edutainment" venue, getting eyeballs and turning those eyeballs into sales is still a matter of trial and error.

Consider my going-in assumptions

1. My target psycho-demographic are actively using these sites.

2. My video is search-able, tagged and can be aligned or grouped with like material.

3. By linking video with my website, blog, Myspace page, iTunes or other content sources, I can facilitate broad and easy access to my message and stimulate traffic.

4. If the content is compelling and resonates with my target audience, they will help drive traffic and by sharing the links and virally extend the campaign.

So based on these assumptions, we put up a sequence of 3 videos aimed at 25-35 year-old mostly male IT guys in small and medium businesses. Our videos are a mix of live action video showing "real" working situations and animation using World of Warcraft characters as a familiar motif and as a way to give voice to and project IT guy's usually stifled emotional reactions to routine office situations.

Here's what we've learned so far:

A. Shorter clips get more views

B. Animation gets more play than live action

C. Search engines drive significant traffic to video sites

D. We doubled our traffic by actively commenting on blogs and posting opinions in community forums which includes a link to our video   

E. We are betting that more links = more traffic. We are expanding the linkages among campaign elements and reaching out in a broader circle to online communities to expand the conversation.

F. The tune-in burden is entirely ours. Unlike TV or cable channels where no matter what you do somebody will watch your stuff, we have no baseline audience online. The video sites are platforms. They don't come with built-in viewership.

The campaign is still rolling out. Stay Tuned.