UnMarketing, 2nd Edition

50Viral Marketing

Viral marketing has many names. You can have a code name for it called buzz. It can be WOM, which stands for word of mouth. It can be called pass-along rates. It goes out there and it gets watched and grows. It's the art of having other people tell their friends about you.

No matter what you call it, going viral is what we all want. Getting hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people to be talking about us and our businesses. We have egos ourselves, we understanding wanting people talking about us and what we do—as long as they're sharing the things we want them to share, of course.

In this chapter, we will learn about Scott's experience with viral marketing in his own words.

People use the term viral marketing a lot. They say things like, “Oh, I had a virus last month on my computer. I don't want to learn this, Scott. It was wicked. It said it was the anti-virus '09 and it screwed everything up.” Viral marketing has nothing to do with viruses. Viral simply means when a host person gets it out there and it spreads. Now one of the dangers with this kind of marketing is that once it goes, you can't stop it, and we'll talk all about that and what's horrible about not being able to stop it.

Viral marketing is pretty basic. It does not matter what kind of method you use, whether it is YouTube or “micro viral” like we find on Twitter. It doesn't matter what the medium is.

There are four secrets to successful viral marketing that we talk about in this section ...