Viral Video
People love online video (that’s a fact), as shown by a recent report by ComScore indicating that 178 million US internet users watched 30.3 billion online videos during the month of April 2010.
What exactly is viral marketing
Viral marketing is a very effective way to drive traffic to your website and gain exposure for your brand. When one of your promotional pieces gets linked to, passed around, and spreads with a life of its own, it has gone viral. In order for something to do this, it has to be of interest to a lot of people. It can offer great value, be shocking, funny or controversial. The idea is to grab the interest of a few people who will want to share your material with a few more and so on.
Here are some viral marketing examples to better help explain.
Funny videos are a great method to use for viral marketing because video sharing is so popular today. Funny or weird videos get shared among friends and posted on blogs and get seen by a lot of eyes. Insert your brand or a link to your website into the video and you have one good example of viral marketing. Remember that your video needs to be unique in some way. There is a lot of competition out there and an average video won't get very much attention.
Hotmail is often used as the classic example of viral marketing. When they started giving away free email addresses, everyone who used their service also advertised it because a link to Hotmail was automatically included at the bottom of every email sent. More and more people saw the link, clicked it and signed up for a free email address. All these new users then sent out the Hotmail link with every email they sent and so on.
Giving away free ebooks or short reports is another viral marketing example that is pretty popular today. The free report contains advertisements for your website with links back to it. You give the report away and let everyone know they can also give the report away to their friends and subscribers. Pretty soon your free report has a wide circulation and your website gets a lot of free publicity.
Posting gossip or rumors on your blog can sometimes go viral as can posting controversial statements. This is also called link baiting. The purpose is to create a buzz that gets people talking about your post and linking to it. All those web hits and backlinks will be good for your business as long as you do it right. You have to be careful about stirring controversy or making statements that are untrue because it might blow up in your face and even hurt your business.
Viral marketing failures are not uncommon even among big businesses with huge advertising budgets. It is difficult to predict what will take off and what will be a flop. There are many good viral marketing examples you can learn from such as Burger King's Subservient Chicken video and Blendtec's "Will it Blend?" videos. These were successful in part because they were interactive and unique.
Remember also to make your video or report easy to be shared. Allow your videos to be embedded on other websites and let your reports be freely shared. For the average webmaster the point to keep in mind is to over deliver on value whether it is in the form of a hilarious video or an informative report. Create something that people can't wait to share with their friends and you will have a viral marketing success on your hands.
Let’s take a look at some of the best viral videos out there:
1. Entrepreneurs Can Change The World (Grasshopper)
Great video linkbait tells a story and Grasshopper did just that – They inspired Entrepreneurs all around the world to join a movement and change the world, and you might want to get grasshopper while you’re at it?
2. Ninja Unboxing (Google)
Here’s a scenario for you: You’re releasing a new phone to an already crowded market place: How do you get the word out and generate buzz? If you are Google, you enlist the skills of Patrick Boivin to animate the unboxing of your product using Ninjas and seed the video on YouTube.
3. Superhuman tape measure skills (Integrity Windows)
A perfect example of well executed viral linkbait for an offline business. From the video, to the landing page, and an engaging online game it’s nothing but a positive experience. I didn’t know of any Windows installers in the US; I do now – Integrity Windows.
4. JavaZone Trailer: Java 4-ever (JavaZone Conference)
Humour always works in Viral linkbait. This video from Java Zone (Scandinavia’s biggest meeting place for software developers) nailed it with this spoof video about a son’s dilemma to develop for an open source platform rather than Microsoft’s. Original Video has been taken down due to copyright infringement. What a shame. (Slightly NSFW).
5. Will It Blend? – iPad (Blendtec)
‘Will it Blend?’ Needs no introduction here – With over 129,155,918 video views, BlendTec’s YouTube Channel is the 95th most subscribed channel of all time. Their speciality is blenders, and now even sell “Will it Blend” Merchandise.
Do all these video views and being a top 100 YouTube channel equate to success? According to Tom Dickson, BlendTec’s CEO and video star it does – “We have definitely felt an impact in sales. Will it Blend has had an amazing impact to our commercial and our retail products.”
6. Fast Lane – The Slide (Volkswagen)
Volkswagen have invested a lot of time and effort in their viral videos (last years Pianotrappan was one of my favourite viral videos), this time with the help of DDB Stockholm.
7. Glastonbury 2010 (Google)
Another fantastic video from Google promoting a multitude of their online services in one cleverly executed video. It’s a follow up to their hugely successful Super Bowl Ad. Not only are Google launching a series of these viral videos – They are following them up with well executed blogger outreach programmes.