A lot of variables come into play in creating online content that will go viral.
But according to Bill Hanekamp, CEO of digital advertising firm The Well, they boil down to one rule: “Don’t be boring.”
The campaigns have been known to produce 36,000 unique visitors in five weeks and 500,000 product views in five days for no ad budget at all, Hanekamp told a session at the PROMOLive conference in Chicago yesterday. But building an effective viral campaign is as much art as science.
“We don’t know what ingredients will work for everyone,” he said. “The only way to know is to try.”
A good viral campaign has to engage users, move them to take some kind of action, then go on to build a relationship with that user. Finally, they should be moved to share the content with others.
And a tactic that works well for one marketer may fall flat for another.
Hanekamp pointed to the strong success of Office Max’s “Elf Yourself” initiative last holiday season, in which users were encouraged to upload their photo and place it on the body of a dancing cartoon elf and e-mail the result to friends. That was the campaign that earned 36,000 visitors in five weeks.
But a similar campaign by Chevy, tied to a commercial run during the Super Bowl, fell flat.
Marketers can improve their chances for going viral by making sure that their content is entertaining, relevant to the target audience, timely and exclusive, Hanekamp said.
The key is to start small, by getting site visitors to take an action, any action, after viewing the content. He pointed to the microsite for Dove’s Campaign for Real beauty as a good example of combining strong viral content—the “Evolution” video that shows time-lapse photography of a model being made up—with an array of calls to action once visitors have viewed the clip.
Marketers should also not neglect the appeal of straight bribery in bringing traffic to a microsite, Hanekamp says. A campaign his firm worked on for a wine product from Paterno Wines tried many different approaches to build buzz among women buyers. Finally, they hit on one that worked: a Prada handbag giveaway contest.
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