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Call it viral marketing, buzz marketing, connected marketing or whatever you will, marketing messages spread by email have been around long enough for management and measurement techniques to come into play, as Simon van Wyk writes.

It’s been 10 years since the first viral online marketing campaign. It’s a campaign that’s still going, and just about everyone who’s ever used the Internet has been exposed to the virus.

It was back in July 1996 that the founders of Hotmail, Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia, added a signature line to all messages from their email service, alerting anyone who received a Hotmail message that they could come to Hotmail and get a free email account. Nearly 250 million Hotmail members later, that campaign is still running, and it has been followed by tens of thousands of online campaigns, according to a recent MarketingSherpa report.

However, MarketingSherpa reckons viral marketing has settled into a rut, despite the fact that creativity is the essence of a successful viral campaign. In fact, in its report, based on a survey it conducted of 790 viral marketers, MarketingSherpa said, “it’s getting hideously same-old, same-old boring. Which spells trouble, because viral’s all about not being boring”.

Compared to last year, the first time the survey was conducted, there are some striking differences in viral marketing activity. Looking at the metrics used to determine campaign success, new email opt-ins was cited by 63% of respondents and value of new email opt-ins was mentioned by 31%, both up 10% on 2005. This indicates that marketers are now starting to focus on the quality of their email lists, rather than just the size.

Not surprisingly, the value derived from video clips has soared, up to 47% compared to 31% the previous year. (MarketingSherpa attributes most of this growth to two industries- automotive and pornography!)

The report declared that social networking-related activities (driven by sites such as MySpace and YouTube) have had the most explosive impact on the growth in viral marketing during the past year, because blogging has finally hit household-name status.

According to Nielsen/Netratings, seven of the top 10 fastest growing Web brands online for November 2005 were user-generated content and social networking sites, which boasted the monthly unique visitor growth rates of up to 1500% over the previous 12 months.

From revolution to maturation

While MarketingSherpa warns of viral marketing being in a rut, marketing consultants Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden argue that the viral revolution has just matured. Kirby and Marsden are editors of the recently published book Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution, in which 17 experts in the area discuss a range of, as they call it, “scalable, predictable and measurable solutions for driving business growth by stimulating positive brand talk between clients, customers and consumers”.

In an excerpt from the book published recently on MarketingProfs.com, Kirby writes that they coined the term “connected marketing” to cover viral, buzz, word of mouth and any kind of marketing (from product research and development through production, to promotion by any means, including traditional advertising) that “creates conversations in target markets that add measurable value to a brand”.

Kirby highlights the crisis in advertising effectiveness which has helped fuel the viral revolution. A 2004 study Deutsche Bank in the US consumer packaged goods sector found that only 18% of TV advertising campaigns generate a positive return on annual investment, while the Harvard Business Review reported that for every dollar invested into traditional advertising for consumer packaged goods, the short-term return on investment is just 54 cents. The HBR survey also quoted a study that showed that an astonishing 84% of B2B marketing campaigns actually result in a fall in market share and brand equity.

One response to the problem has been reducing media costs by using free media - word of mouth connections - to deliver marketing messages. As well as being free, word of mouth connections are influential: Kirby cites a 2004 UK survey by consultants CIA:MediaEdge which found that 76% cite word of mouth as their main influence on their purchasing decisions, compared with only 15% for traditional advertising.

Kirby writes, “Many brands are now finally realising that the most powerful selling of products and ideas takes place not marketer to consumer but consumer to consumer.”

Although most viral marketing campaigns look as organised as a men’s weekend away, Kirby argues that managing successful viral activities “is possible through an organised series of decisions and approaches; it’s not a hit-or-miss quest for that one groundbreaking idea.”

Circles of influence

Integrating the viral, buzz, and word of mouth techniques with the whole mix of marketing - advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, PR, etc. - is essential for successful campaigns.

According to Kirby, successful integration starts with listening to what customers are already saying about your brand and identifying and involving your most influential customers.

“With connected marketing,” Kirby writes, “the aim is to profile and recruit customers who represent the 10% of society that helps influence the majority of all purchasing decisions. These influencers are not necessarily the customers who spend the most money with you, but they are the most important people you can reach, because they are the ones who can help amplify and accelerate positive word mouth about your brand.

He recommends developing ongoing, two-way relationships with influencers, doing things such as letting them trial your product before it is released, or getting them involved back in the research and development process. This will help increase the chance of success even if the product or service itself isn’t particularly innovative.

One thing Kirby warns against is jumping into bed with marketing specialist who claim they can monitor blogs, forums etc. to gather data on mentions of your brand. He points out there are plenty of free tools available that you can use to monitor your brand ‘buzz’.

Measuring the full impact

Kirby wisely recommends that traditional, cost-per-thousand-eyeballs types of measures should not be relied on to measure the success of viral campaigns. He also argues against relying on recommendation rates as the only measurement. However, he doesn’t offer an iron-clad solution for measurement techniques - he simply says that further research is needed to help marketers be more scientific about success measures.

The MarketingSherpa report, while it also doesn’t solve the measurement problem, includes some useful tips for successful viral campaigns in today’s social networking-driven online environment. Suggestions include: building a campaign specifically with a networking site like MySpace in mind; adding secrets or codes your campaign that only insiders of your demographic might notice; get celebrities involved, even if it is a parody or imitation of a celebrity; brand your creative in such a way that cutting your offer or logo out of it is next to impossible; and always add hotlinks such as ‘forward to a friend’, ‘add a permanent link’ or ‘add to my favourites’.