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Viral Marketing
By Brick | January 22, 2008
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What some people may not know about The 4-Hour Workweek is that the book itself is a case study in viral marketing. Take yourself back almost one year, and you would find that Tim Ferriss was virtually unknown to the general public. Ferriss was a first time author with no traditional advertising or public relations. The book was turned down by almost every editor who saw it, and one publishing industry executive went to lengths to show Ferriss why his book could never be a bestseller. Yet in the space of a few months The 4-Hour Workweek hit #1 on the NY Times and #1 on the Wall Street Journal business bestseller lists.
How did the book overcome seemingly insurmountable odds: According to Ferriss:
It all came down to learning how to spread a meme, an idea virus that captures imaginations and takes on a life of its own.
Well, that’s great for Tim, but what about us? As we develop our own “muses” - products to sell that are vehicles for generating cash without consuming time - we will almost certainly have to consider some kind of marketing strategy. Given the limited budgets some of us may have in setting up a business, some form of viral marketing may actually be inescapable. Viral marketing is defined as:
…marketing techniques that use preexisting social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.
Source: Wikipedia.
So what are the steps involved in creating a so called idea virus?
Be Remarkable
According to marketing guru Seth Godin and even Tim Ferris himself, it all starts with the product itself. While some clever marketing or publicity stunts may grab some peoples’ attention for a time, it is a remarkable product that will create the word of mouth phenomenon required for an idea to become viral. Notice that the product must be remarkable, not necessarily the best quality, or the greatest number of features, etc. Seth Godin has described this concept in the Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. The gist is this: for the most part, cows are not very exciting. We could drive through the countryside and never really take notice of the cows in the fields as we passed. However, if we drove by a purple cow, we would definitely take notice. We would probably stop the car and tell others about what we saw. Here is Seth discussing how we ignore ordinary stuff:
At the end of the day, an impressive commodity is still just a commodity.
Work The Pond
You have to reach out to people and network. Don’t forget, we are supposedly connected to each other by as few as six handshakes. However, as Malcolm Gladwell points out:
Six degrees of separation doesn’t mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.
Source: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.
So we have to network with the right people. In Work The Pond, Darcy Rezac describes these people as the royals of the frog chain where we are all frogs and the world is the pond within which interact. So you have the try and figure out who these ultra-networked people are in the market you want to sell in and then you have to go where they go. Since Ferriss was going to push the ideas behind his book through the blogging community, that meant going where the “A” bloggers go. Before the launch of the book, Ferris attended the likes of the SxSW conference and the Web 2.0 Expo. Rezac also expounds the benefits of positive networking, where we determine what we can do for someone else. For Ferris, that was providing content for these bloggers that appealed to their interests, not his.
One simple technique is to ask the ultra-networked questions about topics in which they are experts and that you are genuinely interested in. It is kind of like the social dynamics of dating: if you go out on a first date and just talk about yourself you are doomed. Expert daters know that the secret is showing genuine interest in the other party, usually by asking a lot of questions and not talking about yourself. Ultimately, this kind of interest in them on your part will cause them to ask about you and you have permission to tell them your great story.
Sell Around The Product
You will notice that when I was discussing Ferris going to where the bloggers go, I said that he was going to push the ideas behind his book - not the book itself. In general, people do not like to be “sold”. Often, one ends up feeling manipulated and therefore consumers often try to avoid the direct pitch. What we want to do is talk about the larger concept, or trend that led to the creation of our product. What is the new or interesting reason our product needs to exist? Of course in the end we can mention our product, but we don’t have to sell it directly.
Polarize
Elicit attacks and polarize people. Say something controversial. While not saying something offensive for the sake of being offensive, we can unapologetically present a legitimate opinion that challenges peoples assumptions. Ferriss recommends questioning one of the three B’s, namely peoples’:
- Behaviour
- Beliefs
- Belongings
Causing people to fight over an idea creates passionate supporters and die-hard attackers - the two necessary ingredients for keeping an emotional debate going at length and therefore creating word of mouth about your idea. Ferris talks about this at a Viral Marketing Conference:
Build A Community
Lastly, you will want to maintain the relationships you build with the so called ultra-networked and at the same time build relationships with your supporters. Ferriss did this through his blog and forums, although these are not the only venues possible for building a community. For example, in the industry I currently work in, community is often built through conferences and trade shows.
Endnotes
You can read about the launch of The 4-Hour Workweek in Tim Ferriss’ own words and also read about it in Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuation blog.
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Topics: 4-Hour Work Week, Marketing, Memes |
January 25th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
What I like about viral marketing is that if you’re savvy enough (and likely you are, based on the amount of time you’ve been doing very little), you can set the boat in motion and sit back and enjoy the crazy cruise.
(And no, not that Crazy Cruise.)
When it works , you’ll be able to sit back and watch the accolades and revenue stream in. And if you live upstream - congratulations, you also have upstream revenue…and upstream accolades.
Those are the best kind of accolades, because it is perceived you had to work harder to get them. I mean, swimming upstream is harder, right?
I rest my case.