How to Run a Viral Marketing Campaign: 6 Keys to Success

March 10th, 2009 by Easton Ellsworth

Have you ever tried to spread a meme or other viral idea in order to boost your business or organization? How well did it work and why?

In this article, I’ll share with you six keys to running a successful viral marketing campaign that I’ve come by through sometimes grueling experience.

The Unlimited Viral Power of the Web

Last year I had the incredible opportunity to help organize and promote Blog Action Day 2008, an effort to get thousands of bloggers worldwide to discuss the subject of poverty. (See here, here and here for insights and information about my experiences with Blog Action Day.)

That amazing experience taught me valuable lessons about the unlimited power of the Web to spread information and ideas quickly.

Now I’m thrilled and humbled to announce that Heifer International has asked me to help plan and lead a viral campaign to get people to participate in Pass On The Gift, a global effort to relieve hunger and poverty by raising money and awareness through local “passing on the gift” events. (If you’d like to help, please let me know!)

Now on to the six keys.

Key #1: Remember the Human

Not just “humans,” but “the human.” Viral campaigns spread just like viral diseases or applause in a crowd: one person at a time.

That means you have to talk to the individual. You have to get the fire to leap from your bones to theirs. That means close personal contact, not a canned distant message. It means stopping to chat instead of flying right by.

The Web makes automation and one-click mass contacting and tracking on a personal level a reality, but please, please shun the temptation to make your campaign impersonal. It has to matter to the human.

The one-by-one human approach takes more time in the short run, but it pays off in the long run because some individuals will volunteer to promote you for free. The fire is in their bones and they can’t help but shout it out to others.

Key #2: Open Every Mouth

You have many mouths online.

Your blog is a mouth. Your Twitter account is a mouth. Your Facebook page is a mouth. You have all kinds of mouths.

Open them all.

Many viral campaigns fail because the pinging happens through just one mouth.

Key #3: Don’t Stop Talking

Get out your megaphone. Get out your soapbox. Stand on the soapbox as tall as you can. Jump up and down and scream into that blasted megaphone as hard as you can.

Also cup your hand to your mouth and get your six-inch whisper ready.

The point is that everywhere you go, in everything you do for your viral marketing effort, you talk. No silent bus rides. No silent plane rides. No silent blogs or social media accounts. You shake every hand you can and you never stop looking for ears to address.

Key #4: Listen Relentlessly

Listen even harder than you talk. This means two things.

First and foremost, listen to the human (see key #1 above). Pay closer-than-close attention to the words in her email, the tone of her voice, her silence. Look for what makes her tick and you’ll able to persuade her all the more easily to join your cause.

Second, use the artificial ears the Web has given us. Email alerts, RSS alerts, search results, etc. Use them incessantly to know what people really want.

Key #5: Hone Your Hook

Make it sharp. People love to be hooked to things. They hate it when the lure is confusing or dull. Give them something sharp, shiny and tasty.

That’s right – people love to be hooked. They hate feeling used, sure, but that’s different. When you give them a sniff of something delicious, they want to bite. If it’s delicious to them.

So come up with a logo, a video, a sentence, a word – something small. Make it central to your campaign. Make it so that if people like the hook, the campaign will succeed.

Blog Action Day’s hook was the simple idea of getting all the world’s bloggers together at the same exact time to talk about the same exact thing. The worm on the hook, if you will, was the viral video shared via the event’s homepage. That was all we needed to get thousands of people involved – an idea and an object.

What’s your hook and how honed is it?

Key #6: Measure Everything

Constantly. Every day, every week, every month, watch exactly how many people are doing what to promote and validate your campaign. The more closely you watch, the better and more quickly you can adapt and adjust.

For Blog Action Day 2008, we monitored everything from Twitter followers and video views to backlinks from non-profit organizations and emails from volunteers. We had interest forms that tracked responses and sent them to specific inboxes. We had all kinds of tools in place to measure our success, and we used the heck out of them.

How much are you measuring?

I hope these keys help you with your next viral campaign.

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