What is viral marketing?
Q: What is viral marketing?
A: Viral marketing is marketing that spreads from viewer to viewer, much like a virus. The idea behind viral marketing is that you create something that simultaneously advertises your product and pleases the viewer, who then is prompted to pass the advertisement along to a friend. This can come in many different forms; the simplest viral marketing comes in the form of "Tell A Friend" forms at the bottom of a page, in which if a reader enjoys the content of a page they can quickly and easily inform a friend about the page.
Better and more effective viral marketing, though, looks like this:
Yes, the Blendtec blender is an actual product. You can find all about Blendtec blenders at www.Blendtec.com. It's also just a blender. Big deal. Blenders are not exciting in any way.
These videos, though? They're hilarious. They're funny enough that they've been watched nearly 90 million times on YouTube, which means that you've got thousands - if not millions - of people who are aware of the Blendtec brand because of these videos and who, when it's time to go buy a blender, will go buy the one that destroyed the iPhone.
The best part about this campaign is that beyond the production cost of the videos, it was completely and totally free. They post the videos to YouTube, and then Google absorbs the cost of the bandwidth for them. The videos are always up and running for people to see at zero cost to them after creation.
Does it actually work, though? Does Blendtec really sell more blenders because of some cheesy little videos? As of this writing, since the first video went up on October 30th, 2006 they've posted 90 videos. They're selling "Will it Blend?" merchandise. The words of Tom Dickson himself say it best, though:
The campaign took off almost instantly. We have definitely felt an impact in sales. Will it Blend has had an amazing impact to our commercial and our retail products.
Yeah, it works. It's cost efficient. There's nothing not to like, and there's no reason not to apply it to your marketing strategy. Now get to brainstorming.