MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

What makes a message go viral? More importantly, how can you position your marketing messages to go viral?

Here at MECLABS, we recently had a front-row seat to just how easy it can be for a message to go viral. Senior Marketing Manager Justin Bridegan attended a rally at one of Mitt Romney’s events here in Jacksonville. During a break in Mitt’s stump speech, in which the former governor was attacking Newt, Justin yelled out, “Send him to the moon.”

With that comment, Justin changed the course of history. Or at least had a big impact on the latest message to go viral in the 24-hour news cycle.

Mitt started on to his next point, but then spun on his heels and asked, “What did you say?”

Justin, ever the marketer, sold the line even better the second time, “Send him to the moon.”

With that, Mitt changed the course of his speech to talk about Newt’s moon colonies, and within just a few hours, this interaction appeared on sites from New York Post, Los Angeles Times, and 7,131 other related articles.

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“I never thought what I said would be repeated or shape some of the political discussion or landscape for the day,” Justin said. “Only after posting my video did I realize my comment had been used across the country in many of the major news affiliates.”

“It really comes down to being at the right place, at the right time, and then seizing the moment. Today I witnessed firsthand what real-time marketing means.”

Of course, we were eating it up here in the office every time the quote was picked up in another major news source. (One of our favorites was a comment on a New York Times article claiming Justin was a plant for the Romney campaign.)

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How can you position your marketing messages for virality?

Just like that, with a quick spur-of-the-moment shout, Justin’s message went viral. And that’s just how easy it is.

Deceptively easy. Because, unlike, say, crafting a message in paid media, you have little control over how to get that exposure to your message.

So, I’m not going to tell you how to make your messages go viral. I simply haven’t seen anyone that can force virality. However, here are a few tips to help you at least prepare for that possibility. To remix Seneca … virality is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Get involved in the conversation

If there is anything we can learn from Justin’s experience, it’s that it never would have happened if he weren’t at the rally.

So what does that mean to marketers? As Woody Allen said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” You should be present and engaged anywhere your audience and customers are engaged in a conversation. For some, that is Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. For others, that may be online forums. For a local business, it may mean joining local civic organizations.

Being an upstanding member of these offline and online communities, and being a legitimate part of the conversation, increases the likelihood that the early adopters and influencers will start to spread your message.

But, don’t be a faker and try to force it. Or it could blow up in your face.

Understand the zeitgeist of your audience

That’s a fancy word for saying the “defining spirit or mood.” Being present in the community will help you keep a finger on this pulse. Genuinely serving your audience and responding to their needs don’t hurt either.

And, if you’re really engaged, it will pay off in myriad ways in your marketing. In this case, understanding the hot-button issues to push when creating a message you’re trying to spread virally.

Don’t be salesy

It sure is exciting that your winter whites are on sale for 20% off … but highly unlikely that it is a message that will go viral.

In testing conducted for “Can viral video clips drive targeted traffic to your web site?,” we found that although the 28 video clips we experimented with had no promotional message or content, 1.49% of viewers went on to become newsletter subscribers. In just 60 days, our videos were viewed more than 324,000 times at no cost to us.

The research goes on to recommend, “Be cautious about including commercial or promotional content. The most powerful short videos are those that are purely entertaining. It’s when people click through to your site that the time is right to add your sales message.”

Don’t overlook direct media outreach to help germinate your message

While there is nothing I detest more than the traditional spam press release that jams up my inbox, don’t forget that including digital and mainstream media in your viral campaign can be a helpful tipping point to virality (and, of course, the inverse is true as well – a viral idea can help lead to earned media mentions).

For example, Sunflower Market, an organic foods retail brand, sent branded flower pots to key media contacts six weeks before a store opening (the amount of time it takes a sunflower to germinate, natch) to support a downloadable desktop plant application they were trying to spread virally to promote a store opening.

As a result, they received 1,631,862 media impressions in the Indianapolis area, and beat the opening week store sales forecast by 24%.

Related Resources:

Romney urges sending Gingrich to the moon (good video here of how it all went down … starts about 1 minute into the video)

What do great viral videos have in common?

Social Media Marketing: Viral sweepstakes targeting moms grows Facebook audience 4,488%

Content Marketing: Microsoft crowdsources content ideas with a viral contest for new Windows Phone 7 platform

It’s the latest trend in print ads and TV commercials – drive customers to a landing page on Facebook instead of the brand’s own website or microsite. So, for example, a Toyota print ad with a contest might include Facebook.com/Toyota as the call-to-action this year when last year it was likely Toyota.com/contest.

So I can see the benefit to Mark Zuckerberg for you paying good money to drive all of your traffic to his site, but is a Facebook landing page the right call-to-action for your campaigns?

As with many marketing questions, there is no one correct answer, no one-size-fits-all solution. However, if you are thinking of using a Facebook landing page in your marketing, here are some factors to consider. Read more…

A value proposition is the one thing that sets your company apart from your competitors in the eyes of your ideal customer. At MarketingExperiments, we define the core value proposition as the fundamental answer to the question: “If I am your ideal customer, why should I buy from you rather than your competitors?”

It’s a simple question. But many marketers find it almost impossible to answer. Articulating it clearly is hard enough, but internal political battles and highly opinionated superiors make it even harder for the average marketer in the trenches.

And yet, with all these challenges, it’s easy to overlook the person that can actually help you the most in determining what sets you apart from your competitors…

The customer.

Now to truly hear the opinion of the customer you need to test. Measuring actual behavior is the only way you can be absolutely sure you are effectively capturing the minds and hearts of your customers.

And while the act of running tests on your website and in your marketing campaigns is certainly hard, what’s even harder is figuring out how to design your tests so you get a learning about your customers. To do that (specifically as it relates to value proposition) you need to start with some qualitative research on your customers to get ideas about what they value and don’t value about your business.

Once you’ve got those ideas, you can start testing potential value propositions.

While you’re certainly not limited to the Internet for conducting that research, mainstream social networks are a great place to start.

But you must widen your gaze. Even on the Internet, social networks like Twitter and Facebook are only a fraction of the places you could potentially scour for your testing ideas.

Forums and business/product review sites (i.e. Yelp, CNET, Amazon) can be just as helpful (if not more so) and can also be mined for insight into the minds of your customers.

Where ever you decide to look, you must ask two main questions before you can generate value proposition testing ideas: Read more…

Along with 45,000-plus attendees, I’m at Dreamforce ’11 in San Francisco this week as a guest of HubSpot. On Wednesday afternoon, I caught a session by Dan Zarrella of HubSpot about “engineering contagious ideas” using social media. You may be familiar with Dan from his personal website, his very popular HubSpot webinar series (including the recent Guinness Book recognized largest webinar ever) or his books such as the recently published, “Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness.”

Dan’s talk at Dreamforce was based on his new book and his hierarchy of contagiousness:

• Exposure
• Attention
• Motivation

He broke down each of the three areas with a series of “best practices” myths, and presented the reality based on his research using publicly available information, or metrics on his own online real estate.

For this post I’m pulling one example from each of Dan’s hierarchy zones. Read more…

“What is the most effective copy for my buttons?” That is one of the most frequent questions we receive at MarketingExperiments. And for good reason. As our testing shows, simple changes to the copy on your call-to-action buttons can generate impressive results.

Yet even though we know that, we don’t always optimize our button copy. And in this case, I’m not using the royal “we” to try to refer to all marketers. Right here on the MarketingExperiments blog, where all we do is write about testing, optimization, and messaging, we had an unoptimized button.

But, fortunately, we also have an audience of savvy optimizers that constantly keeps us on our toes. In fact, on a recent post – Live Experiment (Part 1): How many marketers does it take to optimize a webpage? – Thomas Strunk made a comment on the post that rightly called us to task…

Also just another thing I just noticed is that your little green button below says “Submit Comment” and I thought that the word “Submit” was a BAD word Maybe you could do an A/B test on it with a button that says “Share Your Thoughts” or something like that… Who knows you might get more responses to your posts?

Good point, Thomas. To the splitter!
Read more…

Hey buddy, why should I buy anything from you? OK, that’s a harsh way to start a blog post, but, essentially, what value do your products or offerings have to your buyers? Unless you nail that down, any marketing you do is just puffery (and ineffective puffery at that), not really communications.

As we continue to dive deeper into value proposition for an upcoming book we’re working on, we see an increased need to help marketers discover what value they truly offer customers. That word – discover – is key. You simply cannot dictate your value to your customers. You have to determine what truly works for them.

One of the biggest untapped resources for making that discovery is social media.

So in today’s blog post, let’s take a quick look at a few ways you can use social media to help discover your value proposition. And by help, I mean social media will not give you THE answer. But it will help you come up with a few ideas that you can then test which will ultimately lead to your most effective value proposition.
Read more…