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 You’re no doubt familiar with the term Viral Marketing. At it’s most basic definition, Viral Marketing is getting people to pass on (most often via email) your marketing campaign. This could be a game, video, an image, a link to webpage or blog post.
Most often these campaigns drive brand awareness rather than individual product sales. Burger King's Subservient Chicken may not have driven home the "Eat this specific chicken sandwich" message as well as say, Chik-fil-a's long-running adorably illiterate cow campaign. But I'm sure that during the height of that campaign, many people who were deciding between fast-food joints gave BK a try when they might not have before. To many large-scale practitioners, viral campaigns are about a favorable brand image and lots of good WOM (word of mouth).
If you’re a company living in the B2B space, you may be under the impression that popular consumer sites offer viral features that are simply too expensive and overarching for the B2B world. Even though many of the highly-publicized viral campaigns often feature absurd videos, risque content, games, or a combination thereof, there’s still something B2B marketers can take away from these consumer techniques to exponentially increase brand awareness and sales.
KISS it
“Send to a friend” may sound casual and consumer, but this is a basic viral tactic everyone can take advantage of. Often in a B2B setting, the person searching a Website for information has to move that information along to the person or people making the ultimate decision to write the check. Making it as easy and persuasive as possible to do this part of their job can be a huge bonus to your business.
If your products or services need a group of people to ultimately approve the purchase, at the very least, put a “Share with a colleague” link to facilitate this communication. Giving them a quick form to fill out and email links to product pages just got your site that many more exposures. Just with a single link on the page!
This most basic option starts to scratch at what you’re really doing behind-the-scenes here: controlling the discourse of your customers. You, more than anyone, know the right way for customers to reach consensus on buying your product/service. Why not give that person spreading the message the support they need to close the sale for you?
Instead of just emailing a link, let them send a nicely designed, automated email speaking directly to that audience. For example, if your product is enterprise software, the IT person who needs it will be searching your site based on the solution itself. But she needs to convince her colleagues, the director of IT, and the CFO that it’s a good idea. Of course all of these people need to know different things about the product to make an informed decision.
A link to the same product page that thrills the original person browsing the site isn’t going to do a thing for the CFO. But what if your site generated her an email of ROI information to send along? Now you’ve not only made her job of sending the information easier, you’ve made her most difficult job – convincing the CFO – that much easier. And in the process, you’ve opened up new doors to your site content, and exposed your brand virally, in a truly valuable, persuasive way.
This applies to customers who need to sell your products in a down-channel environment as well. By reformatting emails to speak on behalf of your customers – to their customers – you’re helping them maintain a professional level of brand awareness. What’s more, their brand awareness is yours. When you make it easy for your customers to market themselves, they’re more than happy to do it with your products.
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