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Kapil Gupta
Viral marketing of digital products using social media
Dissertation presented for the Degree of Masters of Business
Administration at the University of Edinburgh Business School, May 2011
MBA Dissertation Page 1
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor, Tony Kinder, for all of the help and guidance he has
given me over the course of the project, from the initial idea through the research and
writing stages through to the conclusion. It would have been impossible to complete this
project without his assistance.
I would also like to thank all of the interviewees, whose experiences and insights were
invaluable in writing this report:
Rachel Armitage
Jenny Herbison
Andrew Burnett
Colin Gilchrist
Tera Dargavel
I would also like to thank all my friends and colleagues who tolerated me while I incessantly
talked about viral marketing and who sometimes even helped me brainstorm some ideas.
Warm thanks to all of you,
Kapil Gupta
Edinburgh, May 2011
MBA Dissertation Page 2
Abstract
Improvements in hardware and software technologies like high speed internet, cloud
computing, smaller and faster chips, have made social networking and mobile devices
ubiquitous, which has in turn created a huge opportunity in digital products and services
market. Marketers, in trying to use traditional word-of-mouth marketing concepts online for
- aka viral marketing – for their digital products are realising that there is the potential of
exponential growth that can be achieved very quickly and very cheaply when compared to
using more traditional marketing channels. This report attempts to explore how marketers
could use viral marketing to market their digital products and realise this potentially
exponential growth.
In answering this question, this report draws on the results of primary and secondary
research, including four interviews conducted in March and April 2011 with professionals
from organisations dealing in digital products and social media marketing. Among the topics
covered in these interviews were identifying who can use viral marketing, strategic issues
surrounding viral marketing, specific characteristics that a products needs to have to be
considered for viral marketing, creating and executing a viral marketing campaign, and how
to make a viral marketing campaign sustainable.
The research showed that all aspects of an organisation need to come together and work in
tandem to potentially achieve an exponential growth using a viral marketing campaign -
from defining an overall business and marketing strategy, looking at company’s capabilities,
putting crisis management in place, developing the right product which is social spread
friendly, finding the right influencers in the relevant market channels, seeding these
influencers, monitoring the campaign, engaging with customers as they provide positive and
negative feedback, and all this while building momentum to a point where campaign
potentially goes viral.
Research also shows the marketers need to be aware of the negative aspects of viral
marketing, as it could be catastrophic to a brand.
MBA Dissertation Page 3
Drawing on these findings, the report then presents the five areas that marketers should
consider while using viral marketing to market digital products:
Overall business and marketing strategy
Human and system capabilities
Finding the right Influencers
Designing and developing a brilliant product
Creating and managing a campaign
Sustainability of viral marketing campaign
MBA Dissertation Page 4
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... 1
Abstract .............................................................................................................................................................. 2
1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 6
1.1 Digital products ............................................................................................................................. 7
1.2 Social media and viral marketing ........................................................................................... 8
1.3 Viral marketing of digital products using social media ................................................. 9
2. Literature Review................................................................................................................................ 10
2.1 What is Social Media? ................................................................................................................ 10
2.2 Social media classification ...................................................................................................... 11
2.3 What does Social Media means for marketers? .............................................................. 12
2.4 What is Viral Marketing? ......................................................................................................... 13
2.5 Advantages / Disadvantages of VM. .................................................................................... 14
2.6 Identifying the target audience for a viral marketing campaign. ............................ 15
2.7 Creating and executing a VM campaign - main characteristics. ............................... 17
2.8 Measuring effectiveness of a VM Campaign ..................................................................... 19
2.9 How to make a Viral Marketing campaign sustainable? ............................................. 20
2.10 Summary.................................................................................................................................... 20
3. Methodology.......................................................................................................................................... 22
3.1 Research approach ..................................................................................................................... 22
3.2 Data collection methods .......................................................................................................... 23
3.3 Interview subjects ...................................................................................................................... 24
3.4 Secondary sources ..................................................................................................................... 25
3.5 Data analysis ................................................................................................................................. 26
3.6 Research limitations .................................................................................................................. 26
3.7 Ethical considerations .............................................................................................................. 27
4. Empirical Material .............................................................................................................................. 28
4.1 Importance of strategy ............................................................................................................. 28
4.2 Important factors for viral messages .................................................................................. 30
4.3 Importance of influencers ....................................................................................................... 32
4.4 Executing a campaign ............................................................................................................... 35
4.5 Sustainability of a VM campaign ........................................................................................... 37
5. Analysis ................................................................................................................................................... 40
5.1 Viral Marketing ............................................................................................................................ 41
5.2 Strategy........................................................................................................................................... 42
5.3 Capabilities .................................................................................................................................... 43
5.4 Product ........................................................................................................................................... 44
5.5 Influencers .................................................................................................................................... 44
5.6 Creating a campaign .................................................................................................................. 45
5.7 Campaign management ............................................................................................................ 46
5.8 Sustainability ................................................................................................................................ 48
5.9 Summary ........................................................................................................................................ 48
6. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 54
6.1 Summary of results .................................................................................................................... 54
6.2 Personal reflections ................................................................................................................... 56
6.3 Contribution to existing knowledge .................................................................................... 57
MBA Dissertation Page 5
6.4 Business lessons.......................................................................................................................... 57
6.5 Further research ......................................................................................................................... 58
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................... 59
Appendix A ..................................................................................................................................................... 66
Appendix B ..................................................................................................................................................... 72
Appendix C ...................................................................................................................................................... 81
Appendix D ..................................................................................................................................................... 89
Appendix E ...................................................................................................................................................... 93
Appendix F ...................................................................................................................................................... 94
MBA Dissertation Page 6
1. Introduction
There is an explosion happening in the digital world, and Social Media is responsible for it.
Not a day goes by without hearing something new about how hundreds of millions of
people are engaging in social media. Here are some examples:
Facebook (Mashable 2010) (Mashable 2011)
o has almost 600m users.
o 750 million photos were uploaded on Facebook on the new years (2010-
11) weekend.
o is valued at $75 billion.
YouTube (OnlineSchools 2010)
o streamed more than 700 billion videos in 2010
o 25 hours of content of was uploaded every minute in 2010
o has 175 million registered users
o 100 million tweets daily.
Venture Capitalists and other investors are flogging to invest in new and innovative social
media companies and device manufacturers are continuously coming up with new and
sophisticated devices to provide a platform for people to engage in social media while on
the move.
MBA Dissertation Page 7
The recent technological advancements - in mobile devices, multi-touch screens, cloud
computing, and the advancements in the way we interact with the devices – has allowed the
companies to deliver content and services in very easy, fast and interactive ways.
With more and more people using social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, YouTube
etc., the way these products are being marketed is changing as well. For example, using viral
marketing, KIK - a cross platform mobile phone application was downloaded 1 million times
in just 15 days after its launch (KIK 2010). In another example, Viber was able to achieve 1
million downloads in just 5 days (Appchronicles 2010). It has since amassed 10 million
(Techcrunch 2011) downloads.
This paper will look at how companies developing digital products could use social media to
develop and execute a viral marketing campaign.
1.1 Digital products
In 2002, Hui et al (Hui & Chau 2002) classified Digital products into three categories:
Tools and Utilities that assist user to accomplish specific goals or tasks
Content based products whose value lies in the information content
Online services that provide access to useful resources like server connections as
well as online utilities that assist users in accomplishing specific tasks
Since then, with the rise and adaptation of Web 2.0 technologies, digital products and
services have seen an explosion - both in terms of the numbers of products and services,
and the number of consumers using them i.e. mobile platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs,
YouTube, LinkedIn etc.), mobile applications (>300,000 apps on Apple AppStore with 10
billion downloads), Cloud computing etc.
This market is set to grow exponentially over the coming 5-10 years (Venturebeat 2010).
Below are some data that support this trend:
MBA Dissertation Page 8
More and more mobile devices are being developed. For example -Motorola Xoom
tablet, HP TouchPad etc.
The vast majority of developing world yet to adopt smart phones (India hasn’t even
start deploying 3G infrastructure yet)
New business and revenue models are continuously emerging (Mobile Ad market
was worth $877 million in the US alone and is predicted to rise to $3bn by 2013 (Kim
2010) )
The smart phone penetration is growing rapidly (Alarcon 2009) (Blandford 2010)
This change is happening at a fast pace (Perez 2010) and there is little written about the
particular challenges in marketing the digital products, hence the reason to look at Digital
products specifically in this paper.
1.2 Social media and viral marketing
Internet has now become a virtual social world where we meet our friends and family, make
new friends, engage in conversation about work-life experience – including buying products
and services and the resulting experiences – engage in marketplace and listen to people we
trust when making buying decisions.
When it comes to making decisions, people have always been influenced by their peers,
group leaders and other influential people in society whose opinion they value. Marketers
have long used Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing to influence the buying decisions in the
physical world. With the advent of Social Media, this conversation has gone online, and has
become global as there are no geographical barriers when it comes to the internet. There
are now hundreds of millions (Bloch 2010) of people using Social Media making
conversations, posting their feelings and opinions, and influencing others with their ideas
and experiences. WOM marketing in this virtual world has a new name, called Viral
Marketing. However, virtual nature of this social conversation presents unique challenges to
viral marketing.
MBA Dissertation Page 9
From an organisation’s point of view, the key challenge is to assess whether it has the
bandwidth to deal with a sudden rush of people wanting to buy its products i.e. can it fulfil
every request? Can it provide a positive customer experience to all its customers? It also
needs to ensure that all its ducks are in a row within the organisation to deal with the
sudden influx. For example, there is no point marketing department using viral marketing if
the IT department cannot deal with a sudden rise in number of downloads.
From the marketers point of view, the key challenges are - How do you find who to target
among the vast number of people interacting online, especially the ones who would both
like your product and influence significant number of others to buy them? What do you do
to grab their attention and engage with them? How do you correctly assess people’s
emotions about the products and services from the text they use online? How do you
measure whether marketing campaign is working and adding to the bottom line? And
finally, how do you make it sustainable?
1.3 Viral marketing of digital products using social media
In order to help improve the overall understanding of viral marketing of digital products
using social media, this paper will attempt to answer the following research question:
How is viral marketing of digital products different from that of viral messages (e.g.
YouTube videos)?
What are the steps an organisation needs to take while considering, designing and
executing a viral marketing campaign using social media
Once a viral marketing campaign is successful, what should an organisation do to
sustain the customer’s interest?
MBA Dissertation Page 10
2. Literature Review
2.1 What is Social Media?
Social Media is the commonly known term for the Web2.0 technologies that enable the
Internet users to generate and exchange content (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010) through desktop
and mobile devices.
With the increase in consumption of the mass media and internet, the decline of community
activity has been one of the dominant social trends of recent decades across the world’s
advanced economies (Putnam 2000). American social scientist Robert Putnam wrote about
this trend, but also saw the potential of revival of these communities through internet
(Putnam 2000). The Cluetrain Manifesto (Levine 2009), the 1999 internet marketing book
also made a similar point in that it claimed people were drawn to the internet because of
“the promise of voice and thus of authentic self (Levine 2009).” Social media’s popularity
(Mashable 2011) over the last few years seems to provide confirmation to this as people
continue to reach out to connect to other human beings and in the process accept the
technological advancements that are thrown at them.
The term Social Media was coined around 2004 with the launch of social networking
websites like MySpace (2003) and Facebook (2004); however the concept of social
networking can be traced back to almost 30 years ago when the first email was sent
between two computers. Advancements in technologies like Internet, network
infrastructure, Web 2.0, mobile devices etc. have since empowered every internet user to
create their own content - be it video, blog, opinions etc. - and share between their online
social networks. Social Media allows people to stay connected with many more people –
friends, families, business associates etc. - even across multiple continents, than was
possible in the past.
From a business point of view, social media is becoming an important platform to
understand the market needs, study competition, and leverage the platforms to launch and
market products and services and to maintain customer relationships. Marketers are
MBA Dissertation Page 11
actively listening into the conversation on the social networks and analysing the impact of
their brands. In December 2010, the editorial in the Harvard Business Review suggested:
“Companies have traditionally spent up to 90% of their marketing
budget on advertising and retail promotions. Yet the biggest influence
in purchasing decision is often other people’s recommendations”
According to Brian Dunn, CEO of Best Buy, “Social Media are where the national
conversation is taking place today and either you are part of that conversation or you are
not” (Dunn 2010).
Social Media Marketing is set to become an integral part of every company’s integrated
marketing mix in the coming months and years.
2.2 Social media classification
In order to find the right customers for targeting a marketing campaign - for a company,
product, or brand - or to look for customers, especially the opinion leaders in social
networks talking about specific brand, marketers need to understand which social media
platforms to focus on. According to Kaplan et al (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010), there are six
different types of Social Media: collaborative projects, blogs and microblogs, content
communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual communities.
Further to this, Bernoff (Bernoff 2010) classify the types of social media users as – creators,
critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives. It is important for marketers to
understand that social network users quite often use multiple platforms while
communicating. For example, a user might post a video on YouTube and share its links and
opinions through Twitter, Facebook etc.
These classifications are important for marketers in that they not only need to target the
social networks or the social media users that are relevant to their business, but also choose
the right management and monitoring tools that link to specific social network datasets.
However, marketers need to be wary of the fact that social media is evolving rapidly and
MBA Dissertation Page 12
new types of networks are quite likely to emerge in the future and they need to keep
themselves abreast on this area.
Failure to recognise the relevant networks or the type of users on social networks could end
up in marketers spending a lot or time of effort with very little in the way of the results. This
is quite a common practice as marketers that do not know understand social media tend to
shoot in the dark and very often fail to get the desired result for themselves and their
organisations.
2.3 What does Social Media means for marketers?
Gerzema and Lebar (Gerzema & Edward 2008) argue in their book The Brand Bubble that
since consumers trust each other more than they trust marketing information, social media
has altered the trust equation for brands by allowing the customers to create and exchange
their own contents. This means the customers can freely exchange positive and negative
perceptions about a brand in a connected world where these perceptions can spread like a
wild fire. For example, Groupon’s 2011 Superbowl advertisement was met by huge backlash
on Twitter, so much so that the CEO of Groupon had to explain their reasoning behind
choosing those specific advertisements on the company blog (Andrew 2011).
The technological advancements and increased connectivity online and offline have also
allowed an unprecedented number of new brands to be introduced in recent years globally
(Gerzema & Lebar 2009). Gerzema et al (Gerzema & Lebar 2009) discovered that consumer
attitudes towards all sizes and segments of brands were in serious decline. They observed
significant drops in key measures of brand value - ‘top of mind’ awareness, trust, regard and
admiration – aka the Brand Equity. The three major problems with the brands, they argue,
are:
1. Excess capacity
2. Lack of creativity
3. Loss of trust
MBA Dissertation Page 13
The advent of Social Media has made a marketers life a lot more challenging. It can be
argued that it has become much harder to capture and sustain consumers’ attention and
interest in specific brands. In an attempt to address this issue, Gerzema et al (Gerzema &
Lebar 2009) propose a new quality to the brand, called ‘energised differentiation’ I.e. Brands
that reflect brand’s energy - communicate excitement, dynamism and creativity.
Social media does provide an opportunity to connect with the consumers and understand
their specific needs. Social media marketing provides unique opportunity to the marketers
to create ‘energised differentiation’ that Gerzema et al (Gerzema & Lebar 2009) talk about.
In order to do this, marketers needs to incorporate social media in the overall marketing
strategy of the company.
2.4 What is Viral Marketing?
Viral Marketing is the intentional influencing of consumer-to-consumer communication by
professional marketing techniques (Kozinets et al. 2010). It is also otherwise known as word-
of-mouth marketing (WOMM), buzz marketing and guerrilla marketing. Wilson (Wilson
2005) describes viral marketing as:
“Any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing
message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in
the message’s exposure and influence”.
People like to share their experiences with one another – the restaurants where they had
lunch, the movie they saw – and when the experiences are favourable, the
recommendations can snowball, resulting in runaway success (Dye 2000). In her paper,
Larsen (Larson 2009) argues that viral marketing through social media is the new format of
the traditional word-of-mouth marketing, only exponentially faster. It enables the word-of-
mouth to spread at the speed of thought (Ferguson 2008). In that sense, it can also be
translated as ‘networked enhanced WOM’ (Datta, Chowdhury & Chakraborty 2005).
MBA Dissertation Page 14
One of the earliest examples of online viral marketing campaigns was created by Microsoft
Hotmail (squidoo n.d.) - by including a simple hyperlink “Get your free Hotmail account” at
the bottom of every email sent out by existing users. It allowed a simple way for the users to
action and create their own Hotmail account. Hotmail increased its customer base to over
12 million in just 18 months a result. Radder (Radder 2002) argues that the new and
improved technology has provided the customer an opportunity to demand and experience
for a personal, interactive and relational experience.
VM in social networks started with videos being posted on YouTube. For example, the
chicken viral video by Burger King in 2004 received over 20m hits (Clifford-Marsh 2009) .
However, these days VM campaigns are more integrated campaigns that are tied to other
more traditional forms of media. For example, the campaign for the movie The Dark Knight
incorporated billboards, commercials, social networks, fake websites, email blasts, online
puzzles etc. The movie grossed over $1bn worldwide (Readon 2009) .
It seems to be the case that the presence of millions of consumers on social networks, who
also share their experiences and views on brands they like or dislike, presents a unique
opportunity to the marketers – to not only understand the customers perspective of their
brands, but also to influence their perceptions quite rapidly using viral marketing concepts.
2.5 Advantages / Disadvantages of VM.
When looking to buy products/services almost 76% people rely on other people’s opinions
for product recommendations, versus 15% on advertising (Qualman 2009). Yang et al (Yang
& Allenby 2003) showed that the geographically defined network of consumers is more
useful than the demographic network for explaining consumer behaviour in purchasing
Japanese cars. Hill et al (Hill, Provost & Volinsky 2006) found that adding network
information, specifically whether a potential customer was already talking to an existing
customer, was predictive of the chances of adoption of a new phone service option. For the
customers linked to a prior customer, the adoption rate was 3–5 times greater than the
baseline. These recommendations come from people who are opinions leaders or someone
MBA Dissertation Page 15
who has influence within a community. In order to capture the attention of these
influencers, marketers have to use targeted marketing campaigns.
VM campaign is a lower-cost option when compared to mass media marketing. It also allows
the marketers to target specific customers and has a high and rapid response rate. It
appears to be quite a straight forward option for the organisations and marketers to adopt
viral marketing strategies; however, the outcome of VM is hard to predict (Watts, Peretti &
Frumin 2007). Mass marketing, on the other hand, has a far wider reach and marketers can
get predictable returns from such campaigns. Watts et al (Watts, Peretti & Frumin 2007)
argue that combining viral marketing with mass marketing, in what they call Big Seed
Marketing, would allow marketers to get a more predictable return.
Marketers should also carefully consider the fact that viral marketing campaigns become
unmanageable once they gain a certain momentum. This can be a major problem for
marketers, especially if the campaign doesn’t have the desired outcome.
In a study in 2001, Bowman et al (Bowman & Narayandas 2001) found that self-reported
loyal customers were more likely to talk to others about the products when they were
dissatisfied, but, interestingly, they were not more likely to talk to others when they were
satisfied. To avoid this, marketers need to carefully monitor the early stages of a VM
campaign when they may have some control and there is an opportunity to take corrective
measures.
The low cost of social media marketing and the potential to reach and influence millions of
people through personal recommendation seems to be a very lucrative option for
marketers. However, if not managed properly, such campaigns also have the potential to
get out of hand very quickly and become unmanageable. Marketers need to keep this mind
and take a balanced approach.
2.6 Identifying the target audience for a viral marketing
campaign.
MBA Dissertation Page 16
As described previously, internet users engage in social media on a variety of platforms.
Marketing messages and meaning on these platforms are not unidirectional, but rather are
exchanged among members of these social media networks.
In a study, Kozinets (Kozinets et al. 2010) found that motivations to participate are complex
and culturally embedded, shaped by communal interests and communicative orientations
and charged with moral hazard. The first challenge for the marketers is to identify the
networks that are relevant to their brand or campaign.
The social network models have traditionally suffered from the lack of data to analyse the
predictive nature of the network. However, Domingos (Domingos 2005) argues that massive
amount of data is now available on very large social networks, allowing the marketers to
build models of the individuals involved in the social media. Data on all the nodes in the
social networks now allows for an unprecedented level of analysis, understanding,
predictions and their productive use in decision-making. The analysis allows for new models
to be created that could be used to create VM plans that maximise positive WoM among
customers.
Similar to any social network in the physical world, influential users play a crucial role in
customers’ buying decisions in online social networks. Armano (Armano 2010), in his blog
wrote that sharing useful information that might help someone within your network scores
you points and builds equity. Domingos (Domingos 2005) defines network value of the
customer as, “the expected increase in sales to others that result from marketing to that
customer”. The second challenge for the marketers is to identify the customers with high
network value. While identifying the target audience, the key question they should ask
themselves is, “If we market to this particular set of customers, what is the expected profit
from the whole network, after the influence of those customers has propagated
throughout” (Domingos 2005).
Marketers should be aware that it is not just about numbers. The context in which these
numbers are used is a lot more crucial. Online users listen to other users for variety of
reasons and do not necessarily get influenced by everything they say. For example,
MBA Dissertation Page 17
celebrities usually have most number of followers on social networks, but they do not
necessarily influence their followers’ buying decisions.
The amount of data now available on the internet where users freely share ideas about
brands and the reasons behind their choices they make as consumers allows the researchers
to perform insightful analysis. Kozinets (Kozinets 1998) coined the term Netnography - a
branch of Ethnography that analyses the free behaviour of individuals on internet using
marketing research techniques to provide useful insights. In order to identify which specific
influencers to use as seeds, marketers need to use these research techniques across the
targeted social networks, in addition to the short listed high network value customers.
The literature seems to fall short in that there doesn’t seem to be the recognition that
consumers use a variety of languages, slangs, abbreviations etc. when expressing their
opinions about brands on their social networks. The idea of using these as insights is all well
and good, but there aren’t systems out there yet that are capable of accurately judging the
mood of the consumer, especially when they deviate from the standard language rules.
Marketers need to be very careful when using such automated tools as the results can be
quite deceptive.
2.7 Creating and executing a VM campaign - main
characteristics.
The researchers view on whether a viral marketing campaign can be orchestrated seems to
be divided. Watts (Watts, Peretti & Frumin 2007) argue that it is very hard – if not
impossible to predict the success of a viral marketing campaign.
Many other researchers have also written about various aspects of creating a VM campaign.
Barnes et al (Barnes & Mattson 2008) in a longitudinal study of Inc. 500, found a significant
growth in the use of social media and viral marketing technologies. Setty (Setty 2009), a
well-known entrepreneur and blogger in the Silicon Valley, analysed nine viral videos in his
blog to define seven key characteristics that he believes should be included in a viral
MBA Dissertation Page 18
message. Wilson (Wilson 2005) further defines six elements of an effective viral marketing
strategy. Dye (Dye 2000) defined the assessment criteria for the buzz-worthiness of
products. The book, The Dragonfly Effect (Aaker & Smith 2010) propose a four winged
framework (see Appendix F, point 1) for social media marketers to get amplification or
infectious action from the customers engaged in social networks.
Dye (Dye 2000) proposed a list of powerful tactics (see Appendix F, point 2) for creating a
viral marketing campaign. Balter (Balter 2005) describes creating a Seeding campaign as one
in which the product is placed among influential consumers so that they can communicate
favourably about it to other consumers. However, managing favourable outcomes in social
media can be tricky as influencers can write positive or negative comments about the
product, so identifying influencers and influencing them should be done very carefully,
ideally based on relevance of the content, influence (traffic) and screened - possible on a
one-to-one basis - before they are chosen to be seeded.
Kozinets et al (Kozinets et al. 2010) defines four important factors (see Appendix F, point 3)
that influence WOM communication. Highlighting the importance of type of narrative
(Evaluation, Explanation, Embracing and Endorsement) in the WOM communication,
Kozinets et al (Kozinets et al. 2010) argue that the type of WOMM promotion, including the
product type, must be considered (see Appendix F, point 4). They further argues that
marketers need to carefully understand the on-going character narrative, communication
forum and the communal norms in the social network(s) where they plan to execute a VM
campaign. They can achieve this by:
Identifying and elaborating on the context, including the product being marketed
and the target market.
Measuring and classifying different types of character narratives and communication
forums.
Understanding and respecting communal norms (explore and classify the norms and
relate to particular outcomes such as reciprocity, trust and role of authority).
Considering the implications associated with commercial-communal tensions.
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Larson (Larson 2009) make an interesting point in that it is essential to ensure that there are
other components that support viral marketing campaign and that there is an appeal to the
customer’s emotions. Larson (Larson 2009) also emphasises that the message should be in a
format that is easy to share and that the message arouse a response in the consumer strong
enough to result in the forwarding, or sharing, of that message with their social network
(How to launch a low-cost viral marketing effort 2008).
Linking viral marketing campaigns to the company strategy and capabilities, Larson (Larson
2009) also points out that the companies need to be prepared both internally and externally
in order to positively benefit from consumer interaction. Larson (Larson 2009) also outlines
one of the main challenge is for the marketers to monitor, manage and influence the two-
way communication that results from the application of social media as once the message
reaches the point where it becomes viral, not only the spread cannot be controlled, but the
entire brand message and its interpretation is no longer in the hands of the company.
2.8 Measuring effectiveness of a VM Campaign
Emerging social network analysis and visualisation techniques offer the marketers to delve
deeper into consumer minds (Whitney 2010) – to identify connectors, influencers,
implementers and other types of members in the group. Whitney (Whitney 2010) describes
that social network visualisations can help identify important connecting points such as pre-
established relationships, shared expertise, and who may have information that isn’t
obvious from their current roles. EventGraphs (Hansen, Smith & Shneiderman 2010) can be
used to illustrate the structure of connections and communications among people
discussing an event. These EventGraphs can help identify sub-groups within larger
conversations, as well as individuals with unique social signatures. Jesse Thomas and Brian
Solis (Solis & Thomas 2011), the social media gurus, recently developed an inforgraphic of
the Twitterverse (See Appendix E) depicting important tools to help marketers more
effectively navigate, engage, analyse and measure participation on Twitter.
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Many other tools are now emerging that allow marketers to analyse multiple social media
networks (Some examples are PeerIndex.net and PeopleBrowsr.com), but these tools are
still very basic in terms of providing consolidated analytics to the marketers.
The other challenge for marketers is the Sentiment Analysis. Current systems are not good
enough to accurately measures emotions. Companies that currently claim to do this are only
touching the surface as they match words but not relate whether they are meaningful or
not. The variations in the language used i.e. abbreviations, slang, interpretations of words,
local dialects etc. makes it even more difficult to develop systems that can accurately
measure sentiments with respect to brands in online conversations. Marketers still have to
depend on specialised tools to analyse individual social networks and then perform a
manually qualitative analysis to make sense of the cross network data and the use of
sentiments in the online conversation.
2.9 How to make a Viral Marketing campaign sustainable?
There is very little written on whether a VM campaign can be made sustainable. Generally
speaking, viral messages are associated with large spikes where the message takes a certain
amount of time to reach the Tipping Point (Gladwell 2000) and then spreads uncontrollably
and then dies down once the message loses its uniqueness. However, marketers should take
a different approach when it comes to sustainability in product/services related VM
campaigns – one of sustaining the interest of the customers once they have experienced the
product or service on offer. Targeted VM campaigns differ from general viral messages in
that they are designed for the customer to give a taste of the product or service on offer.
Once the marketers have the customers’ attention, they should use the standard product
management and marketing principles to help sustain customer interest – be it engaging
with customers, listening to their feedback and using it to drive improvements, managing
their expectations, developing brand loyalty and delighting them when it comes to providing
customer service.
2.10 Summary
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There seems to be a perception that Social Media is a quick and low cost solution to market
products to a targeted audience. Marketers talk about developing viral marketing
campaigns using social media as the key to reach out to a large consumer base in a very
short time span. Researchers have talked about the characteristics of a viral message, its
advantages and disadvantages, however, there seems to a gap between the actual study of
viral messages and how they are, or can be, utilised by the organisations to market their
products. This paper will aim to fill this gap by answering these key research questions:
Is viral marketing of digital products different from viral messages (e.g. YouTube
videos)?
What are the steps an organisation needs to take while considering, designing and
executing a viral marketing campaign using social media?
Once a viral marketing campaign is successful, what should an organisation do to
sustain the customer’s interest?
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3. Methodology
This chapter provides an outline of the research methodology used to answer the research
questions - the research approach, a description of primary data collection process for the
interviews, secondary research, data analysis techniques used and limitations of the
adopted research method.
3.1 Research approach
The research approach influences design and provides an opportunity to consider benefits
and limitations of various approaches available to the researcher (Crewell 2003). Two types
of approaches are available – deductive and inductive. Deductive approach tests theories,
while an inductive approach forms theories (Marcoulides 1998). This report uses inductive
research approach as it aims to formulate hypothesis and develop general theory around
how organisations could go about marketing digital products, especially viral marketing,
using social media.
There are two methods available for data analysis – Qualitative and Quantitative.
Qualitative research is “a research strategy that usually emphasises words rather than
quantification in the collection and analysis of data” (Bryman & Bell 2007), while
quantitative research is based on data analysis to generate reliability. Qualitative research
better reflects “the quality of the lived experience of individuals, which cannot be reduced
to numerical values using statistical analysis” (Hewitt-Taylor 2001). Social media is a
dynamic field which is continuously changing. This means that although quantitative analysis
would provide data, designing an appropriate survey to get qualified opinions and
understand the deeper issues in this area was quite challenging (Amaratunga et al. 2002).
This report uses the qualitative method to explore the research questions as it allows
researchers to conduct in-depth explorations of a particular phenomenon (Crewell 2003).
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This choice is further justified as the research questions focus on opinions, feelings and
experiences, thus providing subjective data.
3.2 Data collection methods
In-depth interviews act as the primary source of the research and syndicate services
(Twitter, blogs, Facebook groups etc.) as the secondary sources.
Qualitative analysis allows for a better understanding and interpretation of the experiences
of their subjects (Tvede & Ohnemus 2001). This is important for this research as it looks at a
wide variety of experiences, understanding of the subject and interpretation of the data
gathered. In order to achieve this, in-depth personal interviews with market participants
were conducted at prearranged locations. The discussion in the interviews was structured
around the core research questions, but no set questionnaire was developed. The
interviews themselves were semi-structured in that even though the questions were based
on research questions, they were kept open ended and the direction of the discussions was
based on the interviewee's experience and area of expertise.
The reasons for selecting semi-structured interviews as the preferred approach are:
They involve a series of open-ended questions allowing the discussion on research
topics.
They allow the interviewer to encourage the interviewee to consider a question
further.
They provide a high level of response.
Necessary precautions were taken to ensure that there were no faults in recording the
interviews. Interviews were recorded on an audio recording device and then carefully
transcribed to avoid any such issues.
The questions in the interviews were sequenced in the following conceptual order:
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Social media strategy and capability assessment
Marketing strategy, especially the importance of an integrated approach
Design attributes for Product / Service for them to be considered for Viral Marketing
Designing a viral marketing message for product/services
Importance of influencers
Executing, managing and monitoring a viral marketing campaign, and the importance
of sentiment analysis
Exploring whether a viral marketing campaign can be made sustainable
Candidates for the interview were selected on the basis of their experience in social media
marketing and their relevance in the managing overall strategy and executing specific parts
of the SMM strategy.
Due to geographical constraints and professional commitments, one of the interviews - with
the Online Community Manager of KIK Interactive Inc. - had to be done as email
conversations. It would have been better to conduct this interview as a telephone
conversation but it wasn’t feasible because of the time differences and other work
commitments on their part. All interviews were conducted in March 2011.
3.3 Interview subjects
Colin Gilchrist – SocialTailor.com: Colin is a social media strategist, who helps
organisations assess their overall marketing strategy and help them integrate social
media marketing as part of this strategy
Andrew Burnett - UrbanNiche: Andrew helps companies design and execute social
media marketing campaigns. Andrew's company specialises in pushing the marketing
message with a view to reach a point where the message could go viral.
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Jenny Herbison and Rachel Armitage - Skyscanner: Skyscanner is an online flight
search company that has recently launched a very successful mobile phone
application. Rachel and Jenny, together, are responsible for the overall marketing
strategy for all geographical markets Skyscanner operates in.
Tera Dargavel – KIK Interactive, Inc.: KIK Interactive, Inc. provides a mobile
application that allows cross platform real time texts on mobile devices. KIK was
downloaded on 1 million devices within first 15 days of its launch. Tera works as the
Online Community Manager at KIK.
3.4 Secondary sources
The rapid changes in the field of social media mean that there is a scarcity of academic
literature in this area. Hence, a lot of research was focused on works by opinion leaders and
practitioners in the field of social media marketing. In order to get an appropriate range of
secondary resources, wide reading was done including these sources:
Analysts reports
Industry and academic journals
Blogs
Facebook groups
White papers
Twitter turned out to be one of the most useful resources for secondary research as it
seems to have become a platform where all the latest ideas are shared in real time, based
on the experiences of the companies and the thought leaders involved in this area.
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3.5 Data analysis
The data processing in this report is based on the technique described by Kumar et al
(Kumar, Tan & Steinbach 2005). Once the interviews had been conducted and the
transcripts had been prepared, the usable material, by themes, was drawn out from the
transcripts through a process called Coding. The coded research material was copied and
pasted into separate Microsoft Word files, one for each theme. These files provided an easy
look through while writing the Empirical Materials chapter. The qualitative data was then
analysed using the interpretive approach (Miles & Huberman 1994).
The material collected through qualitative methods is invariably unstructured and unwieldy
(Bryman & Bell 2007). It is the rough material collected from the field, if the form of
videotapes, conversations etc., that form the basis of analysis (Bogdan & Biklen 1992). Due
to its complicated nature, there is no standardised approach to the analysis of the
qualitative data (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill 1998).
The raw material resulting from the data gathering process in qualitative research is usually
in the form of words, and there are different strategies to deal with words. Miles et al (Miles
& Huberman 1994) outlined three approaches for analysing qualitative data – interpretive,
collaborative social research, and social anthropology. Creswell (Crewell 2003) further
identified five approaches – case study, biography, phenomenology, grounded theory, and
ethnography.
This report uses the interpretive approach to analyse the data as it is used to present a
holistic view of data rather than a condensed view. The results of this analysis are discussed
in the Analysis chapter.
3.6 Research limitations
The exploratory nature of the research and the majority of experienced practitioners living
in distant locations - most successful social media marketing firms are either based in
expertise were limited. However, much consideration was given in selecting the suitable
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interviewees mainly via professional recommendations in the social media industry and a
review of their work. Even though care was taken while identifying the right interviewees,
the number of interviews meant that the findings of the research are not tested to be
statistically significant. Further to this, mitigating any kind of bias that interviewees might
have had, as argued by Robson (Robson 1993), is limited by my understating of the subject
area and interpretation.
3.7 Ethical considerations
The interviewees have been informed of the academic purpose of this study. They have
granted permission for using their details in the report. The research is based on analysing
primary and secondary data using frameworks already developed by researchers. A soft
copy of the completed report will be made available to the interviewees. This research also
has approval from University of Edinburgh and gives rise to no ethical issues.
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4. Empirical Material
In literature review section, we presented the theory behind various aspects of viral
marketing and how businesses should go about creating a strategy, a plan, executing the
plan and monitoring the campaigns. In this section, we will present the research data from
the interviews conducted with industry specialists and practitioners.
4.1 Importance of strategy
The interviewees were asked about the importance of an overall marketing strategy for
companies while considering social media marketing or viral marketing as a tool to market
their products and services.
Gilchrist (Gilchrist 2011) of SocialTailor.com emphasised on the importance of employee
buy in and the need to have a crisis management strategy for the companies - before even
considering social media strategies – to make sure they are protected if things go wrong.
One of the first things that I look at is when they are developing their
strategy, they need to analyse and assess the employees throughout
the business.
One of the other things for big corporations is that they need to know
that there brand is protected, so what we need to put in place is crisis
management - the bottom line is that you are listing all the potential
things that could go wrong and are likely to go wrong.
Viral marketing strategy should be integrated in overall marketing strategy and the content
strategy, and that the organisations should clearly define goals, responsibilities and set out a
communication strategy (Gilchrist 2011).
In terms of the strategy, you need to look at content strategy, in fact
there are lots of different elements you need to look at, but you need
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to figure out who is doing what? What is that you want to achieve – is
it just more sales or is brand awareness, who is going to deliver it,
etc.?
Herbison et al (Herbison & Armitage 2011) of Skyscanner also alluded to the fact that the
social media marketing needs to be integrated with the overall marketing strategy, and it is
important that same people manage all the channels in a particular market.
Managing these contacts throughout the organisation is key whether
it’s through SEO, through PR or anything else. When do an app, we
make sure there is an integrated view of all the contacts.
The same people managing it is important as well. We have country
specialists that look after PR, SEO and all promotions ensuring that
they can see the opportunities across channels.
Herbison et al (Herbison & Armitage 2011) also described how they used an integrated
approach while launching their mobile phone application:
For each market we have main networks and local networks that are
tried and tested, but for the mobile app we used different people as
it’s the different audience and you cannot go with the same people.
It’s a different product, so we have to treat it differently. Everyone in
the company was very proactive in pitching the mobile app. It wasn’t
just the specific people, but everyone in the company.
Herbison et al (Herbison & Armitage 2011) described the inclusion of operations
department to highlight importance of an overall business strategy, and also to emphasise
the importance of capacity/capability management while executing viral marketing
campaigns:
When we were launching the app, a lot of planning went into that as
to what was the right time to launch it and making sure we had
additional capacity
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That’s managed by our operations department. They have
contingency of managing if we suddenly have a surge in traffic. We
have it all planned out and we have capacity to manage say 30% more
traffic to deal sudden surge
If we have knowledge beforehand and expecting a spike we can warn
operations to expect a spike.
Burnett (Burnett 2011) of Urban Niche emphasised this point and argued that the messages
are spread through “every network imaginable”. Dargavel (Dargavel 2011) of KIK Interactive,
Inc. indirectly made a similar point:
Viral marketing is a large effort too - the medium must be decided on,
the marketing story and how it is going to be presented and then the
distribution efforts.
The story and messaging has to make sense and align with the brand -
because people nowadays are much more savvy about marketing and
can see right through blatant, selfish efforts to get as many eyes on
the company name and message as possible.
4.2 Important factors for viral messages
Interviewees were asked to describe factors that would help create a viral message for the
product or service.
Burnett (Burnett 2011) argued that the emotional trigger is crucial for anything to go viral.
He also argues that the product or service being marketed has to be exceptionally good – so
good that people would not be afraid to put their name behind it while promoting it.
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You need an emotional trigger for anything to go viral. Most people
think of viral as being funny, but it doesn’t need to be funny at all. It
could be something that’s informative, or something that’s tragic.
It’s all endorsement and if I am going to endorse something in my
name, it needs to be bloody good – it cannot be OK or mediocre.
If you want a spike at the launch, then you really need to find
individuals with clout (with a ‘c’), even involve them in the process of
creating it. Understand the socials sharing mechanics of what we are
creating. Understand the viral mechanisms that we can include within
the product/services that we are creating.
Dargavel (Dargavel 2011) made a similar point with respect to an emotional trigger. :
Often, the medium is a video and the content involves something that
makes people feel sympathy (or empathy), or is something humorous,
or is something extraordinary to witness.
Burnett (Burnett 2011) also emphasised the importance of making the product social
friendly by using Viber – a mobile phone application – as an example:
The guys at Viber have been really clever in the way they have
designed the app. You can automatically access your phone book
through Viber and the app looks through that to see who else is using
Viber.
It just becomes really easy for users to spread the word. It’s cheap, its
user friendly and it makes it really easy for me to contact others to ask
them to use it as well.
Burnett (Burnett 2011) further highlighted that making the products available for free (and
generating revenue by displaying advertisements) further makes the customers buying
decision really easy:
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To an extent it’s the freemium model. Do I want my choice of free
music anytime of the day and night? Yes, of course I do.
Dargavel (Dargavel 2011) also agreed with the ease of availability and sharing:
Making it very easy to share the content with friends (i.e., do not put
it behind a pay wall! It will never go viral)
Gilchrist (Gilchrist 2011) believed in experimenting with different concepts for a brand and
testing them in the market to see what people might like and on which platform:
Having chatted to a CEO of a media company, what he does is that he
creates lots and lots of small case studies with the clients brand to see
what works and on what platform, and if one particular thing works
then he would pour lots of money into it to do it properly.
Herbison et al (Herbison & Armitage 2011) also argue about the importance of having a
good product that people like and emphasised on really understanding the market, the
channels that work best in each market and finding the right influencers in each of those
markets and channels within each market.
I think as much as anything, your product has to be strong and when
you give a good product to these people, they will give you a good
review and that’s key.
We have done a number of different things in different markets.
Within each of our managed markets we have identified places where
we need to be to get our app reviewed.
4.3 Importance of influencers
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On the question of the importance of influencers in spreading the message about the
product, all interviewees were unanimous in the importance of finding the right
influencers in making a viral marketing campaign a success.
Herbison et al (Herbison & Armitage 2011) describe how they could see the spikes in
downloads when the applications were reviewed and given a good rating. They also
compared downloads to the markets where they were delayed in getting reviews and saw a
positive correlation:
The best example of doing that was that on the review sites, we were
very lucky that we had good contacts of journalists and bloggers and
we just sent them the information, they reviewed the app for us and
then there are people who trust these reviews and see them as
authorities for that, and that’s when you can see the downloads
spikes when they have reviewed the app and given it five stars.
In a couple of our markets, we were a bit delayed compared to others
in terms of doing that, but you can quite accurately see the point at
which we exerted those efforts versus the downloads.
Herbison et al (Herbison & Armitage 2011) reiterated the importance of an integrated
approach in that different approaches worked in different markets, and the channel where
the influencers came from differed between markets.
It’s different for different markets. We make best use of tools where
they make sense and we certainly do manage SEO’s and making sure
who is linking to us and how those links are being passed on. There
are a couple of tools that we started using that are particularly helpful
for tracking relationships.
Gilchrist (Gilchrist 2011) also agreed with the idea that influencers can be found on various
networks or channels, and highlighted the importance of doing research to find out the
right people in the particular sector where product is going to be launched.
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There are lots and lots of different ways. For example, AllTop.com
which is an aggregate news websites, advanced blog search through
blogsearch.google.com.
Finding blogs that are opinionated but will also talk about your
product is important. They cannot always be bought, it depends on
the ethics on them, but if they can be bought it’s probably not good
for you the companies.
Burnett (Burnett 2011) agreed with the idea of influencers and their importance, but
offered his specific insight into who the real influencers are i.e. it’s not just a matter of how
many people follow you, but the compound effect of a network of people who will endorse
your message because they trust your judgment, and are influential enough to further push
the message in their network – to the point that the message reaches a critical mass where
it can become truly viral, where no further pushing is required.
There are definitely people who influence things, but it still have to
have genuine content on it. In the social web, the main currency is
endorsement.
There are people who you trust, so you endorse their things and then
there is a reciprocal nature to it that people who trust you will
endorse your things, but it has to be a two way exchange. It then
comes back to the fact that if something is genuinely worth talking
about, it reaches a certain critical mass and then it takes off by itself –
and that’s what an actual viral is.
It’s a relatively tight knit community – there are probably a couple of
hundred people that are really any good, maybe 500 but no more
than that – and this is global. These are your influencers / endorsers
who are not celebrities. So, if Stephen Fry retweets you, of course it is
going to big because he is got millions of followers on Twitter, but the
people who have got 2000 followers can pull a lot of right strings in
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the background. Of those people there are around 500 max. Basically,
you all work together, not in a financial sense at all, but there are
favours you trade.
Burnett (Burnett 2011) also explained that submission of product to review websites or
blogs works as well:
These blogs will create content about your product. These blogs then
reach out to power users on various networks because they want
readership and they say, “Have you seen this story?” And then the
whole thing starts getting attention. All the links from the blogs get
shared on these networks and you also get secondary benefits of SEO
from it. And people then talking about it gets converted into
downloads.
When asked about how to know when something has reached this critical mass, Burnett’s
(Burnett 2011) view was that it is usually very intuitive. Dargavel (Dargavel 2011) also
highlighted the importance of online influential space like blogs and review websites:
In the app space you may really hope that your news (press releases,
blog posts) gets picked up by Hacker News because it's one of the
most widely read news sources for Silicon Valley and the tech
industry. You may try to distribute your content to journalists at
various publications (Huffington Post, Tech Crunch, etc.) or you may
just submit it to Reddit or other link collecting sites like that. Again,
there is no tried and true method to viral marketing but there are best
practices.
4.4 Executing a campaign
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Once a marketing campaign is launched, marketers need to be able to monitor its
progress, engage with the customers, manage their feedback and measure the success of
the campaign. Interviewees were asked how they managed this.
All interviewees depended on a variety of tools to carry out the monitoring tasks.
Burnett (Burnett 2011) used Raven (to manage SEO at the domain level), Trak.ly (to track
individual URL), PostRank (for new launches) and Google Analytics (for general traffic
information)
Gilchrist (Gilchrist 2011) preferred using a company called Forth Matrix as they combine all
the information together, instead of using separate tools.
Dargavel (Dargavel 2011) highlighted that there are free tools on the web that can be used
to, “listen to the whole of the web or parts of it”.
Herbison et al (Herbison & Armitage 2011) described that their company uses a variety of
tools:
For SEO we are currently using a mixture of Raven, Linkdex, SEOMoz.
We also use Basecamp for project planning and tracking. In terms of
analytics we are big fans of Google Analytics and the various other
tools Google provides (Webmaster, Adplanner etc.) and usually find
that their free offering fulfills our needs. That said, for the mobile
app, we use Flurry which specifically tracks mobile sessions
Customer engagement among the interviewees happen through responding to customer
queries through emails, responding to comments on blogs, or on Twitter. They agreed that
specific processes and communication strategies should be developed in the organisations
to manage customer feedback. Only one out of four interviewees talked about proactively
monitoring the online space for sentiment analysis or netnography concepts in order to
figure what people are talking about their brands in the social web. Herbison et al
(Herbison & Armitage 2011) describe the situation at Skyscanner as:
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We have people who email us and every email gets a response, so we
do track our reputation online, but we are taking that one step
forward looking at emotions online. We are not there yet.
Herbison (Herbison & Armitage 2011) further pointed out the importance of doing the
sentiment analysis correctly and allocating enough resource to it:
In my previous experience I worked with clients managing their
reputation and looking at negative emotions, but it’s all very well
knowing them but unless you can action on it, it’s useless. We were
giving all this information to our clients, but they couldn’t action any
of it because they didn’t have the resource.
There are very few organisations that have the time and resource to
engage properly. Also, one thing you do not want to do is to engage
incorrectly because you will end up doing more harm. If you are
dipping in and out, it is unsatisfactory to the user base
Dargavel (Dargavel 2011) also highlighted the importance of dedicated
resource for customer engagement:
A brand, or even a company representative, is much more able to
answer questions or concerns in blog comments or by responding to
tweets. Negative conversations are usually mediated by explanation.
4.5 Sustainability of a VM campaign
Interviewees were asked if they thought a viral marketing campaign be made sustainable
over a long period
The interviewees thought that it was very hard, if not impossible, to do so. It was felt that a
possible outcome was to increase the average traffic over a period of time following the
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viral marketing campaign if the product and/or the viral message was very good. Burnett
(Burnett 2011) pointed out that:
Either you consistently create engaging content that’s going to get
spike after spike after spike, or you should look at it in a way that
when you create a spike you increase the average traffic towards the
product/service or the website. So, the plateau after the spike should
be higher than the one before if you have done it cleverly. If you have
not done it cleverly the plateau will be the same and if you have done
it stupidly the average will actually be lower.
Gilchrist (Gilchrist 2011) was of the similar view:
Once it has spiked it’s great, but then let’s have a steady growth, and
then another peak and then another peak. Trying to sustain the spike
is very very difficult. This is because what you are doing is you are
shocking people to get them interested. To constantly shock people,
the campaign has to be so entertaining that everyone is going to love
it, but you will never be able to make everyone happy and sustain it.
It’s very very unusual.
Burnett (Burnett 2011) further stressed that designing the product with social sharing
mechanics in mind and engaging influencers at any early stage of the product design will
increase the chances of a product going viral:
Understand the socials sharing mechanics of what we are creating.
Understand the viral mechanisms that we can include within the
product/services that we are creating.
You can also build in mechanisms to share things online within the
product. It is important to note that the earlier you engage the
influencers, the better. Once you have already done it, there isn’t
much influencers can do to help design the product/service.
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Dargavel (Dargavel 2011) thought it may be possible to sustain a viral
campaign, but warned about the fine balance between reiteration of a theme
and an overkill:
Take a look at Old Spice - I think they're trying to make their viral
marketing campaign a little more long lasting. So, when you have a
good idea you can stick with it and reiterate - but there is a fine line
between a theme and overkill.
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5. Analysis
My interest in social media started as a quest for more information. The new applications on
the mobile devices (for example, Flipboard on iPad) have made it much easier to identify,
target and receive information from the specific sources that are of interest to me. Twitter
has increasingly become an important online source for the latest information in almost any
area –including but not limited to news, ideas, opinions and reflections.
In November 2010, I came across a tweet about a product called KIK - a cross platform
instant messaging application. It caught my interest as I had seen Blackberry users raving
about the Blackberry Messenger (BBM). A simple search for #KIK on Twitter revealed that
thousands of people were talking about this product, downloading it and giving positive or
negative feedback about it. Two weeks after launching, KIK was downloaded on more than 1
million mobile devices. Achieving such a huge number of downloads in such a short span of
time caught my interest.
A few questions sprung to mind straight away. How did they manage to do it? Was it just
luck or a carefully carved strategy? Are the marketers aware of the ongoing conversation on
the social networks about their brand, and if so, how do they manage it? Then the
conversation on Twitter slowed down considerably, and the question I asked myself was
what could marketers do to sustain the consumer interest in their brand?
In December 2010, I came across another app, Viber, a competitor to Skype, providing free
calls between iPhones over a 3G network. It was a similar story with Viber in that it achieved
1 million download in just 5 days. KIK now didn’t seem like a one off app that got lucky.
I started looking for already existing research on these topics. It was surprising when I found
that most of the academic material was quite dated, more so because social media and its
usage is changing so rapidly at the moment that it is difficult for the academic world to catch
up.
I also realised that Twitter was one of the main sources for finding information. Most
opinions leaders, industry specialists and even industry and academic journals tweet about
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their papers, blog entries, comments on other members’ articles and ideas. However,
Twitter is like a stream of consciousness, with ideas and thoughts flowing vertically on a 19
inch screen - just like credits flowing on the screen at the end of a movie, but only much
faster. This stream of data is on a variety of subjects and comes from hundreds of people
you follow on Twitter. Once I managed to get a handle on the conversations that were
specific to social media marketing, I started reading blogs, industry and academic journals
and whitepapers to understand how companies go about using social media as an effective
marketing tool.
This gave me deep insights into: how organisations go about using social media, latest
development and opinions from the thought leaders in social media, reviews and opinions
on various strategies and tools used in social media marketing, and importance of sentiment
analysis, or Netnography (Kozinets 2010) of the consumer conversation about a certain
brand. This secondary research also allowed me to get an understanding of the key areas
surrounding viral marketing of the products. It helped me develop a framework for the
interviews. Twitter also helped me identify some of the key social media influencers and
converse with them. For example, connection with the Online Community Manager of KIK
was established using Twitter, and after a few tweets back and forth she agreed to
participate in my research.
Below is an analysis of the primary and secondary research.
5.1 Viral Marketing
Viral marketing literature seems to be divided into two types of viral campaigns: campaigns
that go viral just because they appeal to human emotions – the one’s that do not necessary
have a viral marketing strategy behind them. For example, YouTube videos that catch
people attention and go viral over a certain period. The second one is the strategic viral
marketing campaigns around a product or a service, a brand or even just a message. These
campaigns are well thought out and planned. More often than not, people seem to use
these interchangeably when talking about viral campaigns. In the interviews, the companies
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that didn’t have their own products seemed to have a broad focus on viral messages
(Gilchrist 2011), while product companies were more focused on the properties that were
more suitable to making their own products go viral (Dargavel 2011) (Herbison & Armitage
2011). Since the focus of this paper is on digital products, it mainly covers the marketing
campaigns that are carefully planned for digital products to viral. This means that the
conclusion may differ from designing viral campaigns if the focus was mainly raising the
awareness of the brand.
5.2 Strategy
Before we look at the specifics of a viral marketing campaign, it is important to understand
the overall context in which a company would want to use viral marketing. The research
shows most companies have an overall marketing strategy, and if viral marketing is part of
that strategy, then it needs to have defined goals, resource with assigned responsibilities,
and a plan of action (Gilchrist 2011) (Dargavel 2011) (Herbison & Armitage 2011).
There seem to be enough examples of viral marketing campaigns getting negative publicity
for the company – for example, Groupon’s superbowl advertisement or Threshers discount
coupons (Andrew 2011). The un-predictive and unmanageable nature of viral messages can
be dangerous for the companies. Watts et al (Watts, Peretti & Frumin 2007) talk about
combining viral marketing and mass media marketing, in what they call Big Seed Marketing,
to achieve maximum reach and to counter the unpredictable nature of the viral marketing
campaigns. The research also highlights the importance of having a crisis strategy in case
things do go wrong.
The companies need to understand the markets they operate in and the marketing channels
that are most effective in each of these markets. A marketing strategy should then be
defined, as part of an overall business strategy, covering the marketing techniques for each
combination of market and market channel (Herbison & Armitage 2011). Whether viral
marketing is part of this strategy or not should be decided on the merits of each channel
within the market(s) the company operates in. For example, Twitter seems to provide an
MBA Dissertation Page 43
easy platform for ideas to go viral, by using the hashtag facility. Every day, there are
trending topics that are referenced using these hashtags on Twitter. These trends are in a
way similar to viral messages in that they spread when users use those words in their
tweets. There has to be a trigger for the users to do that. In a way this is similar to the
emotional triggers that were mentioned in the interviews. However, Twitter, as a marketing
channel, may only be relevant for certain markets and the marketers should be aware of
that.
5.3 Capabilities
The research shows that while defining the marketing strategy, the companies’ capabilities
needs to be assessed (Gilchrist 2011). One would expect this to be common sense, but it
seems that it is often overlooked especially when it comes to social media marketing. There
is growing literature that supports the need of an Online Community Manager in the
companies to manage all aspects of social media. The interviewees in the primary research
were unanimous in their opinion that companies need to assign specific people and have
clear responsibilities when it comes to social media marketing (Herbison & Armitage 2011)
(Gilchrist 2011) (Dargavel 2011). These responsibilities can range from delivering marketing
messages, monitoring and managing the overall community and marketing campaigns,
engaging with customers, and listening and responding to customer feedback. Viral
marketing, by its very nature, makes this even harder as the sheer number of customers
engaging with the company could increase exponentially.
Having appropriate system capabilities within the company was also highlighted in the
interviews, especially when companies are looking to use viral marketing as the tool to
market their digital products (Herbison & Armitage 2011). In the case of KIK, Viber and
Skyscanner, hundreds of thousands of download requests could hit the servers in a matter
of hours. Companies need to build a strategy around this exponential increase in traffic
when considering the viral marketing route. Failure to deal with this could result in
potentially irrecoverable damage to the brand.
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This exponential increased traffic could also mean a similar increase in customers trying to
engage with the company. The companies need to decide how to tackle this increase in
customer engagement.
5.4 Product
Interviewees felt that emotional connection with the receiver is one most important
variable in the spread of a viral message (Gilchrist 2011) (Burnett 2011) (Setty 2009). The
other is the ease with which the receiver can pass it on to their network (Burnett 2011).
Online viral messages, like videos, that appeal to the viewers can be easily shared over
internet through blogs, websites and social networks.
The research shows that digital products are slightly different. The product themselves have
to be brilliant at what they are meant to do in addition to the promotions around them.
They should also possess characteristics that allow the user of the products to spread the
message easily (Burnett 2011) (Setty 2009). Viber’s ability to invite other users from within
the product and easy connections to the social networks help customers share their
experiences very easily.
Price is another characteristic. It seems to be the case the offering a free product for the
customers to try the basic functionality, and a paid version for the premium functionality
could lure a lot more customers to start with (Burnett 2011). On the other hand, a really
good product can demand a premium price and people will still buy it. They key difference
here is usually in the speed of adoption. Free digital products seem to get a wider spread
more quickly while the paid products may reach the similar amount of downloads, but it
takes a lot more time to get there.
5.5 Influencers
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Knowing the key influencers in each market and each channel within the market is key to
any marketing campaign. According to the research, viral marketing of the digital products
seems to be no different. Getting the right package to the influencer is important as well i.e.
understand what motivates each influencer and provide them with what they are looking
for. For example, in some case monetary rewards may be frowned upon. Influencers write
about products as they are passionate about them rather than seeking money. In a typical
Product Diffusion Curve (Godin 2005) they want to be seen as the Innovators or the very
early adopters who influence the majority of people – that’s what gets them going. So,
many a times an exclusive preview of the product might do more wonders than a monetary
reward.
What seems to make viral marketing different, according to the research, is the concerted
effort by the key influencers in the online space, to push the product and the marketing
message to a critical point where no further market push is required and the customers
themselves become the product evangelists who then promote the products within their
own networks (Burnett 2011).
5.6 Creating a campaign
Traditional viral campaigns contain highly creative and unique content with emotional
impact (Setty 2009). The secondary research seems to suggest that all viral marketing
campaigns need this kind of content. However, the interviewees had different point of
views. The interviewees from companies that had digital products seem to suggest that a
good product promoted in traditional ways using highly influential people in the right
channels in the right markets are the best way to go about marketing the product and
building momentum (Herbison & Armitage 2011). However, the interviewees who came
from a consulting or a strategic point of view were divided in their opinion in that one of
them stressed on the importance of creativity of the promotional message around the
product and the other about the importance of both creativity combined with a brilliant
product.
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Further to this, everyone seemed to agree on the fact that the consumers today are very
clever when it comes to identifying whether a campaign is genuine or just a selfish effort to
get the company noticed. So, the marketing efforts have to be very high-quality and ensure
that the receiver gets a genuine benefit from the content.
In my opinion, the fantastic product is absolutely crucial to any viral marketing campaign for
digital products, unless the company is aiming to create a one hit wonder, in which case the
product itself is irrelevant. Ideally the product needs to be designed for social spread with
ideas from influencers – to get an early buy-in. Designing a creative promotional message
that would have a viral appeal in addition to a good product should increase the chances for
a product going viral. However, creating a message that is genuine and makes sense - one
that aligns with the brand, identifying the right influencers in the right markets,
understanding what motivates them and engaging with them accordingly, and a high quality
joined up effort from people within companies is far more important.
5.7 Campaign management
The three main areas that the research points out as important in terms of campaign
execution are Seeding, Monitoring and Managing.
Seeding is about influencing the influencer i.e. making sure enough key influencers in the
target markets like the product and they are ready to promote it in their channels, hopefully
to the extent that the message gathers enough momentum to reach the Tipping Point.
The interviewees seemed to agree on the role of the influencers, but backed different
approaches when it came to building momentum. One of the approach discussed was to
submit the products to influential websites then hope that enough users will read and share
the message. Another approach was to build on top of the previous approach and create an
integrated marketing campaign, perhaps using mass media campaigns to get maximum
exposure (Gilchrist 2011). Finally, one interviewee talked about identifying influencers with
worldwide network of other influencers covering all online channels, and leveraging that
network to build momentum (Burnett 2011).
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I believe that companies need to look at all the options available to them. All approaches
identified in the primary and secondary research seemed logical. A particular approach that
a company adopts would perhaps depend on the combination of the following factors -
product type, the specific markets for the product, the channels where the key influencers
are and whether they have personal network of other influencers in the relevant market,
and the financial resources available to the marketing team – e.g. mass media marketing is
much more costly that social media marketing.
Once the campaign is launched, the interviewees believed that channels in each market
need to be monitored for the spread of the message (Herbison & Armitage 2011). This is
done using a variety of free or paid tools for each channel within each market. For example,
Google Analytics could be used to monitor the number of clicks to a website, but a
completely different tool was used to measure the number of users a tweet would reach, or
how many retweets did the message get on Twitter.
The research suggests that conversations on the relevant channels also need to be
monitored for positive or negative feedback. Reward positive feedback, if possible, even if it
is with a simple acknowledgement - it will buy customer loyalty. Monitoring the network for
any negative feedback and managing customers perception when it happens was also
highlighted as crucial, especially the rogue elements, for instance competitors, trying to
spread negative feedback (Gilchrist 2011). One of the interviewee suggested that companies
should have crisis management strategy in place to be able to deal with such things
effectively (Gilchrist 2011). However, all interviewees felt that this can be very resource
hungry task and most companies only really engage in a selection of channels with the
customers (Dargavel 2011) (Herbison & Armitage 2011).
The research also shows that the measurements of sentiments – Netnography (Kozinets
2010) - in the online networks is quite a complex and tricky subject, and the tools available
to do this kind of analysis are far from perfect (Herbison & Armitage 2011). These tools
involve scraping relevant data from the conversations customers have on online channels.
The analysis of this data is still quite primitive in that it cannot deal with the variation in
dialects, cultural variations in meaning of words, language variations, and slang to name a
few. This means a lot of this analysis requires manual manipulation of data which is very
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time consuming and expensive. Hence, the companies use netnographic analysis for very
simple things like brand mentions.
In terms of measuring the Return on Investment the interviewees felt that it is quite a
simple process for digital products as you can measure the number of downloads and
compare it with message spread, and the cost of running the campaign (Dargavel 2011).
Having a Plan B, in case the seeding fails, was seen as quite important campaign
management tool. This could be another set of seeds or a different spin on the product or
perhaps a mass media marketing campaign.
5.8 Sustainability
Every company’s dream is a sustained high growth of their products. Since viral marketing
could potentially provide a means of sustaining exponential growth over a long period of
time, it is quite a lucrative concept. Even though the interviewees thought sustaining the
level of growth that come from a successful viral marketing campaign is theoretically
possible, say by repeating brilliance time and time again (Gilchrist 2011), being able to this
practically was very hard (Burnett 2011) (Gilchrist 2011). The research seems to tilt in favour
of creating campaigns to increase the average growth over a longer period instead.
5.9 Summary
As social media and social networking is such a new concept, companies are finding it quite
hard to come to terms with the fact that it is more than just something social, that social
networks are valuable places where customers interact with each other and communicate
their opinions about brands. These online social networks are extensions of real world social
networks (Dye 2000). In the real world influencers used to, and still, play an important role
in spreading word about a product (Kozinets et al. 2010). They put their reputation on the
line when they do so and hence they have to make sure that products are of top quality.
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Such is the case with online product marketing, the only difference being the influencers can
now be found writing blogs, freelance articles, reviewing products, tweeting their opinions
etc.
Just like strategy is important in creating word-of-mouth campaigns in the real world, it is
also important in social media space. As companies become aware of the importance of the
social media, the impact it can have on company’s brand, and the opportunity it provides,
they are slowly beginning to include social media as part of their overall business and
marketing strategy.
Marketers need to consider viral marketing on social media like any another marketing
channel. They also need to develop integrated marketing strategy in order to decide how
best to make use of mass media marketing and social media marketing to have the
maximum predictable reach (Watts, Peretti & Frumin 2007).
Due to the nature of viral marketing on social media i.e. the potential of rapidly attracting
millions of customers without limited geographical boundaries, companies need to closely
consider their capabilities.
Viral messages by their nature are very hard to control when they go truly viral. Marketers
need to be prepared for both positive and negative feedback on the product – making sure
there are enough people in the company, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities,
who are ready to deal with both positive and negative feedback from a viral marketing
campaign. As much as the positive feedback could potentially put the company on the path
of exponential growth, the negative feedback on a viral campaign has the potential to
damage a company’s reputation irrevocably. Companies need to have a crisis management
strategy in place in case something does go wrong.
Companies also need to make sure their systems are capable of dealing with the sudden
increase in traffic to their servers if a viral marketing campaign does become successful.
The quality of product itself has to be exceptional when planning to include viral marketing
campaign as part of the overall marketing campaign. Viral messages are usually spread by
influencers, and influencers usually would not put their reputation on line within their
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communities if the product is not something their followers would like. Influencers generally
demand the product to be exceptional, whether it is the quality of the idea or the product
itself.
It is of course feasible to try and create a viral marketing campaign using an average product
with an exceptionally creative and dynamic message around it, but these campaigns have
very short shelf life. More often than not, these products risk damaging influencers’
reputation or even if the customers try these products out they will not recommend them
further to their networks (Burnett 2011). Instead they might just be interested in the
creative aspect of the message – which could be a funny video for instance - rather than the
product itself.
However, a fantastic product, wrapped in a unique, dynamic and creative message, seeded
to influencers in the right forums - using character narratives that are appealing to the users
of these forums, and following the communal norms (Kozinets et al. 2010) - could
compound the chances of the marketing campaign going viral.
Marketers should also try and involve key influencers during the design phase of the
product. The earlier the influencers are involved the more robust the case for the marketers
to get a buy-in from the influencers to promote the product. Making the influencers feel
they are responsible for the product design will help them push the product harder within
their communities.
Product should also be designed for social spread i.e. the design should consider making it
very easy for the user or the customer to spread the word about the product within their
social networks. This ease of sharing will allow the customer to promote the product and
help increase the viral spread to farthest nodes within the networks. Hotmail and Viber are
two great examples of this. Providing a cut down version of the product for free would also
help with the social spread.
In terms of finding the right influencers to seed, marketers need to understand who the key
influencers are within each channels i.e. influential bloggers, product reviewers, opinion
leaders or generally influential people in a particular area. Having large number of followers,
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as in the case of celebrities, does not necessarily make someone the right influencer to
target. Marketers could mine the social networks to find the key influencers and influential
subgroups within various networks, but usually experienced marketers know these
influencers within their markets. If this is not the case, then approaching influential social
media consultants could be a good place to start.
Once the key influencers have been identified, marketers need to understand what makes
the influencer tick. Influencers may not be motivated by money. In fact, offering money to
promote the product could have detrimental effects, especially if their followers find out
and do not approve of it. It could be as simple as submitting product for a review to a very
influential website and the influencer raving about the product because of its superior idea
and quality.
Marketers can also engage with professional influencers, who have a global network of
other influencers on a variety of marketing channels. These influencers work on the
currency of favours with each other, and share each other’s messages with their network
(Burnett 2011). They do not necessarily have millions of followers, but have followers who
would in turn have a large number of trusted followers on the node below – thus pushing
the marketing message to a wide network in an attempt to build momentum. The ultimate
idea is to build enough momentum by pushing the message so that it reaches a point when
it becomes self-propagating i.e. it becomes viral.
Once the campaign has been launched, marketers need to monitor and manage the
campaign. They need to be able to measure the spread of the campaign, monitor the
conversation about their brand on the social networks, monitor the customer feedback on
the product and manage appropriate responses to the feedback. Marketers need to act as
product evangelists and proactively engage with the customers about the features and
benefits of the product. All these tasks require a variety of tools to be available to the
marketers. Both free and paid versions of tools are available in the market. Marketers
should try different tools and settle for the ones that suit them best in terms of usability,
quality of results and subscription fees.
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Marketers also need to make sure enough human resource is allocated for monitoring and
managing the viral marketing campaign. The resource requirement could potentially be
huge if a company were to engage effectively with all customer feedback. A sensible
approach would be to select some of the major channels and focus efforts on those.
One of the challenges in monitoring campaigns like these is to get an accurate idea of the
sentiments in the social networks. People use many different languages, dialects, slang,
abbreviations and cultural contexts when conversing on social networks, and it is very
difficult to get an accurate measure of the sentiment using the tools currently available in
the market. There is almost certainly a lot of manual work required to go through the
collected data and assess whether the sentiment analysis provided by the automated tools
is correct. If the available resource is a concern, marketers could just focus on a smaller area
of sentiment measurement, for example, only go through conversations from particular
channels that mention their brand name.
It is every marketers dream to have a sustainable growth over a long period as a result of a
marketing campaign. Viral marketing campaigns usually see a quick spike and then flatten
out in a very short time span. One of the things marketers could aim for is to get a higher
average user base after the spike generated by a successful viral marketing campaign. This
higher average can be sustained if marketers follow product lifecycle management and
customer service management best practices.
Theoretically speaking, in order to be able to sustain the spike from a viral marketing
campaign over a long period, the message has to be so creative that the receiver never gets
tired of spreading it. It could also be sustained by creating brilliant campaigns one after
another. These results are very hard to achieve repeatedly. However, if we apply these ideas
to a viral marketing campaign for digital products, a product designed to encourage the user
to very easily spread the message on their social networks may be equivalent to a message
that receiver never gets tired of spreading. Again, Hotmail and Viber can be used as good
examples here. This compounded with a brilliant product might just mean that the viral
nature of the campaign can be sustained until every node in the network has been touched.
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However, when marketers get excited about viral marketing, do they really mean viral in
terms of getting to a point where the message becomes uncontrollable? This sounds like a
highly undesirable situation for the marketers to find themselves in, especially if something
goes wrong. Maybe viral messages are more suitable for brand awareness, perhaps once
the product has been successfully marketed in a large enough, but yet controlled,
environment? It sounds more likely that marketers would want to be able to manage
customer expectations, especially in the early phases of product launch when the product
and its benefits are yet to be proven – perhaps by using a network of influencers to spread
the word. However, even in a controlled environment, marketers need to be aware of the
dangers of the viral spread when the message seems to be reaching a critical point as it will
be very hard to manage expectations after a certain level of spread.
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6. Conclusion
This chapter contains the summary of the results described in Chapter 5 with particular
reference to the research questions. It also contains my personal reflections on the research
and the process of getting to the results. Furthermore, contributions of this research to
existing literature, lessons for the business are discussed before highlighting the future
research opportunities.
6.1 Summary of results
Question 1: Is viral marketing of digital products different from viral messages (e.g.
YouTube videos)?
Answer: This seems to be the case, but there are certain commonalities. There are
certain characteristics that make a message go viral. Usually this is something that
triggers some kind of extreme emotion while receiving the message. The ease by which
the receiver is able to spread the message is also crucial. Characteristics like these are
common to anything that goes viral, but viral messages usually spread without the need
of a strategic push. In case of viral marketing of digital products, however, companies
need to define a strategy to create, package, and orchestrate the delivery of such a
message.
Question 2: What are the steps an organisation needs to take while considering,
designing and executing a viral marketing campaign using social media?
Answer: Any company wanting to market their product through viral marketing
campaigns using social media needs to go through following steps:
Strategy
o An overall business and marketing strategy should be developed keeping
in mind the core capabilities of the company
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o Marketing strategy should consider which channels should be used in
each markets they operate in, and look at whether viral marketing is
suitable for their markets or not
o Companies need to have a crisis management strategy in place. A viral
marketing campaign gone wrong or beyond the capabilities of the
company is capable of destroying a company’s brand.
Capabilities
o Companies need to evaluate the human resource capabilities and make
sure that staff is working towards set goals. Quite often, social media
responsibilities are just tagged on in addition to other responsibilities. If
clear goals are not set and time allocated to perform these tasks, it would
be hard to get achieve any results.
o Companies need to evaluate their system capabilities, especially in the
case of marketing digital products. A successful viral marketing campaign
can result into exponential growth in traffic. Failure to deal with such
traffic can result in damaging the brand.
Product
o The product itself has to be outstanding in what it does. Viral marketing is
all about customers sharing their experiences and nobody wants to spoil
their reputation by recommending a bad product.
o The product should be designed for social spread. The user should be able
to invite other users, recommend the product, share it with their network
with ease.
Influencers
o Marketers need to identify key influencers in each marketing channels
and should ideally involve them at the time of designing the product.
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o Marketers need to understand what influences their key influencers and
should be able to influence them to share
Executing and managing a campaign
o Marketers should evaluate how many influencers to seed.
o Once the campaign is launched, marketers need to have the right tools to
monitor and manage the spread of the campaign and engage with their
customers, especially when negative feedback is received.
Question 3: Once a viral marketing campaign is successful, what should an
organisation do to sustain the customer’s interest?
Answer: Sustaining the exponential growth, achieved through successful viral marketing
campaign, over a long period is very difficult, but not impossible. However, a more
realistic goal for marketers would be to increase the average growth following a
successful campaign, perhaps closely followed by yet another version of product or
campaign to keep the customers continuously interested in the product and the brand.
6.2 Personal reflections
One of the key challenges in writing this paper has been to not sound like a social media
evangelist. With the amount of information being available specifically on social media and
how organisations are creating social media strategy, many a times it was quite easy to drift
away from the core topic of viral marketing using social media into a more generic social
media space. This was especially true during the secondary research as there is a lot of
interesting information being made available on the internet on general usage of social
media.
Also, before starting the research I envisaged the paper to be about exploring whether a
framework exists around the specific characteristics of a product, or of a marketing
campaign, that businesses could use for their products to go viral. As I delved deeper in this
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area, it slowly became apparent that there is a lot more to viral marketing of digital
products than just a good campaign.
6.3 Contribution to existing knowledge
The results of the research provide insights into how marketers perceive viral marketing and
social media marketing in the real world. Following areas stand out in particular:
Viral messages and viral marketing campaigns for digital products are subtly
different in the way of using viral marketing as part of the overall marketing strategy
with specific objectives in mind
Even though there is research and theoretical models for understanding, creating
and executing viral marketing campaigns, in real life the tools available to marketers
aren’t sophisticated enough to manage and monitor all aspects of such campaigns.
Organisations are continuously struggling with resource availability for any kind of
social media marketing, unless it is well thought out at the business strategy level.
The outcome of the interviews provides insights into how companies are using social
media and viral marketing concepts in real life to market their products and services.
It also provides insights into the importance of overall business and marketing
strategy while considering viral marketing as an option to market products.
The research is relevant to marketers and organisations planning to use viral
marketing concepts to market their digital products using social media.
6.4 Business lessons
The research highlights that the businesses need to go back to the basics of strategy and
marketing when considering social media and viral marketing, rather than giving into the
buzz. Following points are of specific interest:
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The research highlights the importance of overall business strategy, including goal
settings, and resource availability and allocation to achieve these objectives, while
considering social media or viral marketing.
Knowing who your customers are and where can you find them is important while
considering the type of marketing channels. The research suggests that this is quite
basic yet often overlooked aspect of the social media marketing.
Viral marketing by definition can become uncontrollable. Marketers need to
carefully consider if this is really the result they are hoping to achieve.
6.5 Further research
Due to the lack of time and resource availability the number of interviews in the primary
research was kept to just four. Further interviews with companies or professional social
media consultants and marketers - who have either used viral marketing to market their
digital products on social media, or are engaged in the viral marketing process as strategists,
policy makers or influencers - would add more authenticity to the results, or clarify them
further.
Mobile application being one of my interest area may have meant that I had a personal bias
in this area while performing the research and articulating the findings. Further research
with fresh perspective on other types of digital products like website, online services etc.
would further refine the results.
Sentiment analysis (netnography) is an emerging field. There are a lot of challenges yet to
be overcome, especially when it comes to automatically collecting and performing an
accurate sentiment analysis on the conversations that relate to a brand or product on a
variety of social networks. Once sentiment analysis becomes a mature field, further
research in this area should provide ways to better monitor and manage negative feedback
during marketing campaigns.
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Appendix A
Interview with Jenny Herbison and Rachel Armitage, Skyscanner.net
Interview conducted in person, Edinburgh, 8th March 2011
Transcribed – 2nd April 2011
KG: You just launched your mobile app a couple of weeks ago and the app has already been
downloaded 500,000 times. How did you go about marketing the app?
RA: We have done a number of different things in different markets. Within each of our
managed markets we have identified places where we need to be to get our app reviewed -
whether it’s an aggregate review site or a blogger who we need to appeal to to make sure
our app is reviewed. That’s had a massive difference.
KG: The viral marketing literature talks about finding the right influencers and seeding them
to spread the message. Is that what you think happened in your case?
JH: That’s absolutely how we have achieved this. The best example of doing that was that on
the review sites, we were very lucky that we had good contacts with journalists and
bloggers and we just sent them the information, they reviewed the app for us and then
there are people who trust these reviews and see them as authorities for that, and that’s
when you can see the downloads spikes when they have reviewed the app and given it five
stars. I think as much as anything, your product has to be strong and when you give a good
product to these people, they will give you a good review and that’s key.
MBA Dissertation Page 67
KG: Did you do anything specific to find who the right bloggers are, or which review websites
you should go to?
RA: Yes, definitely. We do that within each market for other reasons. Aside from just
promoting the app, it is important for us to make sure we are on the radar of particular
influencers. We are better at that in certain markets than other
JH: It’s also research. We have a good PR agency. There’s a big crossover – our PR is not
offline anymore, it’s all online. We have to have those contacts. A lot of journalists are not
only writing for newspapers now, they are writing their blogs, they are writing for online
only publications and that’s key to make sure we are online and we have to have that
presence and PR.
KG: Is that mainly desk research or do you use any tools for your research, for example there
are lots of tools on twitter that look at influence, areas of interests, number of followers etc.
RA: Yes, and again it’s different for different markets. We make best use of tools where they
make sense and we certainly do manage SEO’s and making sure who is linking to us and how
those links are being passed on. There are a couple of tools that we started using that are
particularly helpful for tracking relationships. Raven is something we recently started to use.
Managing these contacts throughout the organisation is key whether it’s through SEO,
through PR or anything else. When do an app, we make sure there is an integrated view of
all the contacts.
JH: Also, the same people managing it is important as well. We have country specialists that
look after PR, SEO and all promotions ensuring that they can see the opportunities across
MBA Dissertation Page 68
channels. So, they know that they can utilise their contacts across channels, whereas if you
have people working separately you do not get that joined up marketing approach.
KG: What did you in terms of capacity management i.e. to manage the number of hits on
your servers to downloads the app or hits on your website? Did you have to think about that
at all?
JH: That’s managed by our operations department. They have contingency of managing if
we suddenly have a surge in traffic. We have it all planned out and we have capacity to
manage say 30% more traffic to deal sudden surge
RA: When we were launching the app, a lot of planning went into that as to what was the
right time to launch it and making sure we had additional capacity. It becomes a bit harder
when we have spikes out of the blue.
JH: We recently had a spike because we were on the Italian TV and one of the main thing is
to figure out why there was a spike if we are not already expecting it. If we have knowledge
beforehand and expecting a spike we can warn operations to expect a spike. We also know
seasonality wise when the big months are for travelling so we have that planned out. So, in
the UK January is a big month and most European countries follow the same trend. When
we go into a new market, we have to look at those seasonality trends and make sure we
have the capacity to deal with the traffic.
KG: Did you use any special strategy for Social Media marketing at all?
JH: Again, it depends on the market and what works in the market. For each market we have
main networks and local networks that are tried and tested, but for the mobile app we used
MBA Dissertation Page 69
different people as it’s the different audience and you cannot go with the same people. It’s
a different product, so we have to treat it differently. Everyone in the company was very
proactive in pitching the mobile app. It wasn’t just the specific people, but everyone in the
company. I emailed everyone in my LinkedIn profile to tell them about the app. Everyone in
the company really pushed it personally – via Facebook, emailing their friends. We have
Facebook pages per market and it was put up on those. It wasn’t seen as a marketing
department push, it was seen as a company push and the whole company got behind it
RA: In terms of making people aware of what the response of the app is, we have got
dashboards in the office where all of our operational stats and marketing stats are available
for the whole company. We have a specific mobile app dashboard where we can look at
each market separately and also an aggregate on how the sessions are doing and how the
downloads are doing. That’s quite motivating if you can get that kind of stats up.
KG: Do you measure emotions at all in terms of what people are saying about the app?
JH: We do not at the moment. It is something that’s coming. We are kicking off a project in
house. It’s a resource issue. The PR team certainly measure what is being said. We have
people who email us and every email gets a response, so we do track our reputation online,
but we are taking that one step forward looking at emotions online. We are not there yet.
JH: In my previous experience I worked with clients managing their reputation and looking
at negative emotions, but it’s all very well knowing them but unless you can action on it, it’s
useless. We were giving all this information to our clients, but they couldn’t action any of it
because they didn’t have the resource. That’s where Skyscanner is doing the right thing in
that we are just replying to every email that is coming into us. We reply to anything on
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email, Facebook and Twitter but we cannot do anything beyond that. There are very few
organisations that have the time and resource to engage properly. Also, one thing you do
not want to do is to engage incorrectly because you will end up doing more harm.
RA: If you are dipping in and out, it is unsatisfactory to the user base.
KG: How many people do you have in the organisation that actively engage in or monitor
Social Media?
RA: it’s quite distributed actually. For instance, for people interacting with us through our
website we have one central point of contact. They will make sure that every email is at
least acknowledged and then if a more detailed response is required then it is filtered across
the organisation. For example, it is someone from the Spanish market getting in touch with
us and if this person cannot diagnose the issue and reply, then the query will go out Spanish
team who will then respond. In terms of Social Media, everyone monitors it – the tweets are
on our dashboard, but in terms of responding it’s within the marketing team
JH: We have an active Twitter account which is handled by our comms team, but then Barry
who is one of the cofounder is very active on twitter. I think having one of the cofounders
very active on it is also quite important. We also have specific people from each market who
update Twitter and Facebook pages and that’s on-going – it’s not something we go in and
out of, its constant.
KG: What kind of tools do you use for Social Media and have you come across any tool that
would allow you to work with multiple social networks? Do you find that to be an issue?
MBA Dissertation Page 71
JH: We use a wide range of tools – for paid market channels, for search engine market
channels, for mobile app, for PR. We have to go to different places for each task and it is
very hard. For SEO we are currently using a mixture of Raven, Linkdex, SEOMoz. We also use
Basecamp for project planning and tracking. In terms of analytics we are big fans of Google
Analytics and the various other tools Google provides (Webmaster, Adplanner etc.) and
usually find that their free offering fulfils our needs. That said, for the mobile app, we use
Flurry which specifically tracks mobile sessions. There are some bespoke tools that you can
get. Some of the analytics companies can actually build a specific tool for your needs, but do
not think you can get one off the shelf that does everything. Also, Its very well having all the
data, but you really want tools that let you take action on that data. If there are no actions
that you can do, then it’s useless. There is a lot of resource goes into looking and analysing
the data, so you really want the tools to be tied up with actions and KPI’s.
KG: What are your views on the ROI of Social Media?
JH: One of the reasons why a lot of companies find Social Media quite difficult is that they
find it hard to link it to the KPI’s. The fact that search engines are linking to social networks
now will help the business case. Also, the ads and places on Facebook has had an impact
and it has made it possible for the businesses to see an ROI which we have not seen before
in social media.
RA: I think it’s still a long way to go though - it’s still early days. There are now mechanisms
to prove the ROI, but still the beginnings of the full benefits of the social media, but on the
other hand sometimes people get carried away, it’s just another way of engaging with your
audience, which we do well in other channels so it’s just translating that into social media.
MBA Dissertation Page 72
Appendix B
Interview with Andrew Burnett, Urban Niche
Interview conducted in person, Edinburgh, 10th March 2011
Transcribed – 3rd April 2011
KG: Andrew, could you tell us about your background and how you got into Social Media?
AB: I come from a design background. Way back in 1995 I went to Switzerland and did an
apprenticeship there as a graftsman. I started getting really heavily into vinyl records and
started playing these records in parties with friends. We then started designing our own
flyers. I came back in 2001 and started working with Adobe. The taught me the postscript
workflow for print. Then I went and worked with Macromedia who were looking for a print
specialist. I learnt about HTML, Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks etc. while at Macromedia. So
I got really involved in the web stuff and found it really fascinating. I used to interact with
their users during the day and at night I used to use their products to create various things
like animations, building websites etc. Adobe took over Macromedia in 2005 and I then
decided to do something for myself in 2006. First client I got was spending 20000 pounds a
month on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on Google. I helped them get on the page ranks
organically and at the end of 12 months they were spending 6000 pounds instead of 20000
pounds a month. In 2007 people really started talking about Social Media and the more I
read about it was all about forums, blogs, StumbleUpon etc. and I thought I am already
doing this, so that how I got into it. So, I have been doing it since 2001-2 almost but never
MBA Dissertation Page 73
knew what it was called until maybe 3-4 years ago. I know run a Social Media agency called
Urban Niche.
KG: Your company is known for promoting messages in viral fashion. What is it that you
think makes something go viral?
AB: You need an emotional trigger for anything to go viral. Most people think of viral as
being funny, but it doesn’t need to be funny at all. It could be something that’s informative,
or something that’s tragic – even something like video of JFK getting shot and different
conspiracy theories attached to it, that’s a viral object in itself and that’s not something
done in a humorous way, but you need to have an emotional trigger. A really good example
is parents. As a parent you are always really proud of your kids – it doesn’t matter what the
quality is…if your kid does a drawing, for you it’s much better than any drawing done by the
next kid, so if you can tap into that emotion, that’s where you can get the viral potential
coming out.
KG: What do you think is the role of influencers when it comes to companies trying to create
a viral campaign for their products or services?
AB: Finding specific influencers can be important to a degree, but it’s a cynical company that
tries to do that. There are definitely people who influence things. I help put 10 million extra
hits to a website in 2009 - that was a client of mine, but it still have to have genuine content
on it. In the social web, the main currency is endorsement. We very rarely handle in cash,
very rarely handle in links as we do in traditional web in terms of SEO. So, it’s all
endorsement and if I am going to endorse something in my name, it needs to be bloody
good – it cannot be OK or mediocre. I am getting asked to endorse upwards of 200 things a
MBA Dissertation Page 74
day, so I really need to be able to look at something and very quickly say that’s really good
and that’s worth getting endorsed. In fact, I am being sent around 600 things to look at
daily, but out of things that I am being asked to endorse, there are certain things that are
just spam that I can ignore straight away, some are OK but they are not really good, so at
the end of it I am putting my name to around 100-200 things daily.
KG: As much as that? And how do you spread the message – is it through Twitter or Blogs?
AB: Through every network imaginable – through Twitter…actually a lot of things do come
through Twitter because it is used to share these links, so a lot of asking for endorsement
isn’t a specific request but it just appears in your stream and there are people who you
trust, so you endorse their things and then there is a reciprocal nature to it that people who
trust you will endorse your things, but it has to be a two way exchange. It then comes back
to the fact that if something is genuinely worth talking about, it reaches a certain critical
mass and then it takes off by itself – and that’s what an actual viral is. A really good example
is that I got asked by a bank, which shall remain nameless, to help promote some YouTube
clips that they had. Each of these clips were 15 seconds long and these were add-ins that
were shown before and after the adverts on commercial TV and what they did was that they
took exact same advert that was on TV and put it on YouTube and after 4 weeks that had
something like 60 views on one of the videos. In total there were 6 videos and each of them
had a similar number of viewings, which didn’t even equate to their entire marketing
department watching the video once a day. I had a look at it and I said to them that there is
nothing I can do because the content is useless. On the back of it they spent 7000 thousand
pounds to buy 10000 views and basically there is a call centre somewhere in South East Asia
where people sit there and for a couple of pence watch YouTube videos. So you can buy
MBA Dissertation Page 75
these views but that’s not something that I am in slightest of interest in doing because there
is zero value in actually doing it. For the same amount of money, what we could have done
is we could have taken some outtakes from the video that they had produced, and we could
have made something relatively funny. It wouldn’t have been a hugely viral video but it
would have got at least as many views organically from people who maybe actually want to
use those services that the bank was offering, which is the whole purpose of doing it in the
first place. So, things like that can and do happen all the time.
KG: I came across something similar on Twitter in that there are services that offer you
thousands of followers for a little bit of cash. What do you think of that?
AB: Yes, I get them following me all the time. A really big give away for somebody doing that
is that they may be following say 2000 people and they have got little or no following. That’s
one of the ways I quickly look and identify if that’s a spammer or not. Obviously it’s not
always the case though, for instance if a brand wants to allow people to direct message
them they will follow a lot more people than people following them. So, there are
exceptions to it. So, yes these mechanisms exist but there is zero quality behind it i.e.
getting thousands of followers who are worth nothing. It takes real effort to build your
presence and ultimately you want to be engaging with individual people and that takes real
effort too.
KG: When you go about creating a viral marketing campaign for a product or service, how do
you then share the message?
AB: Sharing it can be as simple as one single tweet. Vast majority of it is just sharing stuff
and I do not get paid for it. The actual hours that I get paid for is maybe 10% of the total
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hours I put in. There’s a lot of network maintenance that goes in there, a lot more than
there is money in it. A recent bad example is the Charlie Sheen story, and I do not get tied
into all the celebrity stuff but it could be a picture of a tweet that he did that you push
towards critical mass as an example, and you generally speaking you have between 20%-
40% success rate.
KG: What do you mean by 20%-40% success rate, can you please elaborate?
AB: That’s the success rate of things that actually achieve this magic number that could be
called as the critical mass for anything to go viral i.e. if goes beyond you pushing the
message
KG: OK, so how do you go about spreading the marketing message and what is this critical
mass and how do you know when something has reached this critical mass?
AB: There are two things to it – one is the actual networks that do the promotional things.
It’s a relatively tight knit community – there are probably a couple of hundred people that
are really any good, maybe 500 but no more than that – and this is global. These are your
influencers / endorsers who are not celebrities. So, if Stephen Fry retweets you, of course it
is going to big because he is got millions of followers on Twitter, but the people who have
got 2000 followers can pull a lot of right strings in the background. Of those people there
are around 500 max. Basically, you all work together, not in a financial sense at all, but there
are favours you trade. So, the reason I need to do anything that’s good is because if I pass
anything that’s rubbish onto these guys then they will say, “Andrew doesn’t get it, so we are
not going to pass him anything”, and this is like a spiral. You basically ask them that if they
like the message then could they spread the word on whichever networks they are part of?
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For example, it could be Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg or whatever, but always if you
genuinely like it because you will have to put your name to it. So that’s one side of it, the
other side is that you have a product that you want to get traction and you have create a
good message then a lot of news websites and blogs start writing about it. Blogs have a lot
of stigma attached to them, but you will be surprised to know how many websites are
actually run on Wordpress. So, these blogs will create content about your product. These
blogs then reach out to power users on various networks because they want readership and
they say, “Have you seen this story?”. And then the whole thing starts getting attention. All
the links from the blogs get shared on these networks and you also get secondary benefits
of SEO from it. And people then talking about it gets converted into downloads. A good
example of it is the work I did with Channel4 in 2008-09 when they had a mobile app that
measured how much alcohol you are drinking. It was aimed at the young market and it went
through a similar process.
KG: Is there a measure of critical mass? How do you know when something has reached a
point where it will go viral?
AB: It is usually very intuitive. You can use thinks like PostRank, Google Analytics at the
domain level. You can measure things like how many mentions did your blog get, how many
tweets were written about it, which pieces of content within your site got more attention. I
look at things at a much more granular level just now. I am looking at a system called
Trak.ly. You give this system a RSS feed or even an URL and the system monitors what’s
happening on that URL – It’s still in beta but it looks at services like StumbleUpon, Facebook,
Twitter etc. and tracks what is happening on these networks that is specific to the URL that
you give it. Digg and StumbleUpon are good networks that give you a lot of traffic overtime
MBA Dissertation Page 78
if the content is good. People are really sceptical these days about marketing, more so in the
social web. So you really need to come up with genuinely good content and once you do,
people will talk about you. There is a concept of Social Object – something people talk
about. It could be an iPad or a blog etc.
KG: Have you come across a good example of a digital product that is designed in a way that
helps its users spread the message? Have you heard of Viber and what do you think about it
in this respect?
AB: Yes, I have Viber on my phone. The guys at Viber have been really clever in the way they
have designed the app. You can automatically access your phone book through Viber and
the app looks through that to see who else is using Viber. It lets you text users to say, “Hey I
am using Viber, why don’t you?”. As soon as you do that, it’s a good product and makes it
easier to find people – you do not need to know their Skype name etc. – it just becomes
really easy for users to spread the word. It’s cheap, its user friendly and it makes it really
easy for me to contact others to ask them to use it as well. Yes, of course I will spread the
message. It’s a no brainer. As soon as you give something to people, where they do not even
need to think, that’s really it. People’s attention spans are so short these days and you really
need to capture people’s attention very quickly and allow them to do things in real time
without any effort at all. And that’s what social media consultancies should really be about –
helping companies create products and services to achieve this – take the decision away
from people or make it so easy that they do not even have to think about it. To an extent it’s
the freemium model. Do I want my choice of free music anytime of the day and night? Yes,
of course I do. Spotify is a great example. Do the ads annoy me? Maybe a bit, but do they
annoy me enough to pay 10 pounds a month? Not yet! They might do! Spotify has reached 1
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million paying subscribers and they have got around 7 million total users. So, 1 in 7 is not
too bad and they get ad impressions as well.
KG: What tools do you use to track what people are talking about in the social web?
AB: For tracking I use a tool called Raven, which is mainly for SEO but they have some really
good social things in there, and it does in on a domain level. For granular things, which is
when you are promoting an individual URL, I use Trak.ly. If we are just starting something
new, then I use PostRank. I have used Radian6 in the past, but to be honest it’s more than
you need. There is another couple of people from Edinburgh who have created a tool called
SoDash, they monitor social space at the domain level as well. So, these are the main tools I
use. I do not think Klout is any good, it’s entirely gameable. The idea behind it is good, but
it’s very difficult to measure the clout on the social web. To measure influence of an
individual, the best thing to ask to see the Google Analytics of their clients, ask to see how
much traffic they have driven. Have a look at their social space.
KG: What are your thoughts on sustaining the level of interests once a product or service
goes viral?
AB: Either you consistently create engaging content that’s going to get spike after spike after
spike, or you should look at it in a way that when you create a spike you increase the
average traffic towards the product/service or the website. So, the plateau after the spike
should be higher than the one before if you have done it cleverly. If you have not done it
cleverly the plateau will be the same and if you have done it stupidly the average will
actually be lower. So, do it cleverly you could for instance incentivise people to come back
the next day, you could create a game out of it. Peaks are more like ego boosts, it gives a lot
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of adrenalin boost, but beyond that what you really want is sustainable increased traffic or
downloads. In terms of getting a spike, it varies, sometimes you will see a plateau for years
before you see the spike. If you want a spike at the launch, then you really need to find
individuals with clout (with a ‘c’), even involve them in the process of creating it.
Understand the socials sharing mechanics of what we are creating. Understand the viral
mechanisms that we can include within the product/services that we are creating. Again,
going back to Viber, if you can send your friends a message that you are using it and they
can use for free, of course people will do it but these things need to be built in right from
the start – that’s almost like an offline viral. You can also build in mechanisms to share
things online within the product, so for example let people talk about the product on
Twitter etc. then the chances are that when you launch you will get a lot more attention. It
is important to note that the earlier you engage the influencers, the better. Once you have
already done it, there isn’t much influencers can do to help design the product/service.
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Appendix C
Interview with Colin Gilchrist, Social Media strategy consultant, SocialTailor.com
Interview conducted in person, Edinburgh, 11th March 2011
Transcribed – 3rd April 2011
KG: What are your views on what companies should do while considering whether or not to
develop viral marketing or social media marketing strategies?
CG: I am employed by businesses to put in a strategy for social media. Every business is very
different and people within it are very different, and their needs and wants are very
different. One of the first things that I look at is when they are developing their strategy,
they need to analyse and assess the employees throughout the business. One of my biggest
tasks is doing that before we start. One of the things I will never forget is being employed a
company – they had a member of staff that hated the company, hated the management but
they were working there because there was nowhere else to work. This is something that
has to be resolved before we could even think about any kind of strategy. Obviously, there is
then the issue of policy documents for the organisation, how individuals react outside the
business and if they are using a network like LinkedIn then who owns the profile – is that the
individual or the company? Little things that are unique to every business. One of the other
things for big corporations is that they need to know that there brand is protected, so what
we need to put in place is crisis management. Crisis strategy in this case, the bottom line is
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that you are listing all the potential things that could go wrong and are likely to go wrong –
and what you are doing is for instance identifying keywords. This is so that when something
happens you can buy them from Google. When people search for these keywords you direct
the traffic to a crisis site and be prepared. The site can have videos from the CEO for
instance. So, this is all done long before you can think about the strategy for the businesses.
Loads of people, especially SME’s miss all of this. You basically need to cover yourself before
you look at strategy. In terms of the strategy, you need to look at content strategy, in fact
there are lots of different elements you need to look at, but you need to figure out who is
doing what? What is that you want to achieve – is it just more sales or is brand awareness,
who is going to deliver it, etc.? I am usually brought into the business usually by their
advertising agency or marketing agency. We do training needs analysis with the key people
and figure what tools to use for a specific business. Then it’s a case of identifying the key
people within various divisions that are able to deliver, monitor and manage these kind of
things. Then you have a Community Manager appointed within the business who is going to
manage all this. My role, having done the training and creating strategy, is then to monitor
all the overall activity and provide assessment, analysis, activity reports and keep them on
the right path. What strategy works for one company can be very different to another
company depending on the people within a company. You have to also get your internal
communications right, so that people are doing exactly the same things between different
departments. They all need to speak the same language and this get very complex. So, all
this is a huge task and takes months and months to sort out.
KG: So, do you consider all sorts of media when you look at the strategy or is it specific to
social media?
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CG: Yes, it all has to be integrated. So for instance you might be working with the advertising
and marketing agencies and for example if you are working with a restaurant you need to
consider menu change, look at the point of sale, things that are on the counter or on the
tables – the leaflets that are lying around – they all have to be integrated. The social media
also takes a lot of resource if you want to be proactive, so the management has to consider
if it is a wise things to say, have a Twitter account for the business, and if so then who in the
company will monitor and manage the engagement with the customers. For example, I am
working with a company that has a Twitter account and they have 6 people managing one
account, they all have abbreviations at the end of their name. What they do is scan and
responding to customers on Twitter. There is another Twitter account for events i.e. for
pushing information, and there is another account purely for marketing and PR stories etc.
So, they have different policies for every Twitter account and it states very clearly on each
account as to what it is used for. So, the companies need to think about what tool is best for
them and how to use social media for doing different things, and how you integrate that
into your overall strategy.
KG: And what is your role in doing these specific tasks?
CG: As a strategist, I do not do any of these specific things. It’s all about finding the people
who are very good at things like Facebook applications, landing pages, blogs, YouTube,
people who are good at delivering the right message etc. In 2009 I was in Las Vegas with
Zappos. In the first 6 years of its existence the company made no money, but Tony (The CEO
of Zappos) was determined that his staff will be happy and his customers are going to be
happy, so he invested heavily in making sure his staff had the best of everything they
needed. They have restaurant where they get free food, they have a breakout area etc.
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Everything was thought about to the nth degree. There will always be someone who is
unhappy but more often than not it’s the outside influence than the inside influence. Not
every business can do all that Zappos have done, but it is important to recognise that if they
are going to have a really success at having brand awareness ambassadors within the
business. Businesses really need to think about their staff first, internal first!
KG: What are views on whether organisations understand what social media can do for
them and getting a buy in from the top level executives in the organisation?
CG: It’s a real challenge. What we are trying to do is to educate the businesses that if people
love their jobs, they will talk about it, and all of a sudden brand awareness can be taken to
the next level. There are lots and lots of things that can be done, but it’s a big buy in and a
lot of these companies do not like change. They do however understand that if you tell
somebody else, then they will be aware of your business, and if they are aware of your
business they might buy some of what you are offering. So, there are lots of little arguments
from these old school managers because they hate the idea that someone could talk bad
about them. This is why you need to do this crisis management exercise first, because when
they buy into the crisis management plan, they are relieved that if something goes wrong,
they are covered.
KG: Have you come across any companies using social media for viral marketing of
products?
CG: My experience stems from a friend of mine named Hugh McLeod (author of the book
Ignore Everybody: And 39 other Keys to Creativity), who was blogging back in 1998-99, who
completely transformed this wine company. Way back in 2002-03 Hugh was at this dinner
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and he liked this particular wine. He tried to find this wine but couldn’t find anywhere in the
shops, so he phoned up the vineyard. The vineyard said to him that they were surprised that
he had it because they didn’t export the wine and somebody must have brought it back with
them. So, Hugh said to the vineyard that he wanted to promote the wine in the UK, so they
gave him some money and loads of wine. He had these dinners up and down the country
where he invited lots of bloggers – this is way before twitter when blogging was big. He said
to them, “ look if you like the wine, then just write about it in your blog and if you write
about it I will give you another bottle”. So, there were all these blogs that were written
about this wine. He printed them all off and knocked on the doors or all the major
superstore chains – Tesco, Asda, Waitrose etc. – and within about 3 years, from importing
about 50 cases a year, they were importing around 250,000 cases a year – and this was all
because of these blogs – just spreading the word about the wine and why cannot you buy it
here. Hugh was also behind Threshers 40% wine vouchers. He convinced Threshers that
there are only about handful of people coming to our website, why do not we offer them
40% off if they print this voucher and buy it from the shop. This voucher idea went viral and
Threshers had to value all the vouchers around the UK. The whole idea was a mistake, but
Threshers honoured it. Threshers obviously made some money though because it ran for
more than one year.
KG: Have you had any other experiences with viral marketing?
CG: I personally do not have a lot of experience with it, but we a while ago we created a
video with puppets singing songs that went viral. It was just as an experiment to see if we
could get the company to break into new areas. But that way mainly by chance rather than
by design. We were just testing some concepts in the market. But, having chatted to a CEO
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of a media company, what he does is that he creates lots and lots of small case studies with
the clients brand to see what works and on what platform, and if one particular thing works
then he would pour lots of money into it to do it properly. So, often, little quirky things will
happen and you wonder where the hell did that come from and they might not have the
brand or product in it – just to see what works. Volkswagen’s sponsorship of steps with
musical notes in a train station and musical bins in a park1 in Sweden and great case studies
for something like that. Volkswagen’s brand only appears as association at the very end but
it does something good for the environment or health, and they use the technology in their
cars as BlueMotion technology. Creating something that could go viral takes a lot of
thought, work and time.
KG: What are you views on how the businesses can go about finding people who could be
used to spread the message, similar to bloggers that you mentioned earlier?
CG: There are lots and lots of different ways. For example, AllTop.com which is an aggregate
news websites, advanced blog search through blogsearch.google.com (you can identify
people by geography, particular interest etc.). You can also look at something like Klout to
assess what their reach is out with their own blog. I write a blog for a magazine and in last
few months I have had regular visitors in hundreds and already companies are approaching
me to promote their products. Normally it may take years to establish yourself, but if you
are clever about how you position yourself you can speed it up. Also, a blog is not corporate,
it’s opinionated. Finding blogs that are opinionated but will also talk about your product is
important. They cannot always be bought, it depends on the ethics on them, but if they can
1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=2lXh2n0aPyw
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be bought it’s probably not good for you the companies. So, you just have look around and
find your way, and you got to look for people who are good in a particular sector.
KG: Once you have identified the influencer, how do you go about measuring the success of a
campaign, monitoring and measuring it?
CG: I use a company called Forth Matrix. It is a business that does exactly that. They will tell
you your brand spread, not from the keywords, but from the actual conversations. They will
track back all the visitors on the website on the back of your release of some information.
Instead of having to look at separate tools like Google Analytics, Social Mention etc., Forth
Matrix does everything for you.
KG: Do they look at all social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, other review websites
etc.?
CG: Yes, they look at everything. So, for example if you are Cadburys and you have releasing
a new product, you send out the release to specific people to write about it, Forth Matrix
can track everything, anything that has ever been on internet, not just on social media.
KG: Once you have successfully made a product message go viral, is there a way to make it
sustainable?
CG: It cannot be made sustainable. The concept of viral by its very nature is based on virus
that spreads and then dies. To sustain it is like trying to keep someone happy all the time –
it’s never going to happen, because to experience real happiness you have to be miserable
at some point. To make and sustain, what you want is steady growth. Once it’s spiked it’s
great, but then let’s have a steady growth, and then another peak and then another peak.
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Trying to sustain the spike is very very difficult. This is because what you are doing is you are
shocking people to get them interested. To constantly shock people, the campaign has to be
so entertaining that everyone is going to love it, but you will never be able to make
everyone happy and sustain it. It’s very very unusual
KG: I was following this app on Twitter in December last year, it’s called Viber. They had a
million downloads in just 5 days. My initial reaction was that this must just be a spike and it
will die down, but then I had a look at their downloads in February this year and they had
achieved 10 million downloads. I found it fascinating that they were able to sustain that kind
of interest. What do you think could be the reasoning behind it?
CG: It’s about getting a community to grow. To get a million downloads in just 5 days you
have seed the idea with very influential people, so first of all you have to identify very
influential people and speak to them. In case of digital products, you could perhaps engage
with those first wave users, do polls and surveys and get their feedback to tweak the
product and let them spread the message forward.
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Appendix D
Email interview with Tera Dargavel, Online community manager at KIK interactive, Inc.
Interview via email questionnaire, April 10th, 2011
1. Are all digital products suitable for viral marketing?
TD: Yes. Viral marketing is not limited to certain products because the way that anything is
marketed is by telling a story that people are going to relate to or connect with. The way
that the story is told can be done in any medium (film, picture, etc.) and as we have seen -
an infographic is just as able to go viral on the Internet as a well done video. So, I believe
that, at this point, all digital products are able to be marketed in a way that allows for viral
distribution because if the piece of content can be found on the Web then it has the
potential to be distributed virally. I don't think that in marketing there is such thing as
reaching too wide of an audience - so whether your digital product can actually be used by a
niche audience there is no harm in any marketing effort going viral.
2. What does a company need to do before they consider viral marketing as a method to
market their products/services i.e. company level strategy, capacity management etc.?
TD: Always remember that viral marketing is still marketing. It needs to tell a story and
engage the audience with the product or service and the brand. It must be on-brand - it can
be quite confusing to see a very off-brand viral marketing effort (for example, Groupon's
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superbowl commercial - I don't think the company wants to be seen as insensitive and
cutthroat). Viral marketing is a large effort too - the medium must be decided on, the
marketing story and how it is going to be presented and then the distribution efforts. Often,
the medium is a video and the content involves something that makes people feel sympathy
(or empathy), or is something humorous, or is something extraordinary to witness. Then the
marketing content must be distributed across the Web and become high frequency, after
that there is not much that can be done - it's up to the audience to start sharing that
content with their friends.
It's important to remember that marketing efforts have to be very high-quality. The story
and messaging has to make sense and align with the brand - because people nowadays are
much more savvy about marketing and can see right through blatant, selfish efforts to get as
many eyes on the company name and message as possible. That's the last thing, before
attempting to market something virally ask "what is this piece of content going to give back
to people and how" - usually you can discover some way that people benefit from a piece of
content.
3. How to create a viral marketing campaign i.e. - the role of influencers, quality of products,
creative content (video etc.)?
TD: I sort of answered this above - you can follow a number of paths to viral marketing by
brainstorming and creating the content for the product, and then by distributing it on the
Web and making it very easy to share the content with friends (i.e., do not put it behind a
pay wall! It will never go viral). Influential places, like certain websites, are often targeted
more than just specific people.
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For example, in the app space you may really hope that your news (press releases, blog
posts) gets picked up by Hacker News because it's one of the most widely read news sources
for Silicon Valley and the tech industry. You may try to distribute your content to journalists
at various publications (Huffington Post, Tech Crunch, etc.) or you may just submit it to
Reddit or other link collecting sites like that. Again, there is no tried and true method to viral
marketing but there are best practices.
4. How to measure the spread of the message and return on investment?
TD: The return on investment is going to be different for every viral marketing case. The
spread of the message is much easier to monitor and measure. You need to use any of the
many, many analytics tools or social media listening tools that is available on the Web.
There are many free tools and there are also more powerful tools that one pays for. What
these tools do is listen to either the whole web or just parts of it. For example, HootSuite is
very useful for monitoring Twitter. You search for keywords, your product name, your @
mentions, etc. and you are able to respond to tweets and aggregate information.
Often, the spread of the message can be measured by how many times it has been tweeted
and liked. Say, the viral marketing content was a video you can measure where it's been
watched, if it's on YouTube you can see how many views it has had - there are lots of ways
to measure spread and everyone does it a little differently. Return on investment is much
harder. What was the goal of the video? Was that achieved? Whether it was to make a
brand name a household name or to actually get more people to buy Old Spice deodorant -
each company and brand is going to measure success differently.
5. How to manage the positive and negative conversation on social networks?
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TD: The only way to ever feel like the conversations on social networks are manageable is by
constantly monitoring them, and using discretion as to when, as a brand, to jump in and
respond. You must have a powerful tool, usually a dashboard, that makes it easier to see
and respond to conversations happening on different social networks. Commonly, the
conversations that a brand, especially a start-up brand, can take part in occur on Twitter and
on blogs. A brand, or even a company representative, is much more able to answer
questions or concerns in blog comments or by responding to tweets. Negative conversations
are usually mediated by explanation.
6. Is it possible to make such campaigns sustainable in medium to long terms? If so, then
how?
TD: In a way - I think that it is possible. Viral marketing is meant to be consumed quickly - a
piece of content going viral is usually quite popular for a week or so - it accumulates huge
amounts of views and sharing and then it dies away. But, take a look at Old Spice - I think
they're trying to make their viral marketing campaign a little more long lasting. Their
marketing now has a theme - the Old Spice Guy - and they are able to make many pieces of
content that share that same theme that went viral in the first place. So, when you have a
good idea you can stick with it and reiterate - but there is a fine line between a theme and
overkill.
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Appendix F
1. (Aaker & Smith 2010) - Four winged framework to get amplification: All four
“wings” of the dragonfly act in concert. The first wing is focus: what is your single
small, concrete goal? That goal should be measurable over time so you see how
close you’re getting to it. The second wing is grabbing attention, making people look.
That is very similar to more traditional means of marketing. The third wing is
engagement, telling the story, which also has been important in the past. But how do
you enable action on the part of employees and customers? That is very new to the
social-media world. When you execute on these four wings—when four small acts
are taken in concert—that’s when you get amplification or infectious action
2. (Dye 2000) - List of powerful tactics for creating a VM campaign: Seed the vanguard
i.e. the influencers, Ration supply, Exploit icons, Tap the power of lists, Nurture the
grass roots
3. (Kozinets et al. 2010) - Four important factors that influence WoM: Its placement
within character narratives or the personal stories related to particular character
types, particular forums where the WOM communication takes place, the affect of
communal norms that govern the expression, transmission and reception of a
message and its meanings, and the effect of the promotional characteristics of a
WOM campaign over its message and meaning.
4. (Kozinets et al. 2010) – WoM campaigns based on the type of product: Technology
and other high involvement products would tend to naturally inspire more
evaluation, while fashion and entertainment products result in more embracing
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narratives. Hard-sell offers result in more explanation and evaluation, while soft-sell,
long-term brand-building campaigns inspire endorsing or embracing narratives.
WOMM programs that overtly seek recommendations, mentions, or reviews may
encourage narrative responses using the evaluation strategy.