Welcome to the Digital Web 2.0 Academy

BOOSTING VIRAL CAMPAIGNS WITH DIGITAL’S TEN STEPS MODEL

To bring some marketing discipline and structure to viral and buzz marketing, we designed the ten step model. It mirrors our ten steps in media planning, and by following through it will equip you not only with the roadmap, but also with a process for learning and becoming ever smarter in your digital marketing.

It’s designed to be a flexible tool, but everyone who goes through the programme comes away with a clear blueprint that can then be opened up to their team, agencies and partners.

A few areas really deserve highlighting though. When setting objectives ensure that they’re SMART from the start; it will take a few campaigns before there is enough baseline data to understand what ‘SMART’ looks like, and as we always stress in the Viral & Buzz Marketing Academy, watch out for SMRT objectives ;-)

When it comes to learning, treat your first digital marketing campaigns as research exercises. Put significant energy into the learning and analysing of campaigns when they finish, and then refine your model for the next time around. Get the models right and your digital marketing will become easier and scale. You don’t have to be a digital expert to turn your activities into a learning engine that feeds back on itself.

And if you come across great viral marketing then let us know – we’ll take a look and might be able to include it here in the viral marketing training programmes.

Find out more in the Viral Academy Classroom: www.DigitalTrainingAcademy.com/viralmarketing

UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGE THROUGH THE INFECTION MODEL

Viral marketing isn’t something you can control, but it is something you can enable. There are several theoretical models we use to help explain how you can get your viral marketing to work. Remember that there’s still nothing that beats a great idea - and you can throw all the marketing techniques you like at something and it might never fly – but by breaking down the challenges into their parts makes the task more manageable and the results more effective.

Follow the medical analogy of disease diffusion can be really useful. Years ago I was lucky enough to spend some time with epidemiologists who were looking at how you model and structure disease diffusion. We were exploring infection rates and the pathways for diseases in rural Africa and urban Europe, and although our interests were in disease containment rather than proliferation, it taught me how strong the analogy is for the spread of ideas. Because of the importance of disease, there’s a mass of literature and an army of researchers that the marketing industry can learn from.

When we’re applying the model to viral and buzz marketing, some simple steps to tackle are:

1. Is the message ‘infectious’ enough to spread?
2. Are there barriers to the spread that can be removed?
3. Are there people who can transmit the message effectively?
4. Is the social landscape able to facilitate the spread of that message?

Following it through can lead to surprising implications. On the most recent Digital Viral Academy, one of the things I took away was how it might not be the expected top selling products that are the ones to focus on. Thinking through which messages are easiest to absorb, process, and act on could see relatively small turnover products used as the tests for viral campaigns. The message needs to be clear at first glance and have a logical connection in the mind of the recipient to help them uncover the benefit of forwarding it on to more of the ‘people like me’ that viral relies upon.

Find out more in the Viral Academy Classroom: www.DigitalTrainingAcademy.com/viralmarketing

SIMPLE STEPS TO HELP THE VIRAL PROCESS

We’ve been running the Digital Viral Marketing Academy since the summer of 2004, and yesterday’s classes back here in London were a great chance to reflect on the low cost routes as well as the big budget stuff. Here in the Digital Classroom there are links to some of the video material that is so often front of mind when we talk about ‘viral marketing’, but it’s worth remembering that some of the simplest viral techniques come free and can be added to any web page.

• ‘Forward to a friend’ – helping the information find other ‘people like me’
• ‘Bookmark this page’ – helping the customer find you again easily
• Email – helping build that relationship over time
• Mobile news alerts – for the right group and the right message
• RSS feeds – helping the customer find you again easily
• Syndicated content – making the most of traffic on other sites that are out there
…And along the way, checking that your harnessing your navigation so customers can find what they want effectively is an equally important issue.

But before any of it goes into place, plug in the web analytics so you can see what the baseline is for audiences. Some digital marketers are visionary and brilliant enough to intuitively get it right straight away, but for most, the safety of the numbers and the classic approach to testing cause and effect, will be the smartest way forward.

Find out more in the Viral Academy Classroom: www.DigitalTrainingAcademy.com/viralmarketing

Welcome to your Digital Training Academy: a great way to boost your knowledge and skills, helping you and your team get the most from digital marketing, publishing and communications.

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