7 Viral Marketing Campaigns You Should Steal Ideas From
Viral marketing is a great, low-cost way to spread an idea, your name, your brand because if you have the right ingredients your idea can take off and spread like wild fire…without you even breaking a sweat.
The following is a list of some effective campaigns from 2006 and the first half of 2007.
The sheer range of these campaigns proves practically any marketer targeting any demographic online can use viral successfully. One note:
Micro-budgets still OK.
One of the most popular campaigns we picked was created on a $1000 budget. A few others were created by in-house shops or single-man operations. That’s not to say you shouldn’t hire an experienced viral agency to help (many of the best are represented here too.) But, if you can’t afford it and you are a *very* clever and/or lucky marketer, viral can still be do-it-yourself tactic.
Now…for that list. Real estate agents of all stripes–prepare to be inspired!
1. Known as “Real Estate’s Greatest Sales Legend,” the slimy Ted Truit and his interactive website (quiz and all!) created a firestorm of response from Virginia REALTORS, and birthed an effective image campaign for VAR.
2. 258,000. That’s the number of people Obama’s viral marketing machine has encouraged to donate to him during his Democratic nomination campaign.
3. I think the prizes are the best I’ve seen for an SEO keyword contest, but that alone doesn’t explain the success of v7’s viral campaign. This got press from USA Today even.
4. This campaign is proof that if you blatantly appeal to bloggers’ egos and desire for more traffic/attention, they will in turn happily link to you.
5. What I really liked about this knife website was that the viral element came out of left field: a police newsletter picked the demonstration video up to warn police officers about it. The article basically said “watch out for this.” Sales went crazy…all to police officers.
6. According to the Inman Blog, at the Real Estate Connect SF August 2 Keynote address, Hugh MacLeod explained how a viral marketing campaign he engineered for a South African winery, Stormhoek, has helped boost sales from 50,000 cases to a projected 250,000 cases in 2007.
7. Finally (and possibly my favorite because of the humor), this DVD video called The Pitch, Poker and the Public published on YouTube by Dave Lakhani created a sensation in the Internet marketing arena and sold a thousand books in one day.
So what did you think? Are you inspired to create a compelling video that will rapidly spread through your market? Maybe even the nation? Have any suggestions for effective viral campaigns that I haven’t mentioned here? Or am I off my rocker and viral campaigns are a waste of time in the real estate market?
I want to hear from you!
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