What makes viral marketing viral?

Everyone would love to have their product, hotel, agency, or service talked about by others (in a positive light) and have the referrals that are generated by word of mouth.

But what is it that makes this type of viral marketing really work?

Is it the ability of a marketing company to get the information about YOU into the hands of the “right” person? The right person in this case is the “movers and shakers” who can make something famous with one comment.

Or is it inherent to the product or service itself?

In The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell points out that for all trends there comes a point when the trend crosses a threshold and tips to spread like wildfire. Wouldn’t we all want that to happen with our product, service, or idea?

Jupiter Media just came out with a report stating that viral marketing campaigns are falling short of the goal. Only 15% of the marketing campaigns initiated by marketing firms were able to get people to talk about a specific product or service.

In a world where so many people are communicating every day about thousands of things, how can marketing campaigns fall so short of the goal? The key is – they were marketers paid to try to persuade people to talk about something… not quite the same as Gladwell’s findings.

The key to this all is very simple: Provide a product, service, or idea that is so good people want to talk about it! You can pay people thousands of dollars to initiate a viral campaign to persuade people to talk but in all honesty, it won’t work. The passion and enthusiasm are missing and that is enough to make people ignore the message.

When people are passionate about what you have to offer, they will speak to anyone and everyone who will listen to you without having been paid a cent.

Be careful, the reverse is also true if they don’t like you with a passion! An incentive to always do your best.