New Media Buzz

You’re no doubt familiar with the term Viral Marketing. At its most basic definition, Viral Marketing is getting people to pass on (most often via email) your marketing campaign. This could be a game, video, an image, a link to webpage or blog post.

Most often these campaigns drive brand awareness rather than individual product sales. Burger King’s Subservient Chicken may not have driven home the "Eat this specific chicken sandwich" message as well as say, Chik-fil-a’s long-running adorably illiterate cow campaign. But I’m sure that during the height of that campaign, many people who were deciding between fast-food joints gave BK a try when they might not have before. To many large-scale practitioners, viral campaigns are about a favorable brand image and lots of good WOM (word of mouth).

If you’re a company living in the B2B space, you may be under the impression that popular consumer sites offer viral features that are simply too expensive and overarching for the B2B world. Even though many of the highly-publicized viral campaigns often feature absurd videos, risqué content, games, or a combination thereof, there’s still something B2B marketers can take away from these consumer techniques to exponentially increase brand awareness and sales.

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