Viral Marketing: Part I

Viral marketing is one of the hot topics in online marketing right now, though it is not a technique that is exclusive to online promotions. While this technique has always existed, the advent of social media has exponentially increased your ability to get noticed. For those of you who've never heard the term, viral marketing refers to a marketing campaign that spreads naturally through word of mouth (or links across the web). If used correctly viral marketing can be one of the powerful promotional devices you can use. This two part blog series will (hopefully...) give some insight about how you can make it work for your foodservice establishment.

Part I: The Preliminaries

The Exciting Parts of Viral Marketing
With viral marketing, you have the potential to exponentially grow your popularity because people tend to pay more attention to what their friends are excited about rather than direct advertising campaigns. You can reach a wider audience and help create and retain a loyal customer following. Getting repeat customers can make your business. This type of marketing can also be considerably cheaper than other, traditional, campaigns.

Make Sure You Know What You're Getting Into
If you are new to viral marketing, there are several issues that you need to be aware of. These types of campaigns require a lot of work up front. Unlike traditional advertising, you do not have any time to tweak the campaign once it goes live, so you need to take a great deal of care to make sure the campaign is exactly what you want. One of the potential downsides of viral marketing is that it is considerably more difficult to make sure it reaches your target audience. Since word will spread naturally, you need to make sure to tailor your campaign to specifically appeal to your intended demographic. The single most important thing to keep in mind when using this technique is that you *must* have a promotion that is unique and attention grabbing, or else you are just wasting your time. If you want people to talk about you, then you have to give them something to talk about.

Know Your Target Audience
In order to combat the issue that all viral campaigns must face (not reaching the right demographic), you need to make sure you have a very specific idea of what your target audience is. Who are you trying to appeal to? The stay at home mother with 2 kids? The edgy rocker in his/her early 20s? The wine connoisseur? The more specific you can get, the better. Too many restaurants get stuck in the idea that they will appeal to everyone. You will never appeal to everyone, regardless of whether you are a small family-owned joint or a major chain. Decide your demographic and then monitor the viral campaign to see what other demographics your very targeted promotion is appealing to. This is a much better way of discovering new potential customers than just trying to appeal to "everyone."

Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, check back for Part II: How to Actually Create a Viral Marketing Campaign!