Viral Marketing:

• The rapid adoption of a product or passing on of an offer to friends and family through word-of-mouth (or word-of-email) networks.  Any advertising that propagates itself the way viruses do.

Viral is growing, no pun intended.  Traditionally this has been referred to as word-of-mouth, however with the advent of our dear interwebs here, viral can mean the spread through video, email, social networks, blogs, etc.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

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I should talk about this topic more, but online is just SO fascinating and I’ve been immersed in off line for the last 4 years so it’s routine to me. Since we discontinued our old poorly performing affiliate program at the beginning of February, I’ve been focused on growing our new Reseller Program and much more improved Affiliate Program. We decided, as I’m sure we’re legally bound, to pay out all pending commissions, regardless of whether or not they met our minimum threshold. This meant 400+ checks being processed by accounting, then printed, then signed, then put into envelopes, then posted, then actually put into the mail. This took about a month to get through the internal systems and the checks were sent out a couple weeks ago.

Since many of our affiliates in the old program had long abandoned the program, a lot of checks are coming back unable to be delivered. I’ve been contacting people and resending the checks as I get new addresses, and with every check I’m resending I’ve been throwing in one of my business cards. I realize today that this is the epitome of online marketing (affiliate payments) meets off line marketing (business cards).

It just goes to show that you can’t keep exclusively to one medium or another. There’s such a vast audience out there for your product or service – and they’re not all going to be able to be found in one place. It’s important – maybe now more than ever – to integrate your direct mail marketing with landing page testing. Put your produced commercials for television onto the web and get a piece of the viral marketing cookie. Remember the old adage “don’t put all your eggs in once basket” and don’t put all your money into PPC or direct mailing.

Diversify your marketing efforts and remember that just because you’re an internet geek, not all your customers are.

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ALL FREAKIN’ DAY I’ve seen the likes of Gary Vaynerchuk, Ze Frank, and others go back and forth on Twitter about joining the Very Green Team and wondered if they’d lost their natural minds. It looks like there’s a color war going on… just something to pass the time. Gary explains why he’s so passionate about the color green on his website. This is a great example at viral marketing at it’s finest. Sam Harrelson also posted about the phenomenon at CostPerNews. So take a page from the Garyvee book and do something viral!

EDIT: OK, Ze was kind enough to explain what the heck is going on with these color wars in his blog.

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