I read a very interesting set of data on Viral Marketing Programs from MarketingSherpa today. MS conducted a survey of 790 viral marketers.

Here are some of the highlights:

1. The top two reasons for Business-to-Consumer viral marketing campaigns are branding/awareness (32%) and Direct Sales (19%) for B2B it was lead generation (32%) and branding/awareness (22%).

2. Based on what marketers are using to measure success, the top two goals are site visitors and email list subscribers (no surprises there).

3. The top three viral marketing methods that have reported great results are cool microsites (53%), video clips (47%) and online games, quizzes and polls (39%).

4. Top 5 reasons for using Viral Marketing: Reach can explode, it’s cheap, provides highly qualified leads, breaks through the online/email clutter, it’s cool.

5. Top three Viral Marketing tactics used by experienced viral marketers: encouraging email forwarding (91% - WOW), Tell a friend boxes on site (sweeps, coupons, etc - 81%), Online games, quizzes, polls (59%).

There are some really interesting data points on the fastest growing brands online (Myspace up 750%), and some very interesting viral marketing suggestions. You have to remember that this is aimed toward the heavy hitters in the business, but it’s still very interesting and fun to read.

I find it very interesting that the top two tactics that the people who get paid a lot of money to do this for the big name sites use are tell a friend and email forwarding. If you’re not using these effectively on your site stop reading this and get to work getting everything set up.

Take a look at MarketingSherpa.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 4:16 am.
Filed under Viral Marketing, Internet Marketing.
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