Conclusions from a B2B viral marketing campaign

Viral marketing campaigns are attractive because if they gain momentum they become self-perpetuating. The marketing message is passed from person to person without constant intervention and investment by the marketer. These campaigns can gain the interest and attention of a large number of people at a low cost.

But can this attention affect the minds of your prospects and turn into sales leads, particularly for a company that sells to other businesses, not consumers?

A case study of Arbor Networks shows that it can be done. With a lot of careful planning and heavy lifting at the front-end.

The full case study can be found at Marketing Sherpa (How to Make Your Technology Brand Famous Via Podcasts, Blogs and Games: 12-Month Viral Marketing Plan, subscription required) and Jordan McCollum wrote a good summary of the case at Marketing Pilgrim.

Arbor Networks is in the very competitive enterprise information security business. The purchase decision is a serious one for the customer because the decision affects the company’s ability to protect its vital information systems.

The viral marketing plan Arbor developed for 2006 included a series of campaigns that would be communicated across several media vehicles. These campaigns centered around an online game, a series of podcasts, a blog, and continued production of educational white papers.

The program was very successful, with 40,000 visitors to the blog in the first nine months, 24,000 downloads of the podcast episodes, and generation of sales leads from white paper offers, banner ads, and email newsletter sponsorships.

What can we learn from Arbor’s experience?

Look at how the competition is communicating with customers and do something different.
Arbor realized that their competitors all used the color blue for their ads and that there were no people. So their ads used a different color (green) and featured real people.

Create content that is both real and engaging. Continue to develop new fresh material.
The blog was written by subject matter experts in the company: researchers, developers, and customer support engineers. The podcasts were dramatizations of information security breaches. The game was fun to play.

Multiple campaigns across multiple media
The core of the program was the blog and podcast series. But Arbor supplemented them with online and offline promotions at shows, in publications, and online advertising.

Ongoing campaigns that sustained the communication
They continued to add material to the blog and the podcast series. Promotions were ongoing.

Integration between the campaigns
Bloggers at Arbor were given digital cameras to take pictures of people at trade shows and post them on a photo site. After the trade show announcement of the podcast series, Arbor continued to promote the series through print ads, email newsletter ads, and online ads.

Campaigns that create awareness and that generate sales leads.
The campaigns did more than just create awareness. They led those who were interested to register for a white paper, to swipe their card at a trade show, to sign up for the podcast feed.