Here at The B2B Lead we want to congratulate our Lead Blogger, Pam O’Neal Mickelson, for her case study on Viral Marketing in the Marketing Sherpa B-to-B Lead Generation Handbook. The following is a two part post that details the planning, execution and results of the campaign. Congrats Pam!

The B2B Lead Vidcast – A Case Study in Viral Video Marketing

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post contains a long post on controversy in the field of viral marketing and a long (30 min) video case study on viral video marketing presented by Pam O’Neal Mickelson. It presents advice on what to do and what not to do when it comes to producing and distributing a viral marketing campaign.

Viral video marketing has become a hotbed of controversy these days! Who would have believed that videos like Netcosm, Mr. Happy Crack, Benny Lava, and Tay Zonday could be tainted by heated debates over the validity of viral marketing and the techniques used by some to promote their campaigns?

Still the debate rages: Many B2B Marketers think viral marketing is like “lightening in a bottle.” They advise there is no simple formula and you cannot possibly orchestrate such a campaign because both content and timing are so critical to viral success. Others, will argue that they can concoct a viral campaign for anyone and will go to just about any lengths to do so.

While most will agree that content and timing are both crucial, I do believe that almost every B2B Marketer has a successful viral or Word of Mouth campaign in them. And, I also believe that they don’t have to resort to trickery or deceit to attract tens of thousands of viewers for their YouTube video. In fact, I believe the more authentic you are, the stronger the Word of Mouth effect. Let me explain.

The B2B viral video campaign NetQoS ran earlier in 2007 is a case study in how to package relevant and compelling content and get the word out to the right audience using Social Media. We used entertaining content that was compelling to our target audience, played down production value and branding, and then got the word out to the people who cared – technology professionals. We didn’t trick viewers into YouTube with headlines like “Stolen NASCAR” just to boost our numbers. By taking this high road we were able to generate more than 66,000 views, and importantly almost 2,000 leads and a half a million dollars in pipeline.

Unfortunately, not all B2B Marketers are using a transparent or authentic approach. A recent widely criticized Tech Crunch post written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg advising marketers to pay for blog coverage and trick viewers into viewing videos has triggered a firestorm of controversy that threatens to ruin the discipline for the rest of us. Much like spammers ruined email marketing.

Greenberg kicks off his post with this inauspicious intro: “Over the past year, I have run clandestine marketing campaigns meant to ensure that promotional videos become truly viral, as these examples have become in the extreme.” He might as well have run an ad inviting people to bash him. Or was that his intent? This is almost as bad as the sales letter I received from a company offering to post “laudatory comments” on our video postings or blog articles in an effort to build a following. I felt like I needed to take a shower after reading that letter and this post! (As you’ll read later I was not the only one.)

Greenberg also advised “So how do we get the first 50,000 views we need to get our videos onto the Most Viewed list?

• Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.
• Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.
• MySpace: Plenty of users allow you to embed YouTube videos right in the comments section of their MySpace pages. We take advantage of this.
• Facebook: Share, share, share. We’ve taken Dave McClure’s advice and built a sizeable presence on Facebook, so sharing a video with our entire friends list can have a real impact. Other ideas include creating an event that announces the video launch and inviting friends, writing a note and tagging friends, or posting the video on Facebook Video with a link back to the original YouTube video.
• Email lists: Send the video to an email list. Depending on the size of the list (and the recipients’ willingness to receive links to YouTube videos), this can be a very effective strategy.
• Friends: Make sure everyone we know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.

As you can imagine, Greenberg’s post was slammed big time for advocating “techniques including writing fake sensational titles and creating controversy by having arguments in the comments of a video using multiple YouTube accounts.” I can’t help but notice, however, that while Greenberg may be unpopular with the readers of Tech Crunch, he is apparently very popular among advertisers. A look at both the quantity and the prominence of his clients shows that there is huge demand and high stakes around viral marketing.

Viral video, much like televised infotainment, remains one of the best ways to broadcast your brand and message to a very large audience. Combine it with a blog or other social media component, and it can be an ingenious way to build a large following. And, unlike televised infotainment, it doesn’t come with a multi-million dollar price tag. The NetQoS viral video project, for example, cost only $6,500 to produce and will likely generate a 6,000+% ROI. Importantly, viral campaigns come with the added bonus of Word of Mouth cache. Viewers are guaranteed to tune in when the content has been recommended by a friend or colleague, or when the buzz has reached a level that demands their attention.

It’s easy to see why companies such as Greenberg’s firm are in high demand. And, while what he does may feel unethical and deceptive, is it really so different from the infotainment that we call reality TV? I mean, wasn’t The Apprentice just one long commercial for Burger King and Yahoo? Isn’t Project Runway a great promotional vehicle for Banana Republic and Bitten by Sarah Jessica Parker? Aren’t these all examples of Marketing disguised as entertainment? Aren’t we, as viewers, tricked into tuning in to these hour-long commercials by slickly produced teasers of apprentices battling to the finish or snarky fashion designers back stabbing each other to get ahead?

In an increasingly marketing-averse world, tricking your audience into tuning in may seem the only way to get your message out. But this is extremely short sighted. If you’re not looking at viral marketing with a long term perspective, you are over looking one of the most valuable aspects of this approach – the ability to quickly and inexpensively build a community of interest. The Word of Mouth aspect of viral marketing gives Marketers a powerful way to attract a following of media, blogerati, influencers, and–most importantly–buyers.

As this video case study of the NetQoS network monitoring campaign illustrates, just about anyone can be successful with viral marketing if they take an authentic, transparent, relevant and entertaining approach. Look at the fantastic job Dr. Pepper did with the Cherry Chocolate Rain viral video or this clever Symantec video. It may not always guarantee a million views, but it will earn you respect and a loyal following over the long term.In the next B2B Lead post I’ll enumerate the 20 ideas that made the NetQoS campaign a success leading to a Marketing Sherpa Viral Marketing Hall of Fame inclusion. I’ll also present some of the visuals that might have been difficult to see on this video.Put These 20 Ideas into Action for B2B Viral Marketing SuccessAttention Conservation Notice: The following post contains 20 ideas for packaging, promoting and tracking the results of your viral video campaign. It also contains visuals from The B2B Lead Vidcast on viral video marketing.As I’ve written previously on The B2B Lead, many Marketers advise there is no simple formula for making your campaign go viral. Others argue that they can help anyone go viral and will use less than authentic and transparent techniques to do so. As you can see from this vidcast case study for a B2B viral video campaign NetQoS ran, it is possible to be successful without resorting to trickery. It just takes relevant content, clever packaging, a solid conversion strategy, and transparent outreach via Social Media.

However, even with a good idea and superb execution, there are no guarantees. Viral marketing is like walking a tight rope. There is a fine line between success and failure. There are no assurances. No opportunities for testing messages. And it could backfire or simply fizzle. But the great thing about walking a tight rope is that no one can pass you.

Want to improve your odds in the world of B2B viral marketing? Here is a roundup of the 20 ideas that made the NetQoS network monitoring campaign a success, and some of the charts and graphs that you might not have been able to see on the video.

Viral Video Idea #1: Set clear objectives for your campaign. For NetQoS, we wanted to use viral marketing to increase brand awareness, break into the blogosphere in a big way and increase web traffic and leads. We set specific objectives and measured our success.

Viral Video Idea #2: Be relevant. Make sure your message and content are relevant both to your company and to your target audience. Because without relevant content, you may hit a home run but effectively strike out. Kind of like that dancing baby concept from the 90’s. Can you name the company behind that one?

Viral Video Idea #3: Know your audience. And, I’m not talking about their pain points and job roles. I’m talking more about psychographics and behavioral characteristics. Understand what interests them, where they live and work, how they get their information. For NetQoS, we knew that our audience would be a great viral target—they were comfortable online, 80% read blogs or are active in blogging, 84% start their search on a search engine. Most are smart and cynical audience—marketing averse.

Viral Video Idea #4: Be opportunistic. – Have your FlipVideo on you at all times to capture a great idea or moment. I heard a story about one of the leading open source database providers recently. Apparently, a Marketer for that company had a great idea for a video. He Twittered his circle of contacts to round up a video camera and by the time he was ready to shoot, his competitor had already heard about the idea and beat him to the punch.

For us, we were lucky enough to have the right video material right under our nose. A senior researcher had developed a 3D video-game like data visualization of our product data. It converted live Network Performance data from our products into 3D images. It was unique and very, very relevant.

Viral Video Idea #5: Have fun. As I wrote in this blog post from The B2B Lead, you should make fun of yourself before someone else does. We were extremely kitschy because we knew the quality of the graphics was not up to the realistic standards of today’s CGI. It had a very 80’s Tron like feel so we made the most of that. We didn’t just post the clip. We named it, packaged it and added humor at every turn.

Viral Video Idea #6: Develop a seeding and conversion strategy prior to posting your video. In 30 days with less than $7,000, our in-house team along with our team at Porter Novelli developed the strategy and materials for a complete viral video experience including seeding the campaign, welcoming viewers and offering additional content as well as a program for building a following after the campaign.

Viral Video Idea #7: In the world of viral video, production value isn’t important. In fact I would discourage it. Ours looked like some techies had cooked it up in their spare time. In fact, that’s how it started. But we did put a great deal of thought into the packaging, promotion and conversion strategy for the campaign. It is important to always provide a thumbnail image of what the viewer is getting.

Viral Video Idea #8: Protect your brand. You can make fun of yourself but don’t do anything that will embarrass you or the company. Don’t take chances with controversial content or release anything of such poor quality that you create a negative brand image. Don’t use dubious tactics to get noticed or bait and switch techniques. We explained very clearly what Netcosm was (a data visualization) and was NOT (a product for sale). We also made it clear that the work was done through NetQoS Performance Labs and not beta tested.

Viral Video Idea #9: YouTube reports that the average viewing time for videos is 15 to 30 seconds. You have a very short runway to take off. Get to the point fast, entertain and leave them wanting more. We added captions based on the old “This is brain, this is your brain on drugs” campaign. We selected clips that showed the most action and had some fun with the content. Then we offered a longer video if people were interested in seeing more.

Viral Video Idea #10: Somewhere between 40,000 to 65,000 new videos are posted to YouTube every day. Help people find it by optimizing for search engines: Tag it, name it appropriately, describe it, add links and compelling copy and optimize using the right keywords. If it takes off in a big way, you want as many links to your content as possible using your top keywords.

Viral Video Idea #11: Use your corporate blog to trigger the viral distribution and keep the story alive. You’ve got to get the word out and a press release is simply not appropriate for viral marketing. What’s more, blogging with the full story behind the campaign helps to give your program and your company a face and a personality. Make sure that personality is one that will garner respect by being completely open and honest on your blog.

Viral Video Idea #12: Build a community of interest. This is the core message behind my prior B2B Lead post on the subject of viral video marketing. Don’t use trickery or bait and switch to get people to your video because you will be forgoing one of the most valuable benefits of the viral approach – the ability to quickly and inexpensively build a community of interest. The Word of Mouth aspect of viral marketing gives Marketers a powerful way to attract a following. Do this by explaining each step of the program using your blog. Tell your audience what you were thinking when you produced it. Report on the results. Give followers a way to track the momentum and keep it alive.

Viral Video Idea #13: Seed the story with the blogerati, your customers and friends, your social network. Post it to Digg and Reddit or whatever social media site is appropriate for the topic. Twitter your followers. Leverage Social media like Facebook, MySpace, and other groups to spread the word. Of course timing is everything. Here’s a high level snapshot of our timeline.

Viral Video Idea #14: Track and monitor the results and keep your followers and the blogging community posted on the momentum building behind your viral video. This helps build excitement and credibility around how your video is resonating with the audience. It might just convince an influential blogger that he/she should write a story about you. We not only tracked YouTube views and Most Viewed Honors, but we also monitored:

• Google Analytics for web traffic
• Google Alerts for media and blog coverage
• Salesforce.com for leads and evaluation requests as well as revenue opportunities
• Eloqua for clickstream analysis to determine if people were using the right path from the blog story to the video to the microsite and finally to product pages and offers

Viral Video Idea #15: Automate and expedite lead processing. When viral goes big, it really goes big. And, studies show that B2B Marketers and Sales reps need to follow-up on Web-generated leads within 30 minutes of a registration or the chances for conversion are poor. If you don’t have a great program for automatically scoring and qualifying leads so that you can route quality leads to your salesforce instantly, you could be asking for big trouble using viral. First of all your Inside Sales team is likely to be swamped with a larger percentage of irrelevant leads. Secondly, you will miss out on a number of great sales opportunities by taking weeks to respond. We were actually given the Marketer’s Choice award by Eloqua for our Lead Scoring and Automation program that enabled us to process the leads generated by our viral campaign within 24 hours. Eloqua’s Marketing Automation was critical to this process.

Viral Video Idea #16: Demonstrate that you met your objectives. YouTube will allow you to track some of your results, but it won’t show the whole story. Here are a few results that NetQoS tracked:

• YouTube Views: 66,000 and growing. (This did not include those who viewed it on Google video, Tech Crunch or other blogs.)
• Blog Coverage: 70+ blogs wrote about the video.
• NetQoS Blog Readership: Traffic more than tripled.
• NetQoS Corporate Web traffic: YoY 43% higher
• Organic SEO: As the chart below shows: weighted market exposure for NetQoS top keywords increased by 41% for all keywords plus 600% on the primary keyword.

Viral Video Idea #17: Show your campaign delivered value to the business. You most certainly will have to do a lot of convincing to get sponsorship for your viral campaign, so don’t miss your chance to prove to all of the skeptics that the idea was worth the investment. Show that the spike in traffic and coverage hit the right audience and generated brand awareness or demand. For us, the results show it was:

As the charts below show, there was a spike in web traffic for all product pages and a large 4X increase in Web-based leads. We also showed a 26% increase in product demo requests. Our cost per qualified lead was $16. Other techniques range from $60 per qualified lead for Google AdWords to $250 or more from a seminar or online advertising campaign.

Viral Video Idea #18: So, show me the money. Viral video, like any other Marketing campaign, should always demonstrate a positive return. While it is still too early for us to show revenue, we do have more than a half a million in pipeline from this campaign that cost $7,000.

Viral Video Idea #19: Don’t forget to subtly brand the video and microsite with your company name. Don’t be overly obvious or slick. The point is to entertain and encourage people to spread the word while subtly associating your company with the content.

Viral Video Idea #20: It’s not over when it’s over. Extend the life of your campaign. You’ve done the hard work to build a community of interest, so keep them interested and the lines of communication open. Evolve your story, and continue to post updates. For NetQoS, we turned the Netcosm experience into a live event and continued to post about it on our blog.

When we first embarked upon this viral video campaign, there was no playbook. The NetQoS Marketing Team, Dr. Mike Johns, and the Porter Novelli Austin team all worked together to figure it out. Now we are sharing our playbook with you. Let us know if you’ve had success using it or your own techniques.

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