“A very simple guideline to launch a successful viral campaign”
Part 2
By Duane Harris
Going Viral and the many tools you can use to help you go viral!
To launch your own viral marketing campaign does not need to be complicated. The best one done are the one that are spontaneous and straight from the heart. You do not want to force fed a campaign or it will be doomed like a KFC double down chicken sandwich!
Are u serious? This should be banned!
The most important thing before you start the planning process of a viral campaign is to know your market and to keep the content nice and short within a maximum of one minute to get your point across in order to get the prospect to become a buyer.
I call this the one minute sale. Think of it as a commercial that you tend to see on a major network station. The placement for these commercial can start from $100,000 up to $1 million dollars per minute. The key thing is that I am stressing here you want to treat your campaign as if you were going to place it on a major network in a commercial format.
The following viral campaign guideline is an outline. It can be tweaked as you see fit.
1) Determine the key components for your viral marketing campaign via identifying the key primary objective. (Who, What, Where, Why, When and How)
2) Determine the best social media sites to promote the viral media product. It best to use the one that you use on the regular. Allow for the word of mouth to spread it around and it will go viral!
3) Determine how you are going to create the viewing material for your target market. Is it a video or a HTML e-mail?
4) If you are going to do an e-mail campaign. Does your site have an opt-in list? If not then you need to create one! The opt-in list is basically where people who are interest in your product/service and are granting permission for you to e-mail newsletters/deals and special offers. The opt-in list is a great tool to get e-mail address without resorting to spending money on lists from list brokers.
5) If you have an opt-in list – utilized it first before going public. Treat the people on your opt-in list as VIP. VIP stands for very important person. Let them get it first before you go public. Encourage them to forward the e-mail to their network of circle of success that should be encouraged to pass it forward. HTML e-mail is a very powerful and cost effective marketing tool to use. I personally like Outlook because you can create your own HTML email but not all e-mail servers are created equal. So it would pay to use service like Mail Chimp www.mailchimp.com
6) Understand the power of no. Just because they said no – ask kindly if they could pass it on to someone who may be interest. Don’t take rejection personally because if you do you will not be able to establish a network and you want to keep the bridge of opportunity open. Now if they ask to opt-out kindly ask them why and see if you can accompany them by fixing the problem. If not thank them and ask them to come back.
7) Now if you are going to launch a video for the sole purpose of going viral – then use Youtube.com because when you get a certain amount of hits, GOOGLE will want to talk to you and share in a possible ad revenue deal with you.
8) This is an Pah 3 Worldwide’s internal feature – Make sure the video is [TRADE SECRET]
9) Now you are ready to upload the video – depending on your connection and server traffic with youtube.com it shouldn’t take long.
10) Keep the video short 1 to 5 minutes at the maximum. (For best result, keep it under 1 minute)
11) Before going live – do a test focus group – get internal feedbacks. If there are any prime change. Make them and then reveal the link on your site and the various social media sites.
12) Fulfill your orders and inquires in a timely matter. And be sure to take advantage of any PR opportunities whether if they are local or nationwide or international.
Pah 3 Worldwide can provide cost effective viral marketing solution for you especially if you requires personalized services and creative strategies on a budget. Send your inquires to: Duane@Pah3.com
Viral Marketing is the concept of a product or service going viral in real time.
You must truly understand the word “Viral”.
“Viral” in plain English is the process of something going from one person to another person. It can be the H1N1 or it can be a video or an e-mail.
Viral marketing is the cheapest form of marketing tool that anybody can use.
A common expression is “it gone viral!” and that basically means it took off and went global just like that.
Viral marketing is very useful to promote a product or service or simply to get discover and sponsor by a major corporation.
Some popular platforms to launch a viral campaign are: Youtube, Facebook and Twitter as well as various other social media platforms.
The source is often a video or an interactive e-mail that promotes your goods, service, complaints or to parodied something.
The most effective thing about viral marketing is the cost. It is can be done under $100. Some have no budget but can have the same effect as a $1 million commercial that run on a 30 second bit on a major network on television.
*The following video may not be suitable for work*-In my opinion the following video “Window Seat” by Erdyah Badu is an excellent example of a viral marketing campaign that went viral. The video itself raises a lot of buzz and received a lot of free press.
My only problem with this “Window Seat” video is that it should have been released 4 weeks ahead of time prior to the album dropping. The key to a successful viral marketing campaign is building the hype before the actual release of the roll out of the product/services and then when it peaks that when you should anticipate a lot of revenues as a result of a successful viral marketing campaign.
The best viral marketing campaigns that are successful are the ones that come from the heart.
In part 2 “How to do your own viral marketing campaign” I will give you a simple guideline that can be modify to your liking to effective launch your own viral marketing campaign.
Your corporate identity is the key to your company branding success. A corporate identify involves the corporate logo and design strategy to launch your company’s services/products and thus is consider to be the key collateral of your company’s brand.
Nike
Michael Jordan w/his legendary Air Jordan
Team Jordan
Nike, Team Jordan and Air Jordan are three separate brands even though Nike is the parent company. Team Jordan is Michael Jordan’s personal company that is a brand itself and Air Jordan does belong to Nike but they are Michael Jordan’s official sneakers. Nike is the corporate brand. Team Jordan and Air Jordan are brands that are manage/overseen/produced/marketed by Nike.
Corporate identity need to evolve with the times. Failure to do so can negatively affect a corporate identity. There is confusion to this concept – i.e. Coca-Cola will always be Coca-Cola but tempering with the formula is a big risk because then you are messing with the brand! However changing the corporate identity is necessary to keep things from going stagnant and boring.
Therefore brand identity is separate from the corporate identity.
Corporate identity is the result of a well run organizational people culture, excellent product quality, service reputation, great features, over the top benefits for the team, top tier performance and reasonable value “you get what you paid for”, are some of the key factors of brand identity.
Brand Identity – It’s the driving force of your company.
Brand identity is in a nutshell the complete holy grail of a business’ offering to its customers.
It includes the company’s service reputation, product/service qualities, key features, how it benefits your clients, the long and short term performance investment of the product/service and most important the value. It is the abridgement of all these things, which create brand identity.
Brand Image is the consumer and business’s perception of your brand identity, which may or may not coincide with your intended brand identity. All corporations must work hard at the daunting task of getting their brand identity and brand image to align with its target market or resort to a branding company.
A branding company can show you how success starts with the brand identity.
Here some key questions to ask yourself as a decision maker for your company’s brand:
Do you have a well sound realistic executable branding strategy?
Is your teams aware of it your brand strategy and are they willing to be spokespersons for your company’s brand during interactions with the outside world on a daily basis?
Is your firm making the most strategically sound decisions for your brand?
Do you know your competition’s perception of your brand?
Do you know your customers’ perceptions of your brand?
Is your message via media totally accessible to your customer ~ in other words is the message you are trying to tell about your brand clear and ACCESSIBLE to your customer. They won’t buy if they don’t understand it!
If your answer is “no” to any of those questions, take the first step in being able to answer yes to all of them and success by reaching out to Pah 3 Worldwide and we can get you on track.
Is there a corporate terrorist in your office? Wake up please!
Corporate Terrorism
When you are dealing with a high volume of sensitive information, your firm is an open playground for corporate terrorists. Especially if you do not take the time to safe guard your information and think outside of the box when it come to the volume of paperwork that flows into your cost center on a daily basis.
A corporate terrorist sole mission is to hurt a corporation ability to make money for it employees and shareholders whether it is intentionally or unintentionally.
I have worked 20 years in various support roles for small to large corporation. The problem with the mishandling of sensitive information I have seen is pretty common no matter where I am at.
Sensitive information consists of an employee’s personal information such address, birthday, social security and mother maiden’s name. Sensitive information could also contains key supplier information and sensitive pricing information.
Corporation needs to consider implementing an electronic storage of paper information that has a daily backup plan at a remote site and on-site. Two backups are always better than one backup.
An ideal system would be where any incoming documenation would be scanned into a system that will operate on quarterly system as opposed to annual storage.
This cut down the time to retrieve information and helps the company prepare for quarterly report in a faster turnaround time.
If your firm use expense and time report, scanning in via a barcode system is not efficient enough. To eliminate fraud, it should go to an Audit department first, and the Audit team should simply approve or disapprove because they can catch fraud/disputes with field consultants before the company should paid out.
Then it should be released to the Scanning Department where it sole responsibilities lies in scanning the expense and time report along with supporting receipts into a PDF system. Then the paper would get shredded. IRS law states a copy is required for audit purpose. Check with your CPA and Tax lawyer and get the facts directly from the IRS in writing.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that some company treats expense reimbursement to employees as subject to employment tax and that is correct. Per the IRS, ”any Payments made by employers to reimburse employees for qualified business expenses are not treated as compensation subject to employment tax.”
One of the biggest problems that I have seen in a major corporation was time and expense reports with receipts being lost due to misplacement and lack of attention to details and lack of accountability on management’s behalf. This is a problem that could have been avoided if the work flow process involved an electronic process of scanning the report itself.
Changing the work flow process would eliminate the needs for unaccounted for reports that were “checked” in but “disappeared” after the fact is truly uncalled for in a cost center.
The employee or client’s that need copies of the report for validation or verification would get it within the hour of request because, all we would need an employee id # and the cycle that they need report. A PDF copy would be mailed to the requestor.
The biggest culprit were certain key handlers were intentionally or unintentionally misplacing the reports and when they do this they in fact become corporate terrorist again it could be unintentionally or intentionally.
I recall one time when the team I was working on, a person whom was given the task of pulling reports was not paying attention and he “lost” the paperwork. Two other team members from the department went down to double check because the paperwork’s that team member misplaced were of a controller’ whom expenses were under review. This person’s lack of attention to detail caused an unnecessary delay and wasted of manpower time and cause unnecessary attention upon everyone in the department because everyone job was on the line. To add insult, the person that found the paper just got a simple thank you but didn’t get a cash award for saving the entire team from getting fire.
Corporate terrorism is not a laughing matter especially when a person causes everyone job to be on the line then that person should been given a stern written warning placed in his personal folder.
All companies should treat personal information that are sensitive in nature just like the Department of Defense treat it information, highly classified and for your eyes only for certain people.
Cost Center is critical to the company bottom line, outsourcing the cost center is not an option because of the time difference and you get what you paid for. Going America is the way to go.
Finding a team that is loyal and is awarded quarterly is the best to minimize the risk of an employee going rogue on its company.
The bottom line, it was once said”loose lips sink ships”.
Loose documents and bad upper management’s mishandling of a big ass loan can sink a company, right BearingPoint?
RIP BEARINGPOINT victim of Corporate Terrorism and Greed
Marketing in the 21st Century is very different than it was in the 20th Century.
The tools that a marketer has at their disposal is what makes a marketer a powerful catalyst for any organization whether it is a corporate or non-profit.
The marketing consultant wears many different hats these days. The key catalyst that a business need to look in a marketing consultant is that the marketing consultant LISTEN to your problem FIRST and then comes back with a RFP package that provide solution to your problem.
Corporation and non-profit organization should not spend exorbitant amount of money on a campaign that does not yield a high return on investment with a high end firm. You should not spend $10,000 per day on a person unless you are running a sport team or is getting surgery.
The smart thing to do is to determine how you want to roll out your company’s product/services. The key starting point is to determine if is a B2B or B2C campaign?
The marketing consultant is an expert in their respective field. The lead marketing consultant often time acts as a managing director for your project. The smart ones have a team of expertise that come in and handle tasks that consist of modules that are gear toward the end result.
Pah 3 Worldwide aim to act as an optimal managing director and will see the assignment is done from start to the end via offering solutions that acclimate rapidly as possible to you as the client in order to yield a high ROI.
When you are Hot like us, you'll need a fulfillment solution provider that can rock and roll!
As the CEO of Pah 3 Worldwide, I am a big fan of reality star Christopher Boykins bka as Big Black. He was the lead bodyguard of skateboarder mogul Rod Dyrdek on the MTV’s hit show Rod and Big. After Big Black left the show he did some promotion for and then it seem that he just disappeared off the radar.
A few days ago, I was about to order some t-shirts for this spring. But the site is no longer actively managed and you could imagine my disappointment.
It seems that some folks don’t understand the time constraints of having a tv show and a website at the same time. Then when you have to count in obligations to make appearance here and there.
E-commerce is a great business to be in, but maintaining and fulfilling orders can be time consuming.
A celebrity just doesn’t have the time to manage a website and do their website’s fulfillment obligation at the same time.
We can take of your site’s fulfillment process by being your fulfillment solution provider.
Also you don’t have to be a celebrity to use our service. We specializes in books/clothes/electronics order fulfillment for our clients. Please feel free to reach out to us to see how can we be a fit for your brand. We would like to help you.
Pah 3 Worldwide acts as a fulfillment center solution for start up and medium size firms. We believe in getting the orders out to the customer in a timely manner. After all time is money and your customer needs to get the product as fast as possible.
Please contact me duane@pah3.com to see how we can be your authorized fulfillment center solution provider for your products.
By the way if you have a direct contact to Big Black, tell him to reach me I am interest in a potential licensing agreement with him. Have his people contact me directly.
The Twitter revolution is not new. President Obama’s marketing team during his campagin use Twitter as a low cost option to create it grass roots network. The rest is history.
Twitter is a social media tool. The idea of Twitter is very simple. It is like being a dispatcher for a taxi cab company and you have a network of taxi cab driver (In Twitter it would be your Followers – people who follows your tweets) and as a dispatcher you broadcast the same message to all the taxi cab drivers in your network at the same time.
However in Twitter, there is a good chance they might miss it due to not being at the window of opportunity when you broadcast it due to traffic and the fact they are also following other people.
Twitter works like a SMS broadcast feature on the Blackberry Messenger.
You can send a message that can be simple as a personal thought (i.e. “I hate Rush Limbaugh”) or an activity that you are doing ( I am so enjoying this work out at Heat with my PT trainer @BrandiRay) to everyone that follows you.
However, there is limitation in how big the message can be. The maximum is 140 words. So it would be best to create a Twitter ID that is short or that reflects your brand.
Twitter is a powerful marketing tool – it like being the town crier on main street.
Twitter can also be used to broadcast specials or deals – Dell computers have done very well because they broadcast deals and coupons all the time. In fact right around during the height of it Christmas season – a few deals were placed on backorder due to the exceptionally well use of twittering deal and specials on a daily basis.
It is becoming necessary to have a Twitter Consultant on staff or a Twittering Department. The reason for this – you have to keep on track of problems before they become a media relations nightmare for your firm.
Problems can resolved fast if it is an upset customer or disgruntled employee. Now keep in mind the customer is King/Queen but the desire to help the customer need to be shown with an utmost high level of respect and the will to resolve the problem for the long term not just for the short term. Now dealing with a disgruntled employee who broadcast negative things about your firm on Twitter are often shown the door – but at Pah 3 Worldwide, we believe in undoing a negative before turnig into another negative. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
It is our opinion that as a firm you must excerise a great deal of accountablity is the key when you are on Twitter. If the employee does something that would compromise the value of your brand and reputation then of course termination is the solution but before you terminate the employee you would have to determine the problem that the employee is broadcasting is really something worth terminating over. Trades secrets of coure instant termination – they don’t like their boss or peers – a peer review is necessary. If the misguided tweet from employee in regards to a customer of your firm- then a letter of apology to the customer is needed. If it the competetion then a bonus is need.
Just kidding just use good common sense and act as a leader.
If your company would like implement Twitter into its operating practice. Pah 3 Worldwide would be glad to show you how to install and intergrate Twitter for your firm. We would be glad to show you how to make Twitter a part of your environment that will translate into sales for your firm.
Contact us at Sales@pah3.com for a free consult on how we can make Twitter work for you.
In case if you were wondering – you can follow us on Twitter @Pah3Worldwide
The dream is still alive. It is about love and tolerance.
We at Pah 3 Worldwide believes in the Dream that Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached about 47 years ago. The dream did not die when he was taken away from the world unexpectfully. It continues to thrives.
Remember do to your fellow man as you want your fellow man to do you in return.
Pah 3 Worldwide concept of marketing is simple. Scratch a $5 dollar and hope you have the matching number to win $100,000 in cold hard cash and everybody is a winner!
Just kidding it isn’t really that simple but we try to make it as simple as possible.
A wise man once wrote that he doesn’t set a price or you will miss out on an opportunity simply because you price yourself. I thought he was crazy. Now he is in South Beach in nice Miami, Florida and we are stuck in coldlanta. Now who is the crazy one? We are flexible but we aren’t cheap so come correct at us.
Marketing is about the art of getting your product or services to the consumers or to fellow business owners that needs your service.
You have to convert a want into a need. If you can’t do that then you are in the wrong business.
I was watching the Shark Tank last night and a light bulb came into my head – marketing is all about emotions. Everybody wants a stake in the next big thing. But when you are focus on the wrong thing you will miss an opportunity because you thinking about yourself first and not about the consumers or the fellow business’ owners.
Don't be afraid to play dirty!
When Barbara saw how compelling and professional the last presenter was – she acted on her emotion because she believes in a good thing and went half on the deal with Robert. The two sharks agreed to $40,000 for a 40% stake in a new company called Grease Monkey Wipes? If you did not know, the company’s server struggle to keep up with the orders and inquires. That might be a nightmare for the IT department but sweet music to the investors and owners’ cash flow financial statements. I am willing to bet they recoup that $40,000 back in less than 24 hours.
I truly feel the concept of the Shark Tank is truly a fundamental sound business reality show. People come to pitch their products or services or both. The sharks (investors) with deep pockets and the necessary connections to resources and 3rd parties suppliers and vendors) has shown they have the ability to turn a small time operation into a Fortune 500 operation almost overnight. The point is once the deal is sealed – the marketing machine kicks in effect indirectly. Because the majority of fans of the show are very tech savvy and more than likely went to their favorite search engine machine and did a search on Grease Monkey Wipes and bingo it was akin to scratching a winning lotto scratch off ticket.
Pah 3 Worldwide idea of marketing is the following:
We listen to what you are trying to sell and we will explain then execute on your behalf and follow up with you weekly.
Is it a product or a service? Most important is it sellable?
Are your marketing needs regional or nationwide or global? (If it global we more than likely will refer you to one of our favorite consultant)
We are very more than happy to help you to win an election but we do not do White House campaigns unless you are for an encore. J
We work very closely with our Social Media Consultants because Social Media Marketing is powerful. Look at the news in wake of this tragedy in Haiti. People will want to help a good causes if it done efficiently and right and be able to put out the fire (negativity) quickly before it hurt the mission’s purpose.
We don’t have time for fly by night operations. Club Fed is not how we want to spend our time. So please keep moving on.
Ultimately we feel that marketing is all about broadcasting your brand to the world.
So you may ask yourself why should we do business with Pah 3 Worldwide? I am so glad you asked me that question or was thinking about that question.
The answer is very simple it is because Pah 3 Worldwide provides cost effective marketing solutions for small business, entrepreneurs, start ups and more who requires personalized and creative strategies on a budget. After we are about Success to the 3rd Power!
So with that said, if you have a need for a marketing consultant please e-mail duane@pah3.com or sales@pah3.com and we will be honor to assist you.
FTC DISCLAIMER: Our endorsement of television show known as Shark Tank or the company known as Grease Monkey Wipes were solely a personal recommendation of Pah 3 Worldwide in the role of a viewer. We were not compensated in any way as we do not have any type of contract or endorsement with ABC, the production company and the Shark Tank. We did purchase an order of Grease Monkey Wipes and have the necessary documentation to prove so. We do further disclose that we do tweet regularly to all the Shark Tank actor/actress. Only Mr. Daymond John have tweet back to us via DM and they were just mostly answers to our questions and comments that we make toward him or toward the show. FTC inquires can be made directly to duane@pah3.com or via overnight mail Pah 3 Worldwide, LLC 233 Mitchell St, SW Ste#350, Atlanta, GA 30303 Attn: Legal Dpt
