Viral marketing is one of the most talked about elements in contemporary marketing. Can it be applied to education? Here’s a quick run down, just in case you ever pondered such an idea.
The process
The aim of all viral marketing is to create an email, a blog or experience (such as a You Tube video) which works like this…
1. You send the viral agent (email, blog link or whatever) to a lot of people (in our case, teachers).
2. These people forward the viral agent to other like minded people (presumably other teachers)
3. All of these people buy into your message by enquiring about your product or service.
Creating the elements
1. The idea: what are we going to tell them? Most viral agents focus on humour (people or animals behaving in a strange manner is a favourite one), which in some way can be seen to link into the product. Although humour is the norm, you can also create lists of tips, “how tos” and so on. The Hamilton House “How To” articles (www.hamilton-house.com – and click on “how to” on the left) have circulated widely – I often get calls from people who have been forwarded one of the pdfs by a colleague, and have come to us for more.
2. Putting it into practice – the creative element. The article, email or film has to be created. A straight forward advert won’t work – this has to be something that is so interesting that others will want to pass it on to friends.
3. Starting the marketing. You start by emailing lots of people with whatever it is you have created as a viral agent. They then forward it. But here’s the twist. There is no point in just getting lots of people to look at your message. If you are selling a book to English teachers in the UK, there’s not much point having 50,000 university students in the USA coming to your site. It just clogs up your site and has your internet service provider shutting you down because the site can’t cope. And that is the issue with viral when it comes to teachers. At the moment we can reach around half the heads of department in secondary schools by emails that go to them direct. Next term the numbers will be higher. Is it really worth all the trouble to get that other half, when you could direct mail them, even if you can’t email them.
The cost and benefit of going viral
1. Because it involves researching and developing the story you need someone who is used to this type of writing to do it. Blog entries can work – but again this needs a pro writer. I’ve been writing commercially for all my adult life, but it still took me a year of practice before people started picking up my blogs and forwarding them.
2. One of my biggest hits with this was a daily blog written for 9 months for the School of Education Administration which told the story of a school administrator’s activities each day to promote the name of the SEA. You can look at the opening of this at http://blog.admin.org.uk/2008/04/10/diary-of-a-school-administrator-april-8/ The blog appeared on the SEA’s site, and was copied many times. Indeed we still get calls about it, over a year on. But again there is cost – unless you or one of your colleagues has this talent.
The opening lists.
Whether you go for a viral campaign or you go for a straight email campaign which you also put on your blog, you need a list of people to send the opening emails to. We can supply these. There are full details of the named lists at http://www.yesmail.org.uk/PersPrefLists.html and these numbers are growing all the time. Schools where we don’t have the email address of the teacher can be reached through general emails, until we get the full list.
We can also put your notice on the Schools Blog – www.blog.schools.co.uk at no extra charge. Call me if you would like to know more.
Tony