In your company’s pursuit of establishing a viral campaign, it is imperative to have a solid understanding of the main goals you would like to achieve. Your goals should fit into three distinct categories: building your brand, driving conversions and increasing your online presence.

First off, let’s take a look at your branding goals through viral marketing efforts.

When setting goals for building your company’s brand, take a closer look at what you specifically wish to achieve within this category. One component of branding is building your company’s recognition. This is a great goal for companies who are just starting out or are building a presence in a new area (location or industry). Focus on building an understanding of your company with your target marketing; communicating what your products and services are, along with what makes your brand stand-out can increase your market share, as well. Build upon the emotional connection that people have (or should ideally have) when viewing your brand. Instead of sitting around and hoping that people feel a certain way about your brand, why not incorporate the ideal thoughts and feelings you want your target audience to feel when they view your campaign? The great part

The next goal to focus on is increasing your conversions.

Viral marketing campaigns are great ways to drive conversions; the question you need to consider, however, is ‘How do you define conversions?’. Having a consumer subscribe to your YouTube channel, RSS or email newsletters could define your goals for increasing conversions. Conversions could also refer to actions. Driving “pass-alongs”, such as word-of-mouth customer experiences, or driving “calls-to-action”, such as downloading a company whitepaper, could all be considered conversions for your company. The main objective when driving conversions is to ultimately increase sales. Getting your customers to make a purchase on your website is the end goal, but what if you could more easily meet your company’s sales goals by focusing on the conversion goal of up-selling or cross-selling? It’s all possible with careful planning of your viral marketing campaigns.

The final, and perhaps most valuable, goal to consider in the long-term is building your online presence.

The great thing about viral marketing techniques is that they yield large amounts of traffic—that’s the purest definition of “viral”, after all. This traffic is not only coming from your campaign in mass quantities, it is also very focused (mostly made up of your target audience) and emotionally invested (already interested in your brand due to the credibility of others who have shared it). Your company can also build the amount of links to your website. These links tend to be extremely credible, because they are typically shared on topical blogs specific to your industry. Increasing your brand’s mentions, by acting as the catalyst for conversation through social media, is a great way to reinforce positive buzz happening on these sites.

Before you jump right into making your campaigns for 2012, identify your company’s specific goals by focusing on dissecting each main objective—branding, conversions and presence. Outline components to concentrate on for each objective in order to most effectively fulfill your brand’s goals for the year.

Let’s take a look at six ways in which many companies’ digital marketing campaigns have found success.

Keep it simple

When creating a campaign, keep in mind that, if you want your target audience to remember your company’s intended message, keep it simple. People are generally not going to remember more than one or two messages at once. Condense your campaigns to communicate one common message or pair the varying messaging with one central theme. It’s important that your campaigns are still a solid representation of what your brand stands for—this means that your campaigns should be recognizable in style, feel and messaging. After all, the most successful of companies have clear, simple messages associated with their brands.

Example: Reese’s “Dark Remote” Campaign

Be unexpected

Who doesn’t enjoy a nice surprise every once and a while? If you take a look at the successful brands out there, you’ll notice that many of them incorporate a sense of surprise within their digital campaigns. The key to a clever and successful viral campaign is to deliver a message that is not only unexpected, but makes sense for your brand. It’s always great to see ads which are thought provoking and communicate a message which, although conventional, may not be something generally associated with products or services in a specific industry.

Example: Dove’s “Evolution” Campaign

Stay concrete

Making empty promises in the business world is never a good thing; this holds true to a company’s campaign messaging. People take comfort in knowing that a company will go above and beyond to make their customer experience the best it can possibly be. Communicating the “hassle-free” aspect of doing business with your company can reassure current and potential customers of the risk-free investment involved with purchasing your products or services. Sticking to your company’s word will increase the amount of repeat customers and positively influence word-of-mouth recommendations from current customers.

Example: Orbitz’s “Price Assurance” Campaign

Embody credibility

A company’s credibility is a vital part of its success. Having a powerful voice in your industry can tremendously affect the size of your market share. The challenge is, however, that your company will almost always have some form of competition in its industry. In order to break away from your competitors, your brands must embody a sense of confidence and credibility to appear superior to those of your competition’s. Leveraging distinguishing factors, awards and third-party findings when creating your campaigns can help your company establish that credibility.

Example: Hyundai Veloster’s “Best in Class”  Campaign

Connect emotionally

A smart goal to aim for when creating marketing campaigns is to connect emotionally with your current and potential customers. Identify your company’s ideal target market and focus on what resonates with this group of individuals.  Connecting emotionally with your target market can mean anything from making a reference to a person’s childhood to highlighting a certain safety feature to keep protective parents at ease. Establishing this connection through your ad campaigns can not only make your message more memorable, it can also lead to an increase in conversions and ultimately, higher ROI.

Example: Oreo’s “Perfect Mother’s Day Gift” Campaign

Tell a story

Finally, incorporating a story into your marketing campaign can be a distinguishing factor in engaging your target audience to buy into your brand. Using stories can strengthen your brand’s impact by providing something for your audience to connect with on a more personal level. An easy way to incorporate stories into your campaign is to provide real-life testimonials of people using your products/services. This is one of the most personal ways your company can gain exposure aside from word-of-mouth referrals. By communicating the positive results your customers achieved from using your products or services, the credibility of your campaign (as addressed in my fourth point) dramatically increases.

Example: Weight Watcher’s “Jennifer Hudson” Campaign

Try incorporating one, or even a few, of these best practices into your digital marketing campaigns for 2012. Keeping your target audience at the forefront will strengthen your brand message, distinguish you from your competition and help your campaign drive conversions for your company.

The great thing about brand advocates is that they are essentially “volunteer marketers” for your company; they take a sense of ownership and pride in your company’s success, because they believe in its products and services. Brand advocacy is an irreplaceable form of marketing and, with a strong fleet of brand advocates actively promoting your brand, the effect on your company can be tremendous.

Now that we know what a brand advocate is, the next step is to determine how to increase the number of brand advocates for your company. Yes, some part of brand advocacy is naturally occurring, but there is so much more that your company can do to harness the power of these individuals. Essentially, the question that companies should be trying to answer in regards to brand advocacy is ‘What makes people share?’. By breaking down the core reasons for sharing, companies can better understand the ‘recipe’ for building brand advocates.

Understanding a person’s motivating factors behind sharing and promoting their favorite brands can be a significant advantage for companies looking to create advocates for brand awareness. Below are 4 motivating factors for brand advocates:

Knowledge

“I want to be the person others turn to for input and advice.”

Business take-away:

Encourage conversation and empower thought-leadership within your industry through providing products and services which give people something to talk about.

Ego

“I want to be the person who has the newest and coolest thing around.”

Business take-away:

Shape your brand’s message to portray innovation and incorporate trending aspects in your industry to maintain a ‘current’ consumer perspective, while exuding a sense of ‘exclusivity’ within your brand message or product distribution.

Reward

“I want to gain tangible or intangible benefits for sharing.”

Business take-away:

Make your customers feel as though they are valued for their support, whether it’s in the form of a tangible reward, like a coupon, or an intangible benefit, such as a loyalty program.

Passion

“I have a vested interest in this topic and willingly share because I love talking about it.”

Business take-away:

Identify your target market and specifically shape your campaign messaging towards people who are “value-added” influencers in your industry.

What makes these campaigns so compelling is that they are passed around organically and get millions upon millions of views. There’s something that sparks interest in the viewer—some aspect of the image, video or ad which connects with this person on a deeper level—whether it may be a reminder of an aspect of the viewer’s childhood or simply portraying a strong emotion. Viral campaigns seem to capture viewers’ eyes and ears with full-fledged engagement.

What if I were to mention the phrases “Volkswagen Passat and baby Darth Vader,” “Honda and Patrick Warburton,” “Kenny Powers, CEO of K-Swiss,” or “Jennifer Aniston and Smartwater.” I bet that you’ve seen or at least heard of these videos—in their original form, they’ve been collectively been viewed by over 60 million people just on YouTube alone—and that’s not counting all the edited videos that fans have created.

If companies are able to harness the viral-factor and create campaigns with this intention in mind, the potential gains from doing so could be tremendous. Keeping in mind your company’s end goal for these campaigns is important when attempting to create a “viral campaign.” The goal for these campaigns should be focused around having your company’s content spread rapidly by consumers to eventually reach the eyes and ears of your target market. In order to effectively reach your target market, focus on streamlining the message your audience wants to hear and share with others along with your campaign’s goals. Viral campaign success should be defined by receiving targeted, qualified traffic from a targeted message, to ultimately deliver positive ROI.

Now that we understand what viral is and how to define viral success, let’s take a look at some initiatives that can be achieved through viral campaigns.

Branding

What better way to make an impression for your brand, new products or services than with a campaign that could be organically spread to millions of people in a short amount of time? In order to achieve the highest amount of ROI, specifically tailor your brand message to entice your target audience. Crafting a simple, clear message prior to campaign creation will help to ensure that your brand is understood by your audience. With this message in place, you will be able to more effectively communicate your brand through the emotion, images, words and feel of the campaign.

Credibility

People tend to harbor some distrust for ads, having the preconceived notion that products/services are not as great as they are portrayed on television, in magazines, online, etc. People place trust with their friends, family and the online community for which they have a presence in. Connections are a powerful thing; understanding this, through leveraging these connections and personal relationships, could mean the difference between a successful brand and flop. Viral campaigns are the opportunity to push a genuine message to a vast amount of people.

Cost Savings

The beauty of creating a campaign geared towards “going viral” is the tremendous cost savings, as compared to traditional forms of launching online campaigns. Again, harnessing the power of people’s personal connections and online following can work to your brand’s best interest. By creating an engaging campaign, all the work of portraying it to your target market is done organically through sharing, along with Word-of-Mouth (WOM) advertising and online conversations via social media.

Standing Out from the Crowd

Consider the relatively small number of companies who actively pursue creating “viral” campaigns vs those who have been adopting more traditional forms of advertising for their brand for decades. This could be your brand’s opportunity to break away from the clutter and stand out in your target market’s mind. Along with being a fairly new and exciting form of marketing, “viral” campaigns allow for a unique viewer experience which can be interactive (when creating videos or embedding Adobe Flash within company websites). Delivering the “unexpected” to your audience is one way in which your company can stand out from your competition. Try adding an element of surprise to your campaigns; with viewers feeling emotionally connected and engaged with the campaign, the message will be more likely to stay with them longer.

Creating & Empowering Brand Evangelists

The great thing about effective viral campaigns is the massive “fan-base” which is established. Through your campaign messaging, your company can both create brand “evangelists” and empower them to not only “buy into” your brand, but to spread the word to others. Again, this goes back to the point about people trusting their friends and family with opinions and advice. Merely ‘liking’ a campaign does not translate to a person believing in your brand; if your brand is something that a person identifies with personally, he/she is more than likely to tell someone else about it and be a personal ambassador for your brand.

Make sure to check back soon on the Rise Interactive blog for more tips on Viral Campaigns.

Credibility—what does this mean for business, exactly? One thing that businesses should be aware of is the endless possibilities that can be leveraged by having an engaged, loyal audience. People trust the thoughts and opinions of their close family and friends—there’s a sort of comfort-factor that exists which allows for easy, clear communication. With virtually no barriers to information “entry” because of the trust and credibility in these relationships, the message being communicated is quite clear to the listener. This same scenario can be applied to business.

Let’s compare the two: person-to-person interaction and business-to-consumer interaction. Person “A” gives person “B” some advice. Since they have been close friends for a couple years and person “A” has given good advice in the past, person “B” trusts the credibility of person “A”. Just like this scenario, a business must remain aware of its targeted consumers and adhere to their best interest; consistency with a good thing yields credibility. Therefore, focus your business’s efforts in a way that will provide your consumers with that trust and reliability to establish credibility and build tighter-knit relationships.

Business take-aways: Building relationships and credibility, along with the conversions they can drive takes time. Providing consistently high-quality, valuable content will help to establish this credibility.

Now that we know the importance of establishing credibility for content marketing, the next step is to allocate this content in a way which will ultimately lead to a conversion—whether that is defined as a “like” on Facebook, or filling out a demo request form, or even adding an item to a person’s online shopping cart. Producing content with the purpose of engaging your current and potential customers is only as good as the platforms to which you choose to deliver this content.

Choosing the right platforms for your business to engage with your customers, along with tailoring content to best-fit specific platforms, are vital decisions to make for your Communication and Social Media strategies. The first thing to consider when making these decisions is finding the platforms that your customers most-heavily use and trust. This can vary significantly based on the industry, products and how you define conversions. Secondly, consider platforms that will allow for easy conversation on the content which is being presented. An audience which is engaging with your brand will be more likely to share your brand’s content with a friend. Lastly, consider the maintenance which comes along with establishing these “brand relationships”. Just as a person-to-person relationship requires constant attention and communication, so does a brand-to-person relationship. If you’re going to commit to your company’s goal of content credibility, you must remember to engage often and with quality content.

Business take-aways: Example—Platforms like Flickr can convey credibility for a photographer/photography business due to its photo-hosting and sharing capabilities. This is not so much the case for a company that sells baby products.  A baby products company should be present on Facebook, where there’s a deep connection with friends and family expressing their opinions/experiences.

With a more in-depth look into the best-interest of your targeted customers, along with a passion for delivering content which will create value for your audience and continuing the conversation via qualified platforms, your company can be on its way to establishing deep-rooted connections and strengthening its “brand relationships.”

During Thanksgiving Day alone, it seemed as if people had no problem with transitioning from “turkey to tablets” to begin their holiday shopping as soon as humanly possible. The number of shoppers who chose to shop online (peaking at 9PM CST) hit 28.7 million—that’s a 29% increase from 2010. With the unusually high amount of people choosing to shop online this Thanksgiving, sales peaked at $470 million, with 15.2% of traffic coming from smartphones and tablets (up from 6.45% in 2010) with mobile accounting for 11.09% of purchases.

Black Friday remains a day of total shopping chaos. Per usual, consumers camped out in front of their favorite stores, waiting for early AM openings with their smartphones and tablets in hand. Black Friday shoppers for 2011 had risen to 226 million—a 14 million person increase from 2010. A 35% increase in online shoppers (23% of which purchased electronics) accounted for 50 million eager individuals who would make $816 million in total online sales. Smartphone and tablet traffic resulted in 14.3% of all online traffic—a 4.6% increase in from 2010.

After a hectic extended weekend of shopping and eating holiday turkey, consumers continued their online purchases before, during and after work on Cyber Monday 2011. Not only did Cyber Monday surpass Black Friday 2011 in online sales by 29.3%, but online spending (with smartphones owning 10.75% of online traffic) resulted in a 33% increase as compared to 2010. The peak shopping time was at 1:05PM CST—making Cyber Monday the biggest day in history for online retailing!

Sources: IBM IBM Coremetrics NRF/BIGresearch ComScore NPD Blog ComScore Internet Retailer

Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conferences are the largest global conferences focusing around Search and Social Marketing, touching on topics ranging from SEO to Video Optimization to PPC Management. The conference, since its start in 1999, has been held in major cities across the world and brings together professionals from a variety of different industries. The extensive, three-day event encompasses over 70 sessions, within tracks such as SEO, Paid Search and Social Media, along with interactive workshops led by Marketers and SEO professionals from major companies.

SES recently hosted one of their conferences here in Chicago. Rise Interactive’s CEO and Founder, Jon Morris, was featured on Day 1 during the SEO track. Morris participated on a panel focusing on Metrics for SEO. He later went into more detail on the topic with his presentation entitled “SEO: How Understanding Your Analytics Gives You the Edge,” which emphasized the importance of Web Analytics when looking to generate the highest return for your interactive investment. Following the event, Morris participated in an interview hosted by WebmasterRadio.FM where he further discussed the concept and practice of Interactive Investment Management.

SES Chicago presentation: http://www.riseinteractive.com/webinars/understanding-seo-analytics/get-the-analytics-edge.pdf

SES Chicago interview: http://www2.webmasterradio.fm/search-engine-strategies-conference/2011/interactive-investment-management

Step 1:  Evaluate Your Existing Content

Take a look at what you have on your site. If you didn’t work on the site or have an interest in buying the products listed on the site, would there be any reason to visit? If you answered no, than why would anyone link to your site (without payment or reciprocal linking)? At this point, your next step is to create content that people would actually find interesting! In other words, you need to differentiate your product! However, if you answered yes to that first question, than…

Step 2: Research

So you have great content that you think people would link to, but who are those people? Where is the best opportunity, so that you’re not wasting your time and effort reaching out to sites that will never link to yours? Researching your link target market allows you to allocate link building time more efficiently. There are two great ways to do this: social media monitoring and competitor analysis. Competitor analysis involves investigating who’s linking to similar content (i.e. the content on your competitor’s sites) to find opportunities. Social media monitoring allows you to find people who are participating in relevant conversations online, segment them based on the topic of conversation, and then either reach out to them with your existing content or…

Step 3: Create New Content

After you’ve done your research, identified relevant opportunities, and reached out to them to gain links, you may make an unfortunate discovery: you’re not getting any links because your content is subpar. Fear not, all is not lost. By re-thinking the content you’re putting out on your blog (or creating a blog if you don’t have one), putting company resources in an online database, or building out new informative/entertaining content, you can better serve your content market, and get links!

Step 4: The Pitch

The pitch is the key to any good sales push. In link building, the initial email is the first, and often times only, chance you have to pitch your target. The challenge is to reach a large number of opportunities, while still maintaining a personalized feel that will encourage your target to respond positively. The best way to do this is to create multiple templates for the multiple target markets you identified in your research. This will allow you to send out a large mass of emails, but still easily add one or two sentences about the site you’re reaching out to for personalization (Rule #1 of outreach: if you’re not personalizing your email outreach, you’re wasting your time).

Step 5: Rolling in a big pile of money (links)

Chapter 1: Introduction to Google Analytics

Chapter 2: Finding Your Way Around Google Analytics

Chapter 3: Installing Google Analytics Tracking Code

Chapter 4: Interpreting Google Analytics Data

Chapter 5: Visits, Visitors and Pageviews

Continue checking back to our Resources page as new chapters are being posted frequently.

Finally, after three and a half months of waiting, businesses can create Google+ pages.  If they were allowed to do so from the start, it’s possible G+ would not have lost all the momentum it started with, but that’s neither here nor there.  The point is that now businesses can interact with consumers on Google+ and the potential implications are enormous.

Impact on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

To go along with pages, Google has launched a new type of search called Direct Connect.  This allows users to go directly to a brand’s Google+ page simply by typing ‘+’ in the search bar right before the brand name.  It’s kind of like clicking the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button, except you know exactly where you’re going to land.  This means the content you share on Google+ is easier to find than the content you share on any other social network.  It also means your Google+ page is now as important as your Google Places page and probably only one tier below your website.

There’s one more reason Google+ is important to search.  The content that you share on Google+ is subject to the +1 button.  If you don’t know what the +1 button is, it’s basically Google’s version of the ‘Like’ button, but it impacts search results when you’re logged into your Google account.  Sites that are +1’d by your friends show up higher in your results than those that don’t (you’re also hypothetically more likely to click a link your friends have +1’d than one they haven’t).  If your company shares a link to your blog or your website on Google+, the +1’s that link receives will impact search results.  People can also +1 your Google+ page itself, helping that page rank higher in search results even if a Direct Connect search is not used.

Impact on Paid Search or Pay-Per-Click

Unlike Facebook, Google is not creating paid search ads within the Google+ platform (at least for now).  That means you will not be able to “buy” +1’s by displaying ads to Google+ users based on other pages they follow.  However, you can buy paid ads within Google search that direct people to your Google+ page.  It’s as simple as linking there instead of to your website.  Whether that’s an efficient use of your resources is another question, but it’s certainly within the realm of plausibility.

Paid search ads in Google also carry the same +1’s that organic search results carry.  So a paid search ad linking to a site that lots of people have +1’d is more likely to receive a higher placement among paid results, and could even influence a user’s decision about which ad to click.  Paid searchers will have to account for this in their pay-per-click strategy as the +1 grows in popularity.

Impact on Social Media

Google+ is, after all, a social platform, so how can we not discuss the social media impact of Google+ pages?  Your Google+ page is not like your Facebook page.  They may look similar, but their functionality is vastly different (and consumers use Google+ in different ways than Facebook, if they use Google+ at all—more on that below).  The biggest draw of Google+ has always been the organization of discussions and the ability to conduct multi-person video chats.  While there are other great features (and Google+ has always had great features), those are the two that brands should focus on the most as they set up their Google+ presence.

In many ways, Google+ more closely resembles Twitter than Facebook.  Some recent features such as ‘What’s Hot’ (similar to ‘Trending Topics’) help to cement those similarities.  But Google+’s advantage is the way comments are organized conversationally.  This is an opportunity for brands to communicate in a way they can’t on Twitter.  In other words, your Google+ content strategy should be similar to your Twitter strategy except that you have the ability to organize your conversations.

However, the biggest advantage of Google+ is the video features.  Not only is Google+ integrated with YouTube (did you notice the new YouTube search bar on the Google+ homepage that opens a pop-up video screen?), but you can have two, three or even ten-way communication with your customers by using the Hangout feature.  This is a brand new, exciting way for businesses to interact with consumers.  Use it to make announcements, handle customer complaints, hold contests and more.  Be creative.  Find new uses for video communication that nobody has done before.  The potential here is huge and could be what ultimately brings users to your Google+ page.

Did Google+ Become Relevant Again?

Depends who you ask.  Businesses, large and small, need to pay attention.  The question (and the reason I mentioned these implications are only potentially huge) is whether consumers will pay attention.  The momentum of users rushing to create Google+ profiles is long gone.  Can business pages stir up enough excitement to bring users back?  That’s the big question we have to ask—and the challenge your brand is now faced with.  What I do know is that, consumers or no consumers, the SEO and paid search implications now make Google+ a must for brands.