Sometime ago I realized that Scott Adams, the creator of insanely popular Dilbert cartoon strip, writes blogs too! One of the first post of his that I stumbled on was the one had titled- How to be a Marketing Genius.

Reading this post, I realized that Mr. Adams had recently tried his hand at viral marketing but had failed miserably. He even went on to say — But I think I demonstrated one marketing truth: When something is free, that’s what people expect to pay for the next one.

Somehow my experience kept shouting to me that this isn’t true at all and this obviously got me digging into the details of Mr. Adam’s campaign. It turned out that Scott had done some real hard screw-ups with it!

So, what was his viral campaign, where he screwed it up and what could he have done right? Here’s a case study.

Every viral marketing campaign starts with a seed idea — be it a book, a short film, a game or any other medium but all that they do is carry that idea. People will not be actually spreading your media but your idea. After all, they liked it so much that now they want their friends to take a look at it.

Even Mr. Adams tried to do it. His motive was to sell a sequel to one of his old books. So, to pump the sales of the second book, he tried to give away the download of the electronic version of his other book free.

And, that’s where the problems started!

No marketing message is any useful at all if it doesn’t reach the people who it is intended at. Spreading viral marketing messages is even harder since it is not just a regular marketing message but an idea instead.

The tactic that Scott applied to spread his idea — one inside the book he was giving away for free — was to subtly announce it in one of his posts and place a link on his highly visited site.

That’s not the right way to do it. The right way — no, the only way — to spread your viral marketing message is to create a buzz around the idea you want to spread. If you are not enthusiastic enough to spread your idea then why would others want to do it.

Ever observed the master of Viral Marketing, Seth Godin, try promote his viral campaigns? What Seth does is to make it his mission from God to just keep talking about the central idea and get others to grab the carrier of the idea — here, the ebook.

That’s the first count on which you failed Mr. Adams.

Do you realize how difficult it is to remember everything you see or read with the amount information that everyone is bombarded with everyday (blame the Internet)? You will need to remind them again and again about your viral idea.

This is where contact capture may help. You need their eMail addresses and, if possible, their names.

Put them on an auto responder which will send out sequential messages reminding about your viral idea AND that would also get them to check out your new book, which is your ulterior motive.

And oh, the first screw up you made can also be considered to be a part of the second screw-up as, ultimately, by talking again and again about your idea you are giving multiple exposures to it.

Now here comes the most important part of any viral marketing campaign - To turn people crazy about your idea. After all, they will only spread your idea if they themselves love it.

There are so many ways you can do it but one method that usually out-beats every other method is to have an open forum. Another way to do so is to maintain a page of blogs writing about your idea.

The bottom idea is to make sure that people fall in love with your idea and keep talking about it with others too. And that’s exactly what makes viral marketing viral.

Did you do anything of it Scott? :p

Another really important aspect of viral marketing is that you have to make your motives clear upfront.

If you want them to buy your other book after reading your free eBook, tell them about it in the book itself and everywhere you put it for download.

And oh, ask them directly to spread the idea, or sneeze, as Seth Godin calls it.

Reason? People are lazy and want to be told what next to do. By telling them your exact motives you are making it easier for them as well as yourself.

I agree that information travels faster than on the internet than you can blink. But, viral ideas don’t spread ‘that’ fast. It takes a wee bit time for people to read a book and then buy its sequel.

Insulting people by calling them cheap lemon eaters is not such a good way to run viral campaigns where you really want people to be the carriers of your marketing message.

Next time, please try to manage your own campaigns the right way before telling others how to be Marketing Geniuses.