Outreach for the 21st Century: Viral Marketing for Government

Health Marketing involves creating, communicating, and delivering health

information and interventions using customer-centered and science-based strategies to protect and promote the health of diverse

populations (CDC, 2005).

Health Marketing

CDC 2.0 Communications Strategy

Do you understand viral marketing?

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What is viral?

Everyone wants to see it, and when they do, they all want to

share it.

The term was coined by Jeffrey F. Rayport,a Harvard Business School professor, and popularized by phenomenal success of Hotmail who used viral marketing to get popular. From: http://homeforprofits.com/internet-marketing/viral-marketing/viral-marketing-the-virus-act-of-marketing/

What is Viral Marketing?

What is viral marketing?

• Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.

• Viral promotions may take the form of email, video clips, interactive games, ebooks, software, images, text messages, etc. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

Natural Human Behavior

• It is claimed that a satisfied customer tells an average of three people about a product or service he/she likes, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like.From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

• Viral marketing has always existed, but internet and social media have magnified the impact.

Average Number of Friends : 164Median Number of Friends: 132

Social Media Utilize Existing Networks

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According to an October 2008 report by Feed, 72.1% of ad agency executives surveyed

said their clients were “interested” or “very interested” in using viral video.

Viral Video Ad Interest

Viral Impact

“Viral marketing can have 500-1000 times greater impact than what you get from regular advertisements.”From:http://www.baekdal.com/articles/Branding/viral-marketing-tricks/

“The potential for exponential growth is tremendous, and a strong campaign can reach millions of people.”From:http://totalaccess.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1006659&Ntt=viral&No=35&xsrc=article_head_sitesearchx&N=0&Ntk=basic

Viral Content Needed

People need to read and share your content before it can go viral! Thus, it needs to be: • extremely useful• funny • shocking• thoughtful• a great story…

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Make Me Laugh!

Surprise Me!

Make Me Think!

Tell Me a Story!

eCards shared with family, friends, co-workers

• Over 25,000 Opened one card

• Over 180,000 viewed or opened a CDC eCard

• One Card Sent 2,113 times

Viral Spread of CDC Health-e-Cards

Viral Spread of CDC Widgets

• Over 18M Page Views

• Over 20,000 Web sites

Blogger Outreach

Promotion Strategy: Appeal to Leaders

How to Become Most Viewed: • Blogs: Reach out to relevant

blogs and pinpoint “influencers.”• Forums: Start new threads and

embed videos. • Email lists: Send the video to

email lists (govdelivery, listservs etc.).

• Social Networks: Reach out to your social networks, and encourage your friends to reach out to their online friends.

• Friends: Ask your other friends to view and send to their friends via email or social networks…From: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos/

Viral Marketing Tips: Encourage Sharing

Sharing is what viral marketing is all about. That means that you need allow people to easily:– Download the content, in a usable

format (videos in MPG, pictures in JPG etc.)

– Embed the content on their own sites (consider bandwidth issues)

– Send it to friends, either using a link or by sending the content directly.

– Publish on a number of places, like YouTube, Osciso, etc.

Ann AikinHealth Communications SpecialistNCHM, Division of eHealth Marketing, Interactive Media Branchaaikin@cdc.gov

Thank You!