ViralSell™Marketing
Because both advertising and PR lack credibility Viral Marketing is becoming the best way to launch a brand. It is impacting both the B2B and the B2C marketing communi-cations industries.

It’s called viral marketing, or word of mouth, or buzz. All the same thing. And while word of mouth is as old as the hills, the advent of the Internet, through judicious use of email, has breathed new life into this powerful, trusted, highly credible medium ... now defined as digitally augmented word of mouth.

Viral marketing is based on the belief that marketers, using traditional advertising, can no longer deliver credible messages. Only customers can!

Why the departure from tradition? Because the speed of information diffusion enabled by the Internet is weakening the ability of companies to communicate with customers and strengthening the ability of customers to communicate with customers.

What are the deliverables you
can expect from the ViralSell™ process?

• Development of a virus worthy product, or message, to be achieved either through suggested product modifications or a new communications strategy.
  
• Defining and development of databases of power influencers, both Regular Hubs and Mega Hubs.
  
• Development of messages, assistance with seeding of the networks and multiple chat rooms, event strategies, and virus maintenance recommendations based on context sensitivity.
  
• Development of the Accelerated Contagion process incorporating traditional advertising elements of the KBA 90-Day Blitz.

Three rules of virus worthiness
1. The Stickiness Factor: Product exposure must be memorable and move us to action.
2. The Law of the Few: spreading the word via regular and mega hubs depends on people who are either experts or possessed with a rare set of social gifts. These people are defined as Mavens, Connectors, and Persuaders.
3. The Power of Context: Sensitivity to circumstances and conditions of times and places they occur.

Structure of Regular / Mega Hubs

Regular Hubs - non-media people: Consist of Mavens, who function as data banks to provide the message; Connectors, who function as social glue to spread the message; and Persuaders, (salesmen) who help when we are unconvinced of what we hear. Regular hubs are typically found among user groups, peers, opponents, academics, experts, and associations.

Mega Hubs - media people:
Represented typically by the press, celebrities, analysts, politicians and others, also made up of mavens, connectors and persuaders, who are well known to most public relations practitioners.

Six steps to launching a virus
1. Make the product virus worthy.
2. Identify the candidates for the "law of the few".
3. Determine message and/or tools to support either an ideavirus or a shockvirus.
4. Expose the idea to "the few".
5. Support "the few" with influencer relations, PR, and accelerated contagion.
6. Maintain/reinforce the virus.

© 2001 Keith Bates & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Influencer Relations
As the value of advertising and print media continues to decline, a small, elite group of individuals in each market have a growing influence over how customers think, act and buy.

The buying decisions of your customers are influenced by a far broader base than media and industry analysts, although each is vital to the overall communications mix. Today, the purchasing process is influenced by a broad array of friends, colleagues and peers, pundits, academics, authors, researchers, and many others. What’s more, each market has it’s own set of influencers, making it necessary to understand how to identify, and then to reach, these new influencers.

Simply put, the mantle of thought leadership and influence has fragmented, resulting in the need to expand your communications reach to target these new influencers.

Expand Communications Group has developed a proven influencer relations methodology that is based upon identifying and segmenting those points of influence in different markets, and then developing and executing targeted outreach programs based on each individual influencer.

The Influencer Relations approach will be driven by Patrick Rooney, president of Expand Communications Group, www.expandcomm.com in collaboration with Keith Bates, an alliance partner.

Expand Communications Group is a sales and marketing collaboration firm that unifies business-to-business communications to present a single voice to the market. With a focus on improving customer acquisition and retention, they create meaningful communications programs to help realize their client’s organizational objectives.

© 2004 Expand Communications Group. All rights reserved.