Viral Marketing and B2B

By now we are all pretty familiar with viral marketing efforts in the Business-to-Consumer advertising and marketing space. In particular, the posting of video clips on YouTube has exploded along with the popularity of the site itself. Most of us have seen the “real” videos generated by consumers that serve as unintentional marketing tools (Mentos comes to mind), as well as the popular clips that are proved to have come from professional agencies (Ray-Ban sunglasses tossing, for example).

The whole idea of buzz marketing or viral marketing has reached both apogees of unqualified success (some feature film campaigns spring to mind) and perigees of unintended disaster (such as tying up traffic in Boston, getting the police to think you are a terrorist threat, negative PR, and being fired). That last point is a key aspect of viral marketing, I think—you can’t really control it. Like chaos theory suggests, there can be unintended consequences which far outstrip your ability to plan and control. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you need to be ready to handle the unknown unknowns.

For those reasons, B2B doesn’t really seem conducive to viral marketing at first glance. Business buyers, certainly including design engineers or purchasing authorities, do not make impulse purchases. Their buying decisions are very considered and based around specifications and similar hard data. They seem unlikely to be moved by buzz or any kind of groundswell of interest. Likewise, B2B clients tend to be risk adverse and very interested in controlling their own messages, in part because their customer community is much smaller than the general retail market. A percentage-based negative impact can really damage their sales.

Because the target market is usually pretty narrow, dissemination of the “virus” is also a challenge. Opportunities for chance encounter, enthusiasm, and evangelism of the viral objects or objects are limited. Another way to put it is that general distribution methods that are acceptable for B2C are too diffuse for B2B. If only design engineers can be “infected” then you won’t have a contagion unless you can expose a bunch of them to your viral efforts. Fortunately, professional groups are now connected via many of the same interactive tools and social media (email, blogs, forums, YouTube) used by the general digerati populace. Because engineers use the web and can access YouTube, like everybody else, it is full of clips related to the demonstration of specific products or training in processes. It’s there for the appropriate audience, no matter how small—the Long Tail in action.

However, it certainly seems that some tactics would be effective and could transfer well from B2C, especially when you consider that most B2B marketing is pretty dry and features-based, rather than engaging and brand-based. An attention-getting device by its very nature attracts attention; the key is to inject enough hints of substance that the user is willing to follow the viral trail back to a web site that contains the substantive information needed to move forward towards a purchase decision.

Our agency works with a number of clients that develop highly-engineered products for use in manufacturing or other industrial sectors. In the past several months we have created a couple of fun videos intended to generate some buzz, if you will, within the industrial markets occupied by our clients. These clips are very different from the usual marketing efforts within the manufacturing and industrial plumbing sectors, respectively. Through viral distribution we are hoping to build viewership and create a broadened awareness of our clients and new products. We seed interest via targeted emails and trade journal advertising; success is marked by traffic to the supporting web sites which then provide some of the detail and substance that is actually needed by design engineers in order to make their purchase decisions.

These videos certainly stand out from the pack in the all-too-gray world of B2B marketing. Hopefully others will think so and be prompted to find out more about our clients and their products.

Siemens CNC Eye Team Investigates
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA-qdHbWdf4

Powers industrial plumbing products: Angus and Ziegfried, Dynamic Duo Exposed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3UMWuWij6g