Word-of-mouth marketing or viral marketing? What’s the difference?

Word-of-mouth marketing is when a business does something and their consumer tells five to ten friends. Word-of-mouth marketing has an echo affect. The initial sound is loud and then it fades into the background.

Viral marketing unlike word-of-mouth marketing has a compounding affect. A consumer tells five to ten people and then those five to ten people tell another five to ten people. The driving force behind most viral campaigns is the passion a consumer carries. It’s like a virus that continuously infects more people and spreads without requiring anymore marketing effort.

The confusion probably stems from their shared potential for driving exponential growth rates by leveraging existing users

While the two are similar as you can see they are not the same.

The primary difference is that strong word of mouth is primarily based on a compelling customer experience while viral marketing is more “engineered” to specifically propagate a product.

Word-of-mouth marketing is a key component to the growth of a small business. It’s often word-of-mouth marketing that keeps small businesses running in the early days of operation when there is little to no marketing budget. The consumer shares their experience with your products or services and they share it with their family and friends. This increases your consumer base and increases your sales.

Word of mouth, is really based more on doing a favor for the other person (clueing them into something unexpectedly cool).  TIVO is a great example of this.  There is no inherent usage benefit for telling other people to buy TIVO.  But it is such a surprisingly great experience that people tell their friends about it anyway.  Even if TIVO were to offer a free month of service for everybody you tell, I still wouldn’t consider this a viral growth driver.  It’s just incentivized word of mouth.

Viral marketing is more about reaching out and touching the passion point of your consumer, so that the passion drives the message and the message continues to reach the masses without assistance from you. You can orchestrate a viral campaign, but very seldom are viral campaigns that are orchestrated as successful as those that are just driven by the passion of a consumer. In order for it to reach a level of success your consumer must feel they have a personal stake and investment in the success of your campaign.

It’s important to also realize that the success of a viral campaign depends on the vehicles use to transmit the message. There are companies that are more virally equipped than others. In order to create a strong viral link the message must be able to transport from television advertising, to radio and other extended means of broadcasting to the power of the Internet.

A great experience fades quickly when it reaches a couple links into the word of mouth chain.  However, this wouldn’t be the case if word-of-mouth referrals always result in a new user who also refers the product/service.

1.) The viral idea is designed for your customers, not for your marketing department

Companies put together a standard advertising or marketing campaign and then call up a viral consultant with the request to “make” the campaign go viral.

What these companies fail to understand is the nature of the viral message. While it’s possible to orchestrate a viral campaign, there’s never a guarantee of success. (As opposed to something like email marketing where marketers can generally say “we generally have an x% response rate to this offer.”) Viral marketing campaign development is more about taking the time to understand and research the passion points of a target audience than it is about crafting a careful message designed to get point x, y and z across.

2.) Your customers are willing to stake their own reputation on the message

When it comes to word of mouth marketing, consumers are generally just sharing their experience or opinion with some friends and family. A man tells his work buddies about the great florist who delivered a last minute bouquet to his wife on her birthday. A college student tells their classmates about the bar with the best kegs and eggs after the game. Word of mouth tends to happen through casual conversation and the message is often quickly forgotten.

With viral the goal is to make things a little more personal. There’s a big difference between that man telling a few office mates about a florist and him making a dedicated blog post about a new web site. Since viral often happens on a larger scale through more varied levels of relationships, there’s a stronger need for the spreader to feel confident in the message. A blogger who points their readers toward bad content or services won’t retain a strong readership for long and the woman who forwards every email she’s ever received quickly gets placed on “ignore” by friends and family.

The best viral campaigns tap into the passions and interests of consumers so that when they spread the message, they are viewed as trustworthy. Help consumers build up their reputation with friends, family and online acquaintances and they will reward you by spreading your message far and wide.

3.) The viral idea is easy to spread via email, blogs and discussion forums

Word of mouth fizzles quickly because it takes effort to spread the messages verbally. You have to have an actual conversation with someone for word of mouth to work. This is why the life span of a word of mouth campaign is short.

When it comes to viral ideas, there are tons of ways for the message to spread. Messages can spread by email, blog, discussion forum, social news service, podcast (the list goes on and on). Since each of these forms of communication is virtually unlimited in terms of reach, a viral campaign can easily expand with each iteration rather than shrinking.

4.) Your customers stand to benefit from passing the message along

Perhaps the easiest way to ensure the success of your viral campaign is to give people a stake in it’s success. When people feel invested in things, they put far more time and energy into promoting them. Whether you appeal to people’s ego by allowing them a “sneak peek” of a new service or you find a way to let them add their voice to the viral message, making sure people feel good about spreading your message is key.

Keep those four tips in mind as you contemplate your viral campaign and you’ll be far more likely to create a solid idea. Viral marketing may have it’s roots in word of mouth marketing, but the Internet has allowed it to grow into a powerful tool that can bring out the best in customer conversation. Take advantage of it by putting your focus on the customer.

In conclusion the major different between word-of-mouth marketing and viral is that word-of-mouth is often driven by you the marketer or business owner and viral marketing driven by the passion of your consumers and it’s success does not depend on you.

About the author

Farhaan Panagar wrote 13 articles on this Website.

Analyst with Deloitte.

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