Brent Hurley from the Strategic Partnership Development Team at YouTube made an interesting revelation way back in May 2008 that every minute over 10 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. That means by the time I take the elevator from ground floor to my flat in 5th floor, 10 hours of fresh video is loaded onto the google acquired video warehouse. Come December 2008, the number is growing strong and it wont be long before we see a big bang of viral videos in the online space.

It’s easy to make an ‘online’ video. Just about anyone with access to PC and net can do it. But making the video go truly ‘viral’ is not a mean feat. That being said it’s not a rocket science either to pull off a good viral video marketing campaign provided you hook yourself onto some golden rules.

Ask yourself why? - Just coming up with some online video and waiting for a miracle to happen is certainly not a good way to go. It’s important for you to know the purpose of the campaign. What is it exactly that you want to achieve. Let’s take the famous example of Nike: It’s viral campaign showed the famous football star Ronaldinho hitting the crossbar no less than four times, without the ball touching the floor. The main objective was to showcase its Nike R10 football boot and also establish a better brand connection. Viewers wondered if the clip was actually real or just computer generated. To solve this puzzle, millions of viewers became part of the campaign.

Be creative - Ofcourse as a small business owner you wouldn’t be able to afford Ronaldinho in your viral video. The good news is you don’t need a celebrity. Even a gorilla in place of celebrity works as long as you create a unique, entertaining and engaging video. You don’t believe me? Check out how Cadbury used a gorilla to win its customers hearts!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Measure success – Don’t just assume that a gorilla will do the trick. Use the right tools to measure if your viral video campaign is indeed working out or not. Use TubeMogul or any other powerful analytics program to know who, what and how your videos are being viewed.

Keep it short and sweet - Think about it, the recall and viral power of a 2-3 minutes video is anyday better than an hour long video. Do the consumers even care to watch the entire video if its too long? The answer in most cases would be a big NO. If you really have a massive entertaining and engaging content, then break it down and release it in series. This way you will keep providing the viewers with entertaining videos regularly. The more they come back, the more are the chances of they helping you make your video go viral.

Use social media - Use social media sites like twitter, facebook, myspace etc so that the video spreads like wild fire. Ofcourse again the quality of the content decides whether the users of the social media site pass it on to friends, family and others. If the video is not compelling enough it is more likely to stay stale.

Its not just YouTube - Without a shadow of doubt YouTube is the big daddy of online video space but that doesn’t mean you don’t spread the wings of your video to other video sharing sites like dailymotion, veoh, metacafe etc. Remember at the end of the day the whole viral deal is reaching out to as many people as you can through the video.

Finally dont ignore the Metadata – Whats metadata you ask? Well let’s just say its the way google understands what your video is all about. The better you make Google understand, the better the traffic to your video gets. The right ‘tags’ i.e the words which tell what your video is all about, a clear title and description of the video and placing it in a relevant category are some of the ways of optimizing the metadata around your video.

So your company is feeling the heat of recession and you have decided to cut down on marketing costs in this terrible economic climate. That seems like an apt decision but the big question is if not marketing, what else will drive your potential consumers to make purchase off your company? The answer again is marketing but this time it comes with an “online” tag. No brownie points for guessing its Online Marketing.

Unlike traditional marketing where you annoy and storm people with advertisements, print media, cold calling, trade shows and spam; online marketing does things differently.  It replaces TV adverts by viral youtube videos, print media by rss and cold calling by better google ranking.

Online advertising has an answer for everything that a traditional media platform does. Only difference being, online inbound marketing can be done without splurging millions of dollars /pounds just hoping customers will find you. Instead it presents an effective measurable way of drawing leads to your site. Blogosphere, social media and search engine optimization form the pillars of online marketing today.

For instance: If you are a wine manufacturer in UK, you can create a blog explaining different types of wine, the wine parties taking place in the neighbourhood, videos of special christmas themed wines etc. If the information is compelling enough a good traffic will flow to your blog. The search engine optimization can help you push your website/blog to one of the top positions on google. The result again is more potential customers visiting your site.  To further intensify the traffic flow you can use twitter or facebook so that instantly people start sharing your content and again drive more people to your site.

The idea is simple, more traffic = more leads = more sales. The most remarkable feature of online marketing is that it can generate these sales at a low cost and by using an efficient targeting method. Marketing effectively without losing loads of pounds (£ £ £) is definitely the need of the hour. Online marketing sure-shot proves out to be a blessing in this  scenario.

Recently I was in a get together party arranged by DMA (Digital Marketing Aspirant) club in Cardiff. We were having some really interesting discussion and at one stage were talking at great lengths about using twitter and linkedin to generate leads. Throughout the conversation the word we must have used the most was ‘Leads’. At the end of the discussion one smart fella looked right up at us and said the entire discussion was brilliant but could you care to explain what ‘leads’ means? On hearing this we all rolled on the floor laughing, since it was as good as asking who is Neo after watching “Matrix”!

I decided to write this post to help save all those who don’t know what ‘leads’ means from embarrassment.  In simple words leads are nothing but ’sales leads’ meaning anything that leads to a sale. A lead can be an individual or business. Again to give more clarity “potential customer = sales lead “. If a company produces games for playstation 3 and you own that console, then you become a lead. If the company is successful in selling you the game then you turn into a sale. This is what people mean when they say “converting leads into sales”. For a real estate company a lead is “potential home buyer”. Similarly for advertising it’s “a company account” and for consultants the leads are nothing but the “potential clients”.

Traditionally, tradeshows and purchase of databases have been used to generate sales leads. However, in this new media era, blogging and social media is proving out to be an extremely powerful way for generating sales leads. Take for example you are a company producing hospital equipments. You may perhaps open a blog publishing topics around your product. For example you may write a post on low treatment failure rates by using advanced hospital machinery, top 10 hospitals in the neighborhood etc. The idea is to draw potential customers (leads) i.e. the hospitals, doctors etc to your site and selling them your equipments.

While pursuing my MBA, I was called for an interview at Manpower Software in Leicester Square, London and asked why they should hire me as a marketing person and why not as a sales person. I was even told that sales people usually go out there and get the work done, on the other hand the success rate of marketing is always uncertain. This hurt the marketing fanatic in me.

I immediately shot back telling marketing people are the brains behind the success of sales personnel. They are the ones who pave the path and design things to make it easier for sales people to follow. Yes what I said was true and the interviewer was pleased with the answer but I somehow felt I didn’t do justice to the marketing fanatic in me. So in this post lets make things spot on.

A business ofcourse starts with finance, product development, operations followed by marketing, sales and customer support. All these form a part of the system which have to be in sync. Marketing, especially today’s digital marketing is predominantly all about generating leads (prospective clients). This is the most crucial part of any business. More the number of leads, more are the chances of you converting them into sales. Once you have quality leads the sales persons job becomes easier.

One may argue that why cant I just use sales person to do cold calling or personal selling. Well you could do that but at the risk of annoying your potential customer. On the other hand through online marketing you are letting your best customers find you and come to you. So all that the sales people have to deal with are the customers most likely to buy their product/ service.If marketing and sales are in sync things can operate smoothly. If you have too many sales people and very few marketing personnel then either the sales people just end up slacking due to lack of quality leads or they may have to indulge in cold calling. So its not about ‘marketing or sales’ instead it should always be about ‘marketing and sales’.