I’ve written about the "GMOOT Syndrome" (re: a marketer’s penchant for chasing the latest "hot" tactic: "Get Me One Of Those!") and, in that post I lauded one of our client’s own efforts to create a "viral video."

While in San Francisco last week, I had a chance to catch up with our client contact — a very smart, very funny guy named David Appelbaum, VP-Marketing at BigFix — who was gracious enough to write-up the results of their video effort… The results were shockingly good. If you are hot-to-trot to try out a viral video campaign, reading about Appelbaum’s approach will definitely help you "get one of those!"

Read on, social media pilgrim, for a how-to on creating and leveraging a successful viral video…

"Working with Barak Kassar and the Rassak Experience to craft a viral campaign, we established the fake news-site context for our ‘Software Truth’ campaign, in which we told the ‘real story’ of typical enterprise software sales tactics.

"The most important element was to invest in it, financially and in terms of our placement methodology, i.e., we treated the videos as advertising. As you’ll see, this wasn’t a case of grabbing a camcorder and making-it-up as we went along. Also, instead of just posting the videos on YouTube and other sites, we really felt strongly that it needed to be tied closely to the company — you’ll notice on the landing page we’re ‘advertising’ within our own advertisement. It was that kind of detail — completing the joke; not trying to hide the fact that it was an advertisement, that was key. People will watch an advertisment if it entertains them and takes a strong POV. Additionally, because we had brought in multiple video clips, we made it reasonable for people to come back and/or recommend it — again key. If there’s no depth it will hit once, circulate, than fade.

"Overall we’ve had 248,308 pageviews, avg. 50k per month with 169,224 visits. Average view times are holding steady at about 1:35 per visit, which means people are watching between 2 & 3 video clips per session. So far we’ve been using the Software Truth video site as a landing page for keyword search ads, banner ads in tech pubs and venture wire, as well as featuring it on several video sites — most notably Stumbleupon — which as been consistently solid (after the Register, it’s been #1 for referrals). And this is where it gets interesting!

"Starting in January we noticed that Stumbleupon was starting to significantly contribute to our corporate website referrals — by over 10 percent. February we saw that jump even more significantly: Via our viral video campaign, Stumbleupon’s become our #2 referral source, at over 25 percent! (We’ve been tracking this since inception through Google Analytics and LeadLander.)

"We’ve had multiple sales leads uncovered via the ad, as it has a direct response call to action — fill out the form and register for a trial. We also know that many prospects that are already in sales cycles have seen it, enjoyed it, and passed it around. More importantly — it’s actually helped our sales force in that they now have some ‘air cover’ when they walk into an account: based on the personality of the ad, prospects have a much more positive view of the company and more inclined to talk with us."

(Note: this write-up includes some paraphrasing, use of emphasis, and other editorial licenses, but, the content and facts are straight-up.)

So, some lessons learned, from this blogger’s perspective:

1. Don’t go cheap. Going cheap can work, but it’s less likely.
2. Be clever — show your company’s true personality. If your video is not entertaining, don’t expect that your upload to YouTube equates to a viral campaign. If it doesn’t get passed-along, it ain’t "viral," folks.
3. Explore untraditional places to post your video. Invest in it like an advertisement; use the media buyer skills you’d use for an advertising campaign.
4. Don’t forget to tell your salesforce about your efforts. First off, nobody likes surprises in a sales call, but more importantly, your clever video could offer them a new opportunity to reach-out to a prospect.
5. Track it. If you can’t measure your efforts, how will you know whether you ought to try out this funky-fresh tactic again?

Tags: bigfix, software+truth, viral+video, youtube, stumbleupon, leadlander, david+appelbaum, public+relations, marketing

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