There are several common misconceptions about viral marketing: that it is free, that is infinitely scalable, and that it can be engineered. In truth, viral marketing is really a natural consequence or by-product of some previous sunk cost, such as content creation, product development, and implementation of facilitative technologies. By its nature, viral marketing is unpredictable and uncertain; there is no guarantee of ROI, unlike, say, pay-per-click marketing where cost expenditure is proportionate to the number of leads driven to a website. While the ROI of a word-of-mouth marketing campaign may be measurable, it is less likely that the tactics that drove said ROI can be distilled into coherent, specific, applicable processes that is repeatable like traditional marketing.

There are broadly two types of C2C marketing: viral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing (what I would call, simply, “referrals”). While the latter can be indirectly engineered by having a “great product” or “exceptional customer service,” the former is less repeatable and more cryptic in its mechanics. What makes something so compelling that random consumers on the web would want to volunteer their time, effort, and personal reputation to be a business’ marketing/PR team? The common trait among things that went viral (some examples here) is that they elicit unique sensory responses from us: laughter, intellectual curiosity, sadness, reflection, etc. Other common traits include digestibility, in terms of a single core idea as well as the length of presentation, and relevance to a large audience.

While these common traits can be used as guidelines in formulating a marketing strategy, it is important to set the correct expectation when ROI is concerned. Viral marketing is essentially gambling. “Create 10x amount of shareworthy content and hope that x amount of content goes viral” is not a marketing strategy. It is a prayer at best, and to set ROI targets based on factors largely beyond control is unrealistic.

Yet viral marketing can be made more probable by creating the conditions that facilitate it. These conditions can be substantive, i.e. creating unique content and developing differentiated products, or procedural, i.e. adopting social media integration and providing referral incentives (cf. the drawbacks of incentives). Organizing a marketing strategy based on these tactics means two things: 1) the goal becomes to build a sustainable business that organically and sustainably builds brand loyalty among customers over time, as opposed to the one-hit-wonder effects of viral marketing, and 2) it pays immense dividends even if viral marketing does not happen – viral marketing merely becomes a bonus.

In other words, forget about viral marketing. Focus on the product and other aspects of the business, because that in itself holds the best chance to “engineer” viral marketing, however paradoxical it may seem.