Does viral marketing work at all?

I was wondering what some of the send-to-a-friend rates for funny videos. If there's a really funny video that uses a lot of diverse image stills, funny sound effects, and an odd reporter, would this translate to a lot of passings-on to friends? Is the rate 1% or .005% or less or .... ?

 

I have a send-to-friend thingy on my jokes site. A miserable waste of time. Noticed only by spam-bots or people from countries where they don't buy anything online. I would say it's not even a 1% rate. About 0.2% or so.

But answering to the question in bold: yes, viral marketing is working, oh, yes it is! All big companies out there use viral marketing in certain extent. It's just that funny market is so saturated that you just don't stand a chance. From all topics/niches possible you have picked out the second worse (the worst being SEO)

 

It only works if you're good at it

 

I whipped up a shoddy, ill thought out one and it's done nothing. You need serious skills and it genuinely needs to be good to see any type of results.

 

What makes it viral is when the people who see it decide it's worth sending. It's hard to make anything viral that is commercial - people see through that. The most successful commercial viral I can think of off the top of my head is willitblend.

Grinding up an ipod in a blender was a good move.

Come up with and idea that will catch fire and your in. But it's way harder to do than you think.

PS: Hamsters do not blend

 

uhmmm can I say.........

living rooms, bedrooms, dinettes,

OHH YEAH!

you can find it at the market, we talkin bout fle market



Very popular viral advertisement that probably made the guy 0 dollars

 

Yes it can be tough... I have had little luck.
Couple of popular ones were unlocking a car door with your cell phone, and the one where they popped popcorn with
4 cell phones with the antennas pointed together.

 

Like was said, it depends on the content of the video. Your best bet would be to look at videos that are already popular and look at some of the commonalities they share. Most viral videos I've seen involve celebrities/television, babies, animals...not too many I can think of that were promotional.

One way to look at it is, if someone watches your video, is it going to score them points with their friends to share it? If you think about that Miss Teen South Carolina video, it got big in part because people like to feel superior to other people, so by sending it to their friends they both got to laugh at the girl and feel superior together.