Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

A recent report from Jupiter Research shows consumers don't take to viral marketing in the way that may have been thought. The study shows only around 15 percent of viral campaigns lead to consumer purchases.

While it's nothing new to understand launching campaigns that target people of influence, many marketers aren't doing it in the right way.

"Viral marketers often send one campaign to all influentials," said Jupiter Research analyst Emily Riley. "Different influential groups not only respond very differently to advertising campaigns, but also influence others in very different ways."

The simple solution to this is understanding the targeted group and interacting with them accordingly. We may send one type of campaign through a social networking site that skews younger, while we send our older customers a message through email contact.

Some marketers seem to be getting discourage or think it's not worth targeting influential people, and so over half say they're going to decrease targeting them by 2008.

I think the problem is we're still trying to market in a way we used to do on television simply putting up a commercial on a specific program hoping we reach some people interested in what we have.

With a increasingly fragmented market, we have to reach different demographics interested in our products through different means. This is simple enough to understand, but marketers still struggle with implementing this strategy.

It's not because it's hard to do, but because many are still trying to do it in the same fashion as the past. We need to contact people in the preferred way the want. It's as simple as that.

There is no longer the "mass" place people hang out and be contacted; that world is gone. Today's viral campaigns, to be effective, will find customers all across the spectrum of various platforms they hang out at. Each platform and demographic needs to be communicated to in their preferred way.

This is another way of saying we need to customize our campaigns if we want to maximize our results.