Video viral marketing proves a marketing failure

Marketing Experiments (ME) - who recently acquired Marketing Shrepa - released a study that claimed that viral marketing via videos proved an incredibly cost-effective way to get conversions.

However, the study has proved to be controversially flawed.

In the study, the researchers spent $9600 creating 28 videos, which were then syndicated on YouTube, Google Video, and others.

Each video was simply a non-promotional video, with a link to a website at the end.

According to ME, over a 60 days period they videos were viewed over 300,000 times, and generated over 4,000 visitors to the targetd website, by clicking the link at the end of the videos.

1.49% of this traffic was then converted into newsletter subscribers.

ME then claim this as far more effective than PPC, citing PPC as requiring around $20 spend per subscriber.

The problem is, ME claim that the advertising and cost per acquisition (CPA) cost of the video marketing experiment was zero.

However, then failed to factor in their initial $10,000 spend on producing the videos.

Additionally, converting 1.49% of 4,162 visitors means they only got 62 newsletter subscribers. For a cost of almost $10,000.

Which leaves a CPA of $161.29 per newsletter subscriber. Far more than the estimated $20 CPA through PPC.

Overall, the point is that syndication of content - whether via YouTube, Google Search, or news services, can provide a free source of traffic.

However, the cost of the development of that content still needs to be factored into acquisition costs - something Marketing Experiments obviously failed to do.