The Power of Mr. Stickman: Marlon Sanders' New Viral Marketing Tool

Viral marketing is a bit of a buzz word these days, which is rather fitting considering "buzz" is an integral part of making your ideas go viral.

Mr. Stickman, a new video about Marlon Sanders' website design product Design Dashboard, is a stellar example of this kind of advertising.

Just what is viral advertising? In short, it is the ability to make your ideas, thoughts, products, promotions, advertising, photos, videos, and anything else that can be transmitted through networks of people propagate itself without your direct intervention. This means that you are marketing even when you're not marketing, because other people are marketing for you.

If it's not perfectly clear yet, perhaps an example will help. In order to promote the Design Dashboard, a product that makes it easy for someone with no web knowledge to make attractive sales pages and websites, Marlon Sanders created a simple video. Not only that, he made the effort to make it short, entertaining, and easy to share with other people.

Because of these efforts, tens of thousands of people have now seen the "Mr. Stickman" video, and many of them have become customers. Let's look at some of the elements that helped this video go viral.

It's short. Simply put, most people do not like to sit through long presentations on their computer, no matter how much information is packed into them. Making the video just two and a half minutes keeps the length within (almost) anyone's attention span.

It's funny. The video is entertaining, has music, and keeps the viewer engaged. If it didn't maintain interest, no one would see the end of video (and the link to the product), so it wouldn't do much good at all! To get the most out of a viral video, it has to product the desired result, which often times is more visitors to a website (and more customers!)

It's easy to share. All you have to do to share the video is send out a simple link, just like with YouTube. The reality is that if something is easier to do, more people will take the time to do it.