I don’t know about you, but on the rare occasions I have a few spare moments to surf the net, I sometimes find myself drifting to YouTube.

Now, ok, there IS a lot of rubbish out there, but I recently came across a company who have used Social Marketing to successfully grow their business.

Let me tell you their story…

Not so long ago, Blendtec was a little-known company that manufactured blenders – their consumer grade blenders cost around $400, so not the cheapest on the market.

Things started to change for them when George Wright joined the company in 2006 as Director of Marketing. The catalyst happened one afternoon, not long after he had started working for there. On the day in question George came across Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson testing the new bearings for the blender – by blending a 2×4 inch piece of wood!

While this was going on, the rest of the company’s employees went on with their work unphased. Apparently the practice of “extreme blending” was a regular occurrence at the factory, as Tom was keen to make sure Blendtec blenders were the best.

Now George, being the smart marketer that he is, recognised the potential to turn this into a marketing story which would make Blendtec stand out from their competitors, both in market visibility and in proving the quality of the Blendtec Blenders.

He turned the idea into the “Will It Blend” series of videos which you can find on YouTube.

The first video of the series was created late October 2006, and was produced (in a rather cheesy style) using an in-house camcorder – all for less than $50. That’s it. No actors, no special effects – just the CEO, the Blendtec logo in the background a camcorder, and a rather creative blending recipe.

In that first video Tom is shown blending 50 glass marbles. Other items which have since been blended include an iPod, glow sticks, golf balls, toy cars, and a fistful of pens.

Once the video had been completed, it was uploaded to YouTube and the Blendtec employees were asked to speak to their friends, relatives – and anyone else they knew – to spread the word.

It wasn’t long before hundreds, then thousands of YouTubers were watching the series and writing in to suggest items to be blended.

The “Will it Blend” series became a viral phenomenon – with some of the individual videos attracting over 5 million viewings, and many of them achieving over 1 million viewings.

This then attracted media interest. They received coverage and commentary on the Blendtec “campaign” by major national publications and online by bloggers – in less than 18 months, Blendtec received over 100 million views of their videos – which resulted in a massive increase in traffic to their website…

… along with the buzz, came the sales – increasing by 43 percent that first year! Apart from being a bit wacky, the videos had an obvious point… they can blend (almost) anything.

Over the last 18 months, Blendtec have gone from strength to strength, and are now one of the (if not the) leading blender manufacturers in the world – yes you can even get them here in the UK!

Now, realistically, for any viral marketing campaign to be successful, there needs to be certain elements in place – a unique approach, a certain amount of fun, a little pince of zaniness, something which makes it fun. But this success story does highlight two things:

Firstly, “social internet” tools, such as YouTube, Blogging, Community Sites and other online opportunities need to be seriously considered as part of your marketing mix. It only takes one idea to change the face of your business for ever.

Secondly, successful marketing is not about COST. Blendtec only spent $50 to produce the first video. Successful marketing is about understanding what your prospects want from what you offer – and then delivering it to them in a compelling way.

So my point this week is simple…

Look at ALL opportunities and see how you can integrate it into your marketing. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money – all it costs is a little creativity. How can you make your business different or unique in the eyes of your prospective clients?

What’s your “Will it Blend” Story?

If you don’t think you have one, then I seriously suggest you look very hard at your business to see what makes you different… because without difference, why should anyone buy from you?

Now, onwards…

… to your success!

Jez

P.S. If you haven’t seen any of the adverts in question, then click the following to see a few of my favourites:

Golf Balls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC8Zvl-8ziA – 3,962,693 Hits
GlowSticks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l69Vi5IDc0g – 3,146,860 Hits
iPhone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLxq90xmYUs – 1,029,416 Hits
Marbles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OmpnfL5PCw – 2,884,501 Hits
iPod: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8H29jU8Wrs – 5,365,903 Hits

The rest of them: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=will+it+blend&search_type=&aq=f