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Viral Marketing
Viral marketing
is also known as word of mouth (word of mouse) marketing, and typically
includes "tell a friend" schemes etc.. There are other
ways you can spread the word and Dr Wilson explains all in his 6
principles article.
ake a look
at these traffic generation ideas that aim to spread the word about
your website. With thanks to Dr Wilson, who kindly allowed me to
reprint his article (which, as you'll see, is itself an example
of what we're trying to learn about)...
The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing
by Dr. Ralph
F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
Web Marketing Today, Issue 70, February 1, 2000
I admit it.
The term "viral marketing" is offensive. Call yourself a Viral Marketer
and people will take two steps back. I would. "Do they have a vaccine
for that yet?" you wonder. A sinister thing, the simple virus is
fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists
in that nether genre somewhere between disaster movies and horror
flicks.
But you have
to admire the virus. He has a way of living in secrecy until he
is so numerous that he wins by sheer weight of numbers. He piggybacks
on other hosts and uses their resources to increase his tribe. And
in the right environment, he grows exponentially. A virus don't
even have to mate -- he just replicates, again and again with geometrically
increasing power, doubling with each iteration:
1
11
1111
11111111
1111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
In a few short
generations, a virus population can explode.
Viral Marketing
Defined
What does a
virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any
strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message
to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the
message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies
take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to
thousands, to millions.
Off the Internet,
viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating
a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the
Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing." While
others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate
and tame it, I won't try. The term "viral marketing" has stuck.
The Classic
Hotmail.com Example
The classic
example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free
Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:
- Give away
free e-mail addresses and services,
- Attach a
simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get
your private, free email at https://www.hotmail.com" and,
- Then stand
back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
- Who see
the message,
- Sign up
for their own free e-mail service, and then
- Propel the
message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends
and associates.
Like tiny waves
spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond,
a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely
rapidly.
The
Ultimate (Viral Marketing) Supertip?
See how
Harvey Segal exploits common motivations and behaviours in
his ebook called The Ultimate Supertip. Before you groan about
reading yet another ebook, please note that:
* It's
yours, FREE
* There is NO EMAIL to enter
* You have NOTHING to buy,but lots to learn
(Different, eh! Interested?)

Get this ebook when you become a subscriber of my newsletter, Promote! Promote! Promote!
Or - shh, keep it to yourself! - if you don't want to subscribe to yet another useful newsletter dedicated to helping your promote your website, then read Harvey Segal's article, Goodbye
to Google, to find a direct link for Ultimate Supertip! ;-)
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Elements of
a Viral Marketing Strategy
Accept this
fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and
few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are
the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral
marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the
more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely
to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:
- Gives away
products or services (see Ultimate Supertip above - Editor)
- Provides
for effortless transfer to others
- Scales easily
from small to very large
- Exploits
common motivations and behaviors
- Utilizes
existing communication networks
- Takes advantage
of others' resources
Let's examine
at each of these elements briefly.
1. Gives away
valuable products or services
"Free" is the
most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Most viral marketing
programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention.
Free e-mail services, free information, free "cool" buttons, free
software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much
as you get in the "pro" version. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing
is "The
Law of Giving and Selling" (https://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic-principles.htm).
"Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free"
will usually do it much faster. Viral marketers practice delayed
gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they
can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they
know they will profit "soon and for the rest of their lives" (with
apologies to "Casablanca"). Patience, my friends. Free attracts
eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are
selling, and, presto! you earn money. Eyeballs bring valuable e-mail
addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities.
Give away something, sell something.
2. Provides
for effortless transfer to others
Public health
nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who
cough, wash your hands often, and don't touch your eyes, nose, or
mouth. Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. The medium
that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and
replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing
works famously on the Internet because instant communication has
become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple.
From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message
so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is
better. The classic is: "Get your private, free email at https://www.hotmail.com."
The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom
of every free e-mail message.
3. Scales
easily from small to very large
To spread like
wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small
to very large. The weakness of the Hotmail model is that a free
e-mail service requires its own mailservers to transmit the message.
If the strategy is wildly successful, mailservers must be added
very quickly or the rapid growth will bog down and die. If the virus
multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished.
So long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mailservers
rapidly you're okay. You must build in scalability to your viral
model.
4. Exploits
common motivations and behaviors
Clever viral
marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What
proliferated "Netscape Now" buttons in the early days of the Web?
The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to
be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate
produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages. Design
a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors
for its transmission, and you have a winner.
5. Utilizes
existing communication networks
Most people
are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students
are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has
a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family,
and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores,
hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in
society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with
hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long
understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close
networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on
the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect
e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit
such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your
message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly
multiply its dispersion.
6. Takes advantage
of others' resources
The most creative
viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out.
Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on
others' websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position
their articles on others' webpages. A news release can be picked
up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen
by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else's newsprint
or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources
are depleted rather than your own.
An Elementary
Exercise
Let's put this
into practice. I am seeking to promote my newest FREE e-mail marketing
newsletter, Doctor
Ebiz, which discusses Web marketing and e-commerce trends
and strategies. I'm using two viral marketing strategies and I'd
appreciate your help in testing them, if you're up to an interesting
challenge. I'll report results shortly to give you feedback on the
effectiveness of these techniques.
- First, I've
placed a Recommend-It button on every page of the DoctorEbiz.com
site to encourage visitors to tell a friend about the site. When
you go to https://doctorebiz.com
please try the Recommend-It button, and then report at https://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/ri-report.htm
on how effective you think this strategy is. I'll share some of
the results and your comments in a subsequent article: "Review:
Recommend-It" (https://wilsonweb.com/reviews/recommend-it.htm).
- Second,
I grant permission for every reader to reproduce on your website
the article you are now reading -- "The Six Simple Principles
of Viral Marketing" (see https://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm
for an HTML version you can copy). But copy this article ONLY,
without any alteration whatsoever. Include the copyright statement,
too, please. If you have a marketing or small business website,
it'll provide great content and help your visitors learn important
strategies. When you've placed the article on your website, please
tell me at https://wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-reprint.htm
I'll tally the results and report
them shortly, so to be included in the count, please do this
quickly. (NOTE: I am giving permission to host on your website
this article AND NO OTHERS. Reprinting or hosting my articles
without express written permission is illegal, immoral, and a
violation of my copyright.)
(Note from editor of HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com - the links above now no longer work, and have thus been deactivated! -- Apr, 2013
)
Thank you for
helping me carry out and then track this marketing exercise.
To one degree
or another, all successful viral marketing strategies use most of
the six principles outlined above. In the next article in this series,
"Viral
Marketing Techniques the Typical Business Website Can Deploy Now"
(https://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-deploy.htm), we'll move from
theory to practice. But first learn these six foundational principles
of viral marketing. Master them and wealth will flow your direction.
"Copyright ©
2000, Ralph F. Wilson. All rights reserved. Permission granted to
reprint this article on your website without alteration if you include
this copyright statement."
Reminder: This
page is about using viral marketing (and word of mouth) to promote your website -- please share this page!
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