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 http://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.
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
- 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" (http://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 http://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.
Put into practice
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
http://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. (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.)
When I first offered this to my readers in February 2000, many took me up on
it. Six months later a received a phone call:
"I want to speak to the King of Viral Marketing!"
"Well, I'm not the King," I demurred. "I wrote an article about viral
marketing a few months ago, but that's all."
"I've searched all over the Internet about viral marketing," he said, "and
your name keeps showing up. You must be the King!."
It worked! Even five years later this webpage is ranked #1 for "viral
marketing."
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" (http://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, 2005, Ralph F. Wilson,
E-Mail Marketing and Online Marketing editor, Web Marketing Today.
All rights reserved. Permission granted to reprint this article on your website
without alteration if you include this copyright statement and leave the
hyperlinks live and in place."
