Viral marketing

What viral marketing is

Viral marketing is getting people to refer others to your website. Viral marketing is any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as “word-of-mouth” marketing.

A classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com. They attach a message at the bottom of every email that says: “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com.” Then they just stand back as everyone sends this message along with every email that they send out.

For a website, a good viral marketing strategy is to have a link that an Internet surfer can click on that will email the page or website to a friend. Many news websites have this feature at the bottom of the articles that are written.

Elements of a viral marketing strategy

There are many different elements that make up a good viral marketing strategy. Here we will give you five of them. A viral marketing strategy does not need to contain all of these elements, but the more the better. The five elements are the following:
Gives away products or services
Provides for effortless transfer to others
Exploits common motivations and behaviors
Utilizes existing communication networks
Takes advantage of others’ resources

1. Gives away products or services
There is not a more powerful marketing word than “free.” A good viral marketing strategy will incorporate the free concept by giving away products or services to attract attention. For example: free information, free graphics, free software programs, etc. Obviously, you will not make money up front offering things for free. However, the profits will come as you increase your potential customer base, and viral marketing does just that, it attract people to your website, who eventually turn into purchasers.


2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
Viruses only spread when they are easy to transmit. So you must make it easy to transfer your message to others. For example: “Click here to email this article to a friend” or “Send this article” are good examples. Then link that message so that when it’s clicked on, all they have to do is type in their friend’s email address and click send, and away it goes. The shorter the message is and easier to send, the better the viral marketing strategy.

3. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
Greed drives people, and so does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of email messages. Design a viral marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behavior for its transmission, and you’ll be successful.

4. Utilizes existing communication networks
Social scientists say 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 hundreds or thousands of people. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships by collecting email addresses, adding websites to their favorites, signing up for affiliate programs, etc. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you will rapidly multiply its dispersion.

5. Takes advantage of others’ resources
The most creative viral marketing plans use others’ resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place their banner or ad on others’ websites. Authors who give away free articles try to position their articles on others’ web pages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basic of articles seen by thousands of readers. Now someone else’s newsprint or website is relaying your marketing message. Someone else’s resources are depleted rather than your own.

How to implement viral marketing

There are many methods of implementing these principles of viral marketing to your website, here we will list a few examples.

One thing that you can do is write articles and encourage others to post them on their site as free content. Only let others use the articles if it contains links to your site. Another method is to set up an affiliate program to encourage links to your products. Make sure you pay enough to make this attractive to site owners. You could send out news releases for your site.

Word of mouth strategies are also effective. If you know some CGI or JavaScript you can install a “Email article to friend” link at the bottom of each article that you write. If you don’t know how to do this, you can just encourage readers to email the article on their own to friends.

You can also include some free products or services to get the word out like a free e-greeting card or free email or free software. Most importantly, think of unique ways you can build viral marketing techniques into your future marketing programs.

Online websites and resources

There are a number of articles on viral marketing at http://www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mm_Viral that you can look into. For tips on adding the HTML to your site to apply viral marketing, try checking out www.wilsonweb.com and www.htmlgoodies.com.