OK, I know that the term “viral marketing” sounds like something that could crash your computer. Not always.
People fear viruses, but actually they have some pretty cool attributes. For one thing, viruses piggyback on other hosts and use the host’s resources to increase the virus’ numbers. Under the right conditions, viruses grow exponentially. They do this by replicating again and again with geometrically increasing power, doubling with each iteration. |
Are you starting to see where I’m going with this? What if your marketing campaign was like that? Viral marketing is the old technique of “word of mouth”, “creating a buzz”, or even “leveraging the media”, because those things are completely and utterly free.
A rule of thumb for any business person: when you’ve got other people doing your work for you, selling your product, you have truly got it made.
Thus, viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages people to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in your campaign’s exposure and influence. Think about it—you can literally reach MILLIONS of people this way!
Believe it or not, Hotmail.com started viral marketing, and what they did is very, very smart.
Watch and learn, because their strategy is simple:
1. They give away free e-mail addresses and service.
2. They always attach a simple tag at the bottom of every message that says: “Get your private, free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com”
3. Users e-mail to their own network of friends and associates who see the message, think, “Hmm…free e-mail…cool!”
4. The friends and associates sign up for their own free e-mail service.
5. All these new users get the message out to more and more friends and associates.
It’s pure marketing genius: like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.
Another company that does this is VistaPrint. They offer free business cards. What’s the catch? On the back is a small ad for VistaPrint that tells anyone reading that ad how to order their own free business cards.
And VistaPrint isn’t giving away the farm either—when you go to their site, you find the free business cards…but you also see plenty of much nicer cards, without advertising on the back, that cost money. See what they do? They lure people in with a legitimate freebie—which does exist—and then make money on the up-sell.
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