Viral Marketing

[Al]

Is your business spreading like a virus?

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.

We have tweaked our referral systems even more and are using creative marketing Ideas to keep the virus spreading as rapidly as possible.



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[XTREME1]

Branding and viral marketing a similar but viral marketing is usually mostly web based but here are the 6 principles of Viral Marketing unfortunately I am not computer savy enough to head down that road. I will continue to network, brand and referral market

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.
"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"
Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! you earn money. 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.
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.

3. Scales easily from small to very large
To spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. If the strategy is wildly successful staff and services 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 manpower 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. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. You need a desired message 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.

 

[billyeadon]

Author Seth Godin was one of the first to coin the term and he likes to refer to it as Sneezing.

 

[Scott]

Speaking of a great example viral marketing, where is myeasymarketing.com, Bill? Any updates?

Scott

 

[XTREME1]

here is something good for you Bill
I read a book by seth Unleashing the idea Virus but the real first viral marketing that really worked was Hotmail.com and here is a quick history of Viral Marketing and I do believe my company and brand is becoming infectious

The term Viral Marketing was coined by a Harvard Business School professor, Jeffrey F. Rayport, in December 1996 article for Fast Company The Virus of Marketing. The term was further popularized by Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's e-mail practice of appending advertising for itself in outgoing mail from their users.

Among the first to write about viral marketing on the Internet was media critic Douglas Rushkoff in his 1994 book Media Virus. The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user will become "infected" (i.e., sign up for an account) and can then go on to infect other susceptible users. As long as each infected user sends mail to more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than one), standard in epidemiology imply that the number of infected users will grow according to a logistic curve, whose initial segment appears exponential.

Among the first to write about algorithms designed to identify people with high Social Networking Potential is Bob Gerstley in Advertising Research is Changing. Gerstley uses SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research to help marketers maximize the effectiveness of viral marketing campaigns.

In response to its use, many sites have started up trying to describe what viral marketing is.

 

[billyeadon]

idea virus

Good info Greg.

Thanks,

Bill