Viral Marketing
Word of Mouth Comes of Age
By Edward "Skip" Masland, Director of Marketing & Internet Strategy,
WebSolvers, Inc.
It sounds like something you'd want to avoid, but the reality is, viral marketing has become one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to create a "buzz" about your product or service.
Viral marketing applies to any advertising that spreads and multiplies exponentially, the way a virus does. It's similar to a grassroots campaign on the Internet - the equivalent of going door-to-door, neighbor-to-neighbor, to generate interest in your product or service. Viral marketing relies on "word of mouth" - be it by e-mail, by telephone or by the water cooler - to spread your marketing message. It's about creating buzz and generating action.
One of the most widely known and oft-recounted examples of viral marketing is Hotmail. Hotmail grew its subscriber base faster than any company in the history of the world ...faster than any new online, Internet, or print publication ever. How? By "hotlinking" a viral message to the bottom of every e-mail its subscribers sent that encouraged recipients to: "Sign up for your FREE Hotmail account."
As a result, Hotmail signed up over 12 million subscribers in its first 18 months! Because it used the viral approach, it ended up spending less than $500K on marketing, advertising and promotions combined. What's more, every Hotmail subscriber willingly completed a detailed demographic profile, including occupation and salary. No wonder most progressive organizations have been moving toward and experimenting with this Trojan Horse technique.
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant and author of the on-line e-zine Web Marketing Today, is one of the major proponents of Viral Marketing. Below are what he has defined as the six basic elements to include in a viral strategy. It need not contain ALL these elements, but the more it incorporates, the more powerful the results are likely to be. According to Dr. Wilson, an effective viral marketing strategy should:
- Include product or service giveaways
- Make it easy to transfer the information to others
- Scale easily from small to very large
- Exploit common motivations and behaviors
- Utilize existing communication networks
- Take advantage of others' resources
Let's take a closer look at each of these essential elements.
1. Includes valuable product or service giveaways
"FREE" was, is and will always be the most powerful word in marketing. 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 many as you get in the "pro" version). "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "FREE" will usually get results and responses much faster. Viral marketers practice a form of "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 sooner or later. Why? Because "Free" attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! You earn money. Eyeballs are all connected to valuable e-mail addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, and the theory goes, you'll end up selling something.
2. Makes it easy to 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. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. The digital format makes copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you need to simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without any degradation. In this forum, shorter is definitely better. The classic is: "Get your private, free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com." The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom of every 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 mail servers to transmit the message. If the strategy is wildly successful, mail servers must be added very quickly or the rapid growth will bog or even bring the company down. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished. As long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mail servers rapidly you're okay. You must build scalability into your viral model.
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What proliferated the use of "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'll 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 all of us have a network of 8 to 12 people in our close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon his/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 bookmark favorite websites. 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 spread.
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 other websites. Authors who give away free articles seek to position their articles on others' web pages. 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 web page is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own.
What's Next for Viral Marketing?
More tired than wired at this point, viral marketing is the term for giving your site visitors the tools to tell their friends all about you. A common, ongoing incarnation is the "Send-This-Page-To-a-Friend" button - which allows you to easily notify someone via e-mail when you come across a page s/he may like.
Another relatively new manifestation of viral e-mail marketing has been largely inspired by popular culture. Like the "Dancing Baby" that made the rounds in the late '90s, one of this millennium's most widely used hooks has been based on Budweiser's "Whassup" campaign. To date, there have been literally dozens of variations on this theme, using the images of everyone from Wonder Woman to George W. Bush in conjunction with the soundtrack from the original "Whassup" television commercial. And more often than not, there is a brief viral intro and a closing link from the person or company who created it.
"Timeliness" and "cultural awareness" should, therefore, be added to Dr. Wilson's list of viral marketing mandatories.
The 2000 Holiday season was a real record-breaker for viral e-mails - everything from "A Soldier's Holiday Prayer" to "What if the 3 Wise Men had been Women" made the rounds, with viral pleas to "please pass this along." Some were generated by small businesspeople who, by tagging their messages with a company name, title and web site address, sought to generate awareness if not outright action. Either way, if the content of the e-mail is funny, interesting or emotional enough to have an impact, the recipients often forward it - viral message and all - to friends and family. Mission accomplished.
The Bottom Line
As interactive marketing gets "back to basics," viral components will become more important to progressive marketers. By taking advantage of this low-cost, easy-to-generate format, smart companies can effectively extend their reach and stretch their marketing dollars. The key to success will be differentiating their e-mail messages from the mass-market, junk-mail spammers who, as always, put quantity above quality.
WebSolvers, Inc., located in Winter Park, Florida, is a proven leader in creative Web site development, Internet hosting, marketing and e-commerce. The company is dedicated to serving customers in a new age of Internet services and challenges its clients to integrate the Internet into their daily business activities. The firm's home on the Web is www.websolvers.com.
