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The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing
by
Web Marketing Today, Issue 70, February 1, 2000
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let's put this into practice. I am seeking to promote my newest
FREE e-mail marketing newsletter, Doctor Ebiz (http://doctorebiz.com),
which discusses Web marketing and e-commerce trends and strategies.
I'm using two viral marketing strategies and I'd appreciate your
help in testing them, if you're up to an interesting challenge.
I'll report results shortly to give you feedback on the effectiveness
of these techniques.
- First, I've placed a Recommend-It button on every page of the
DoctorEbiz.com site to encourage visitors to tell a friend about
the site. When you go to http://doctorebiz.com please try the
Recommend-It button, and then report at http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/ri-report.htm
on how effective you think this strategy is. I'll share some of
the results and your comments in a subsequent article: "Review:
Recommend-It" (http://wilsonweb.com/reviews/recommend-it.htm).
- Second, 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. When you've placed the article on your website, please
tell me at http://wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-reprint.htm I'll tally
the results and report them shortly, so to be included in the
count, please do this quickly. (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.)
Thank you for helping me carry out and then track this marketing
exercise.
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.
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Copyright © 2000, by Ralph F. Wilson, http://www.wilsonweb.com
All rights reserved.
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson is one of the world's top Web
marketing and e-business authorities and author of Planning Your
Internet Marketing Strategy (Wiley, 2002). He is founding editor
of Web Marketing Today, Web Commerce Today, and Doctor Ebiz and
recipient of the Tenagra Award for Internet Marketing Excellence.
This 750-word article may be reproduced in a website,
e-zine, CD-ROM, book, magazine, etc. so long as these four conditions
are met: (1) It is reprinted in full with no editing. (2) The byline
"by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson" is left intact. (3) The copyright
information is included at the end of the article, preserving the
"hot" hyperlink. The biographical information may be retained
or omitted at your discretion. (4) You e-mail me at rfwilson@wilsonweb.com
letting me know the URL on your site where the article appears,
or the medium used to distribute the article. (Note: I do NOT allow
other articles on my site to be reproduced.)
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Marketing Today, Issue 70, February 1, 2000
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