The Six Simple Principles of Viral 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.”

Viral Marketing is like a virus; it rapidly multiplies and spreads the message to thousands and millions. It can be referred with other terms like “word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz,", “networking marketing” etc…

The classic example for Viral Marketing is hotmail.com. it is one of the first free-web based email services. Their strategy was simple, they:

• Gave away free e-mail address and services
• Attached a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out. The message was: “Get your private email at http://www.hotmail.com”
• Then they stood back watched while people emailed their own network of friends and associates, who see this message and sign up for their own free email service and then,
• Push the message still wider on their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Viral Marketing depends on how you go about it. Some viral strategies may work better than the other. Viral Marketing strategies need not contain all the elements but the more elements it contains; more powerful the results are likely to be.

• Gives away products or services - "Free" is the most powerful word. Most of the viral marketing campaigns give away products for free in order to attract attention.

• Provides for effortless transfer to others - The message which needs to be transmitted has to be Short, Crisp, and Convincing. The best example for this would be "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com".

• Scales easily from small to very large - The message needs to be spread gradually rather than rapidly, because it should not fade away before the word is spread.
  

• Exploits common motivations and behaviors - Just spreading the word is not enough, spreading it in such a way that it would leave an urge to produce millions of websites and billions of website and billions of e-mail messages.

• Utilizes existing communication networks - Each of us will atleast have a network of 10-12 people in our close network of Family and Friends. We in the online industry, develop a network of relationships by collecting e-mails, URLs, etc... Spreading the right message in the right place through the right people would easily multiply your spread.

• Takes advantage of others' resources - The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resource to spread the word across. The best example for this would be Affiliates program, which places text links and ads on other's website.

To get more insight on this article please click on "Read more" below.

Read more