It sounds contagious, and it is -- that's the point. You may or may not have heard the term viral marketing before, but you’ve taken part in its process. Viral Marketing is basically word-of-mouth advertising on a larger scale. You tell your friends about a product or service and they tell their friends, and so on -- at least that's the outcome of a successful viral marketing. For those of you who remember 1970s adverting campaigns, Faberge Shampoo had a TV ad that showed a young woman saying, "You tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so and so on." Each time she would repeat "and so on" her picture would duplicate on the screen until the screen was filled with small pictures of the same woman. Many articles refer to this example because it worked, and that's why so many of us can picture that commercial in our mind.
Although the term didn't exist over thirty years ago, viral marketing worked in the 70s and it's a successful online advertising technique, if it's done right. The term was coined by venture capitalist, Steve Jurvetson, who defines viral marketing as "network-enhanced word of mouth." A more recent example is Hotmail, many articles on viral marketing list Hotmail as the most widely known success story of viral marketing. According to http://wilsonweb.com, "Hotmail gave away free email addresses and attached a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: 'Get your private, free email at http://hotmail.com.' Then stand back while people email to their own network of friends and associates."
The following is a synopsis of the "Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy," by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson. The strategy defines six elements that a viral marketing campaign should include:
- Give away product or services (e.g., free email).
- Provide for effortless transfer to others -- works great for the Internet because it's so easy to spread information to others.
- Scale easily from small to very large -- plan ahead for the success of the viral marketing campaign.
- Exploit common motivations and behaviors -- know human behavior and what motivates people, examples include greed, hunger, love, and understanding.
- Utilize existing communication networks -- learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you will rapidly multiply its dispersion.
- Take advantage of others' resources -- Affiliate programs place text or graphic links on other’s websites. Authors give away free articles, such as the link listed at the beginning of this paragraph.
My next blog will discuss some examples of how nonprofit organizations have implemented viral marketing campaigns.
