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Viral Marketing: Plant a Promotional Seed that will Spread
Like Wildfire>
The Process
 However,
the mechanism of viral marketing is not self-starting magic-it needs
to be leveraged effectively. According to Chris Yeh "Viral marketing
is like sex -- everyone talks about it, but most people aren't as
good at it as they think. What's more, it's an act that's filled with
emotional landmines that we marketers must dance around, to avoid
an ugly breakup with our customers." [11]
Internet marketing guru, Dr Ralph Wilson [10], says that six simple
principles underlie an effective viral marketing strategy. It's easy
to see how the Hotmail campaign leveraged these:
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
What starts the virus rolling is offering something of value and
interest that the recipient will want to pass on to others. Internet
marketer Terry Dean [3] gives the following examples of traffic
viruses that can provide the trigger for a viral campaign:
Postcards - Visitors send postcards to family and friends.
Their recipients visit your site and send postcards to people they
know. The cycle continues for automated traffic.
eBooks - You give away a highly informative ebook free and
then other webmasters take your ebook and post it to their sites.
People all over the Web get your information and links because those
sites are advertising for you.
Refer a Friend - Visit my Web site and notice how I give
you the option of sending every one of my free articles to your
friends. The goal of this is to provide valuable information they
will pass on to others!
Software - Look at programs such as ICQ. ICQ is available
at http://www.icq.com and gives you the ability to chat online with
your friends. The key is your friends must also have this free software
to chat with you. So you automatically try to get them to download
the software, too.
Free E-mail - Ever wonder why so many companies are offering
free e-mail addresses? It's because they want their own traffic
virus. Every e-mail someone sends from a free e-mail address includes
a little link at the bottom taking the recipients to your Web site.
Free Web Sites - This is a traffic virus as well. The Web
hosts offering these free sites place ads on your free Web site.
When you advertise, you are also advertising for them. More people
sign up for free sites and the process continues.
Two-Tier Affiliate Programs - When you offer a two-tier affiliate
program, your members advertise for more affiliates to promote you.
Not only do the affiliates you sign up advertise your site, but
they refer others to advertise your site as well.
E-mail marketer Kathleen Riley puts it this way: "Producing a message
with a quality offer or an incentive for pass-along is what viral
marketing is all about. Offer something worthy of sharing--a valuable
discount, vital information, or offer an incentive for sharing,
additional entries into a sweepstakes or an added discount or premium
service, and viral marketing happens naturally... and often quite
successfully. The bottom line is that the message must be perceived
as having value." [9]
Part 1: A Viral
Market
Part 3: The
Dangers
Part 4: Sources,
Resources & Credits
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