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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 some
have attempted to rename it, to somehow
domesticate and tame it, the term "viral
marketing" has stuck.
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:
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Gives away products or services
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Provides for effortless transfer to others
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Scales easily from small to very large
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Exploits common motivations and behaviors
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Utilizes existing communication networks
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Takes advantage of others' resources
To one degree or another, all successful viral
marketing strategies use most of the six
principles outlined above. |
