The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing
by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
Web Marketing Today, February 1, 2005.
Originally published 2/1/2000
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:
1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent
out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com"
and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends
and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. 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:
1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources
Let's examine at each of these elements briefly.
1. Gives away valuable products or services
"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.
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
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.
3. Scales easily from small to very large
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.
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
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.
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
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.
6. Takes advantage of others' resources
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.
Put into practice
Viral Marketing by Russell Goldsmith
Viral Marketing
by Russell Goldsmith
The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing by George Silverman
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.
(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.)
When I first offered this to my readers in February 2000, many
took me up on it. Six months later a received a phone call:
"I want to speak to the King of Viral Marketing!"
"Well, I'm not the King," I demurred. "I wrote
an article about viral marketing a few months ago, but that's all."
"I've searched all over the Internet about viral marketing,"
he said, "and your name keeps showing up. You must be the King!."
It worked! Even five years later this webpage is ranked #1 for
"viral marketing."
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.
"Copyright © 2000, 2005, Ralph F. Wilson, E-Mail Marketing
and Online Marketing editor, Web Marketing Today. All rights reserved.
Permission granted to reprint this article on your website without
alteration if you include this copyright statement and leave the
hyperlinks live and in place."
Read additional articles from Web Marketing Today, Issue 70, February
1, 2000
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