The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing
by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
Web Marketing Today, Issue 70, February 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:
Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at
http://www.hotmail.com" and,
Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
Who see the message,
Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
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:
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
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.
An Elementary Exercise
Let's put this into practice. I am seeking to promote my newest FREE e-mail marketing
newsletter, Doctor Ebiz (http://doctorebiz.com), which discusses Web marketing and ecommerce
t
