Viral marketing has gained a lot of popularity over the world wide global Internet.  Many Internet Marketing Guru’s and business owners have adopted this viral marketing strategy. 

How did Hotmail do it?

Hotmail is a classic example of a marketing strategy.  This was the first web-based email provider to give away free email addresses.  At the bottom of each email was an advertisement to get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com.   This was hotmail’s marketing strategy to create a system for selling other products.  They gave away a free product so they could sell other products to their customers after they received the free email account.

This is what we refer to as a word-of-mouth concept.  The subscribers would send messages to their friends and colleagues and from the ad at the bottom of the page they would click the link and get their free hotmail account.  They in turn would send messages to their friends or colleagues and soon their friends and colleagues would become subscribers also.  You see how much power viral marketing has.  This cycle goes on and on.

Viral marketing is powerful has the ability to reach thousands, even millions, of people in such a short time and with minimum  effort from the one who initiates it.

Elements of Viral Marketing

Dr. Ralph Wilson, an e-commerce consultant, identified six elements or basic principles of viral marketing. For a message to use a viral marketing technique it does not have to have all of these elements.  The more principles used, the more powerful the strategy will become.

1. The first basic principle of viral marketing is giving away a free product or service. Most people when they hear the word free will strike up an interest in the product or service being given away.  Free products will have faster results for creating viral marketing but sometimes selling inexpensive products can have a similar effect.

 Free products will not immediately generate any revenue but  it will surely develop your customer base that will eventually lead to generating profits.  You must have patience to build your business

2. Ease of transferring to others. Using videos, email, web sites, podcasts, special reports, white papers, and case studies is some of the methods used for carrying marketing messages.  Viral marketing is very powerful with ease of communicating with all the technology that is available. The message should be kept short and simple and get straight to the point  just like the hotmail marketing strategies at the bottom of the emails sent out.

3. Scalability from small to very large. When businesses use viral marketing they should prepare themselves for rapid growth.   The web host must be able to handle and increase in raped traffic within a short period of time.  This should not be taken lightly because if the customer feels that the site takes too long to load they will leave the site.  The owner will lose potential customers if the server can not handle the rapid traffic. 

4. Exploit motivation and behaviors. Build a marketing strategy that motivates the behaviors of people for its transmission is a definite plus. People love to be popular.  This motivation will drive them to voluntarily communicate to more and more people.

5. Utilize existing networks. The average person knows about 8 to 12 people in their network of close family, friends and colleagues.  Use people you know to create viral marketing  The Internet can be used to create a bigger network circle .Using these existing networks in viral marketing will yield better results.

6. Use other web site to post your articles.  This will get them read by a large group of people without needing to create your own web page. Take advantage of others resources, instead of consuming all of your resources.  . Viral marketing messages are voluntarily passed around in the market place. 

Before being too aggressive, do your homework and find the right media mix for your targeted audience first.  If you are too aggressive in the wrong market, this will damage instead of leading to success.  Learn the basic elements of viral marketing.  Study your targeted market and make sure your audience is interested in what you are offering.  Make sure your market is interested in what you have to say.  If you get these things right you can have a lasting effect on your market and this can lead to success. 

You can create your very own Free Viral Ebook by Clicking  here!

Tags: Internet Marketing, marketing strategies, viral marketing, viral strategies and techniques

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Viral Marketing Strategies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.