Sandy MacGillivray asked:


The word “viral” makes you think infection, illness and disease. But, when referring to Internet Marketing , “viral” is very much a desirable thing!

What is Viral Marketing? Well, viral is a way of spreading your marketing message from person to person, similar to passing a cold around. You pass on the germ to about five people, who in turn each pass on the bug to 5 more (5×5=25), who then spread it to another 5 (25×5=125) and so on until after just 8 levels, you reach the staggering figure of 1,953,125. Of course the best example of viral marketing is Hotmail, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. Their strategy was, and still is very simple:

1. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates who see the message and sign up for their own free e-mail service, and the cycle continues.

2. Give away free e-mail addresses and services

3. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every users email message sent: “Get your private, free email at ….”

So, What Makes Marketing Viral? A viral marketing plan has some or all of the following basic elements:

1. Exploits common motivations and behaviours

2. Uses existing communication networks

3. Utilizes the resources of others

4. Provides a product or service free

5. Makes for easy transfer of the message to others

6. Allows easy growth from small to very large

When providing a product or service free, The word “Free” is the most persuasive word in marketing. Most viral marketing campaigns give away a product or service to gain prospect’s interest. Eg. Free e-mail service, free software, free info. etc. Then, when you have their attention, and build their trust, you can sell something related to their target niche. Don’t hit them with a sales pitch first, they won’t be as interested.

Time and time again, this has proven to be true. Now, most people have around 4 to 10 people in their close network of friends, family and work colleagues. On the internet, nearly everyone has email addresses in their contacts list, and favourite websites stored in their web browser. Use this fact in your marketing campaign. So, when you give away a free product, ask the recipient to provide the email addresses of others who may be interested. You could provide a friendly “Tell a Friend” feature which makes letting your contacts know that much easier.

Viral marketing has come a long way since the day of Hotmail. Today, most viral marketing websites take hold extremely well, and benefit all parties involved. Everyone wants to take part in something that is catching on like wildfire, and especially when it proves to be rewarding for all involved.

Because viral marketing is used as a way of building customers, and driving traffic to your website, it’s simply a win/win situation for everyone! There is very little cost involved with a Viral marketing effort. In fact, in many places, it can be free. Given that, and the huge potential for increased profits with less effort, your marketing campaigns should always go viral so your prospects can’t resist!



www hotmail co0m

Cory Threlfall asked:


The term viral marketing implies marketing through the help of Internet or in other words online marketing of any product or service. Viral marketing is also sometimes called viral advertising. And the system is so much effective that it is considered as one of the most powerful marketing and advertising strategies on the Internet. Viral marketing is a system used to promote products and services through a suitable media distribution. It is a very successful marketing system and also a very cost effective method used to promote products.

Viral marketing did not get its name because any virus is involved in the process but it adopted the pattern of marketing through word of mouth network. Viral marketing depends on a high rate of pass-along-the-advertisement from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward the advertisement to a large number of friends then the overall growth speeds up quite quickly. If the pass-along numbers are too low, the overall growth slows down too.

Viral marketing follows the successful method of multi level marketing and applies it to all customers. Though there are several successful marketing strategies this method is supposed to be of more powerful than many other marketing techniques. This viral marketing can be purposefully applied to a variety of products, such as web hosted address books, calendars, list of servers and news group readers.

A brief history

The term viral marketing was proposed by a professor called Jeffrey F. Rayport of Harvard Business School in a December 1996. It was further used and popularized by Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997, while they were describing the Hotmail’s e-mail practice of advertising. The Hotmail was the first to use viral marketing through their emails.

Elements of viral marketing

Recent study has shown that some viral marketing have worked wonders for the company, but some have failed to gain popularity with their products or services. There are few effective elements of viral marketing, which should be followed to make the strategy a hit. It is not necessary to follow all the elements of the marketing strategy but the more you take up the better result you get. These elements of viral marketing are as followed -

- Provides system for effortless transfer to others: Viral marketing works widely on the Internet because, instant communication is an easy, effortless and inexpensive medium.

- Gives away valuable products or services: Viral marketers practice delayed gratification because they know that they may not profit today but if they manage to generate interest from anything free, they will profit fast and easy.

- Exploits common motivations and behavioral skills: Intelligent viral marketing plans take advantages of common human motivations and behaviors.

- Upgrades easily from small network to a very large network: Building scalability is most importantly required for a viral model.

- Utilizes existing communication for networking: Internet has by far proved to be the most widely communicating medium for marketing through marketing by individuals.

- Takes advantage of others’ resources: The most creative viral marketing plans use others’ resources to get the job done.



hotmail site

The Davinator asked:


Finding and using viral marketing tools to aid in the building of your online business is becoming more popular all the time. We are living in an age where more and more powerful tools are becoming available all the time.

As far as I’m concerned personally, any chance you have to get traffic virally, build your list virally, or distribute an ebook or software which can have viral elements you should be doing it.

The most popular and famous example of using viral marketing strategies was Hotmail. By placing a link at the bottom of their emails for anybody else to get their program created an overnight phenomenon. Day after day, there were thousands of more people signing up for Hotmail accounts. I don’t know what the count is these days but it’s in the millions. And the rights to Hotmail was sold for millions of dollars.

Recently, I visited a blog by a very good blogger named Jay. Jay was saying on his site, that he didn’t use viral link cloakers and was also explaining why he didn’t use them. Some of his reasoning was that, with many viral link cloakers they have a portion of the program that does build a list inside the site for you. Jay was stating that that sort of list that is inside a viral cloaking site isn’t really targeted at all. And you know what? He’s right!

Many of the people that may be in your downline may not be in your niche at all. These people signed up through your reference to the site perhaps, but, I’m sure many of them did it for their own reasons of building their business, but they might be in the “no smoking” niche for all we know. Why would they want to receive emails from another guy that would perhaps be in the “food” niche etc.

I replied to Jay’s post because I knew that the method I’m using viral link cloaking for is entirely different. I told Jay that, for one, I have never emailed my downline in a viral link cloaking and tracking site. The reason I use viral link cloakers is because it gets my ads shown on hundreds of other sites. When my ads are clicked they are interested in the headline of my ad, then taken to a squeeze page of one of my free reports and then people opt-in to my real list! Jay agreed, stating that, yes, I can see if you use them that way it would benefit you. And it does! I enjoy new signups for my list everyday because of this method.

Most readers of my blog know I’m a huge advocate for Viral Spiral. Heck, I must be, I liked the program so much I jumped at the chance to work for Tim Brocklehurst. Not only did I love the system he created, but it also meant I could learn a thing or two from one of the people I considered a heavy influence on me. I’m actually learning a lot from him without even asking much of the time. So it worked out real great!

The type of list you build inside a Viral Spiral site isn’t the type that you build inside one of these viral link cloaking systems either. It is targeted to people in your niche. Why? Well, it’s because you supply all of the members of your site with your squeeze pages and rebrandable books, so they can build their own lists. By you having control of the squeeze pages and ebooks supplied your guaranteed everybody that joins your site signed up because they were interested in receiving your books, or software etc. So yes, it is targeted, more benefit for you and all of the members building inside your site!

Viral marketing solutions provide a great way of getting a non-stop flow of traffic to your offers. Use the systems consistently and long term and holy crap, in some time your traffic will get amazing.

My solution in using them for list building is pretty straight forward really.

I’ve been using Viral Link Tracker to drive traffic to ads, which are shown consistently on other peoples sites. The more I use it, the more ads are shown. The more people that use it below me, earns me more ads being shown. So guess what is in my ads? These ads are all pointing towards my squeeze pages. So using these ads across a huge network is building my list for me!

I also did upgrade my membership with Viral Link Tracker because it will allow me to have the power of more levels of sub-users earning me more ads. It just builds bigger, and bigger, it’s endless….seeing the power yet?

One of the last viral strategies that has to be mentioned is viral software.

I remember a while back Ewen Chia came out with My Free Website Builder. My Free Website Builder is basically NVU. But Ewen, in his ingenuity, came up with the idea to create a bit of a different interface for it with links pointing to his websites or different programs that he has developed and what not. He sent it out to his thousands of subscribers for free, and gave everybody permission to give it to all of their friends too. Hmmm, now why would he do that?

Well, viral, viral, viral…. every time somebody gives it away with his links in it, he’s getting traffic from all of those people, and then from all of the people that they give it to, and so on, and so on….once again endlessly!

I recently came across one such softwares that allowed me to rebrand it with any links I wanted.

Guess who I heard about it from? Ewen Chia of course. I rebranded it with links pointing back to some of the websites that I wanted to receive more traffic to. By giving this away, traffic will be coming in for years to come. It’s a great viral marketing strategy to be using!

It was really inexpensive to do all this, and once re-branded, you can do whatever you want to with the software. You can sell it, or you can just give it away. Whatever you want really. I suggest that you let anybody that gets it from you either by paying for it or for free, you allow them to give it away as well. Hence, your viral traffic will start to happen again, in a whole other stream of flow.



JAY

Leter Privott asked:


Viral marketing has garnered much attention today. The way it spreads a marketing message can be very effective. Internet viral marketing behaves like a virus, as the name implies. The marketing message has a tendency to be spread through virus-like activity.

There are many well-known ways of creating a fuzz through Internet viral marketing. One can utilize site links, referral programs and other viral marketing techniques to be able to reach his target audience. A bright idea is the start of the viral marketing venture and this is made operational through the right techniques.

This article tries to explain some of the other viral marketing techniques that are out there on the Internet. These are tools which can sometimes be overseen by the marketer because his vision of viral marketing is limited.

Here are some of the techniques which can be effective in spreading a marketing message:

Create an award

Awards catch attention. When someone or something is given an award, it creates fuzz in the target audience. One can look into award creation to be able to attract people and be successful in spreading the marketing message.

Distributing a free software

Everybody loves freebies! If one is competent in creating software programs for different applications, he can actually use them to as marketing tools. One must make sure, though, that the software contains some kind of advertisement containing the marketing message.

Providing free email account

This is the technique that was employed by hotmail when it initially started. Every person who signed up for their free email account carried the marketing message. This simple idea turned hotmail into a craze and its owners into millionaires. Although doing the same thing today may not emulate the results which were generated by hotmail, but it still is an effective way of marketing.

Providing free web space

Again, freebies are loved by everyone. If one has the option to give free web space to enthusiasts, he can do so. This is a way of effectively marketing a message since people will be intrigued and enticed by the free web space offer. One can make a deal with the people who would want to get some free web space. One can demand to put up his logo, or the marketing mechanism in the website that will be developed by the one who availed the free web space.

Creating a top 100 site

Viral marketing can be seen as a game of getting hits from the Internet users. A “top 100″ website is very popular for people who are researching for something or engaged in plain web surfing. They would like to get quick information about the best websites that are out there. The problem of too much information on the Internet can be used as an effective tool for viral marketing.

Offering free e-cards

The keyword here is, again- Free!

Offering free graphics, banners, templates

If one is involved in doing artworks, he can publicize his works and offer them to different people who might want to use them for their own purposes. Again, one must be creative in using these media in marketing.

Offering free consultation

If one is a specialist in a certain area, he can offer free services for a certain period of time or for a certain topic and use this opportunity to relay his marketing message.

Offering specialized link directory

People are always looking for specialized link directories. This is connected to the problem of having too much information in the Internet. Sometimes, people just want to get information faster.

Free newsletter with bonuses

Newsletters can directly contain the marketing message that one would want to convey, but of course, people should have some incentive to look at the newsletters.

Free redirect service.

Linking with other websites can be used as a viral marketing tool. There are many people who are doing this right now.

Free screensavers

In using screensavers, one should have a general theme so that people can identify with them.

Free autoresponder service

An autoresponder service is a program which automatically responds to emails that are sent to the responder.

Free email course

A free email course can be used by marketers since it is a good way to learn and get information about the basics of getting connected through the net.

Writing articles and distributing them for reprint

If one is a good writer, he can write articles and use them to be able to convey his message. The articles may not necessarily contain the message itself but arrangements should made by the marketer with the other party.

Using forums and discussion boards (using signatures)

If one has a discussion board in his website, he might as well let people use it for free. An advertisement at the top of the discussion board will definitely be an effective way to market the website.

Start your own affiliate program (one of the best method to generating traffic and sales!)

Affiliate programs give incentives to webmasters to put up your banners into their websites. This is one of the most popular viral marketing techniques today.

Joint Ventures

Special arrangements can be made with the webmasters so as to maximize the potentials of the banners and minimize the cost of putting them up.

Provide free guestbook

Providing a free guestbook will attract people because it is an avenue where they can share their ideas and these ideas will eventually be read by others.

Provide free forum

Forums are quite popular. People love to have conversations and forums are one of the main reasons why people visit a certain website.

These are just some of the ways on how a marketer can spread his message through the Internet. There may be other ways of doing viral marketing and marketers are encouraged to look at these possibilities.



LEROY

G Kumar asked:


Free Advertising Part V

Permission is granted to reprint the following article as long as no

changes are made and the byline, copyright information, and the

resource box is included. Please let me know if you use this article

by sending an email to info@eastrovedica.com

Article Title: Viral Marketing – Secrets Revealed Part V

Author: G Kumar

Contact Author :info@eastrovedica.com

Publishing Guidelines: May be freely published w/bylines

Web Address http://www.astrognosis.com/ http://www.astrologiavedica.com/ http://www.eastrovedica.com/

Viral Marketing – Secrets Revealed Part V

In this article we discuss signature files and their uses.

A sig file ( signature file ) is a short bio of yourself. It contains your url and email address.

Signature files have got tremendous use in Web Marketing. It goes along with every email and proclaims who you are and what knowledge you have and what you sell.

This is a sig file which goes out with email I send.

Zodiac Computers = G Kumar

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sidereal Astrology & Yogic Psychology Expert

Get your free Astronumerology Report

http://www.eastrovedica.com/

mailto:zodiac20@vsnl.com

Hotmail.com was one site which came up due to Viral Marketing. The message ” Get your free email with

Hotmail.com” spread like a virus and within 18 months Hotmail has 30 million registrants. This is what the sig

file can do. If you give a freebie, you can add that too in the sigfile. In my sig file I offer a free Astronumerology

Report & so many at least 50 percent of the receipients do visit my website.

If you are using Outlook Express, you can set up a Sig File. You can go to Tools on the Main Menu, click Options, click Signatures and design a sig file and devise in such a way that this sig file goes out with every email that you send.

Ezine Ads

Ezine ads are the most costefficient way of advertising. What is advertising, after all ? It is Salesmanship-In-Print! Ezines do not charge much when compared to banner ads and express search engine submissions. For a nominal price, you can have your ads blasted to thousands of the ezine’s subscribers.

If you have an ezine, you can swap ads with other subscribers. If your ezine has a subscriber base of 1000 and if you want to swap ads with another ezine which has a subscriber base of 2000, you can do a 1:2 ratio.

Adcopy writing is an art. The first and foremost principle to bear in mind is get the attention of the reader. The ad copy headlines should be attractive and should catch attention. You have to focus on the ‘you’ benefits, that is what how the customer will benefit from purchasing your products. You convince him about his benefits and he will definitely buy your product. My ad which pulled in a lot of subscribers runs like this

—>>>FREE Ezine Ads For YOU!



OLLIE

Daryl Campbell asked:


In 1999, three young movie makers released a low budget film that by all rights should have disappeared quickly or at least wound up in the bargain bin at your local department store. Instead, the Blair Witch Project has been labeled a classic while grossing over 240 million dollars worldwide. So why did this film succeed when other low budget movies of various caliber have failed? Of course you have to credit the filmmakers for coming up with an inventive storyline but more than anything the bulk of the praise goes to the ingenious viral marketing campaign unleashed by the Lion’s Gate movie studio.

Eight years ago, using the internet to promote a film was quite revolutionary. Since then online word of mouth has not only become standard operating procedure but also has been taken to the next level thanks to the emergence of new technologies and information appearing almost daily. However there are still some old school tips you should consider using to make your viral marketing work.

1. Give It Away

This is a centuries old technique. A new business creates a buzz by giving away free samples of their product or service. On the internet, nobody exploited this method better than Hotmail. By giving away free email accounts while using various word of mouth networks, Hotmail grew to over 12 million subscribers in less than 2 years. A short time later, Microsoft came knocking and bought Hotmail for an estimated 400 million dollars.

Now no one is saying that a big conglomerate will show up at your door ready to hand you a blank check but the power of the giveaway cannot be overstated. If people feel you are giving them a quality product or information, they will be more likely to spread the word about your business.

2. Make It Small

In the latter part of the 19th century, Montgomery’s Ward was the king of the mail order catalogs. The arrival of this massive volume of tools and products was a major event in many American households. So how did Sears and Roebuck, a late entry into the mail order game, eventually rival and then surpass Montgomery’s Ward? Among the many brilliant ideas implemented by Richard Sears was the smaller catalog. Volume wise it remained just as thick as Montgomery’s Ward but as Sears explained when you place the two catalogs on your coffee table, you will almost always stack the smaller on top of the larger. In other words his directory would be the first one you reached for. The Sears catalog also proved to be much more portable.

Most of the innovations since that time have been about making something smaller and faster. The computer as an example went from warehouse size to personal pc to laptop to handheld. You can do the same for instance using small reports of five to ten pages packed with information instead of mega volume ebooks. People don’t have the time (or patience) to sift through a huge ebook. Instead break into smaller easily digestible chunks, that people can get thru quickly, then share with others.

3. The Promise

Richard Sears also came up with the slogan that has impacted businesses worldwide from its inception: Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. Naturally, Sears didn’t want to give money back but what he did by making this promise was to put his integrity as well as the company’s front and center. In essence, Sears was daring the consumer not to like the product. It worked and many businesses followed his lead but more importantly, the slogan created a buzz.

You can do the same for your online viral marketing campaign. The key is to not over do it. Making unrealistic promises about your products or service is a recipe for disaster. People will see right thru it and potentially spread the word in ways you do not want. Negative publicity in some cases maybe better than no publicity at all, however if you are just starting out online, the last thing you want is to create a buzz that hurts your business, so keep it real.

Viral marketing can be used in many ways to increase web site traffic, sales and get your name out there. New innovations such as video and social bookmarking are making it even easier but don’t let the latest tool replace what has worked for years and years. Combine the old with the new to build your own successful viral marketing campaigns.



HAYDEN

Larry Mccullough asked:


The growing importance of the internet as a channel of distribution as well as an inherent part of the brand equity of a commercial enterprise has led to some new factors of importance. One such is Viral Marketing.

What is viral marketing?

Viral marketing essentially uses the mechanism of ‘word of mouth’. Here the marketing message is passed along by people. The message self propagates as people send emails to others. It replicates and spreads easily.

Today individuals as well as companies specialize in the field of generating online revenue by employing viral marketing, much in the same manner as any other commodity. The forces driving the plan for launching a viral marketing campaign and the strategies adopted by individuals and companies in this market are similar to those of traditional markets.

The trendsetter in viral marketing was the classic case of Hotmail.com. They offered people free email addresses and services and simply added a text at the bottom of every email message: “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com”. So as each member sends a message to another non-member the message to subscribe to Hotmail gets propagated instantaneously without any effort from Hotmail. Hotmail got millions of subscribers within months of launching it using viral marketing effectively.

What makes viral marketing work?

The keyword is ‘free’. Free email, free products to test, free services, free uploading of photographs, free buttons, free smileys – we see that in our mail and we tend to try it out. So keep it free and keep it spreading – the mantra for viral marketing.

Keep your viral marketing message short and succinct. Use the internet platform to your best use to propagate the message.

Use common motivations to influence people. What would people like? Free image uploading or free daily updates on their desktops? Imagine that you have a blog and you want to put a hit counter on the webpage. You pick up the HTML code for the counter from a website and put in on your blog. Now incidentally you will also propagate the website for the counter by having an instruction as ‘Click here to get XYZ counter.’

You can use affiliate programs and advertise your product or website in other forums and blogs and websites.

Here’s a simple example how you can apply all the above four points in order to make viral marketing of your product generate traffic and eventually revenue from your website. For example, you write an article on a topic that people wants to know more about. Then grant the readers the permission to replicate the article in their blogs or websites as it is and give you the copyright to it. Make sure that you insist your copyright statement is published along with the article. Within a short period of time, your name and article will be appearing in so many websites that you will soon start the benefit reaping the benefit of viral marketing. No extra effort, no financial investment, no lobbying – your name spread through simple ‘word of mouth’.



CASEY

Mark Mason asked:


Viral marketing goes by many names. Sometimes called word-of-mouth marketing, social marketing, butterfly marketing, guerrilla marketing, or buzz marketing, the goal is always the same: get the word out far and wide about a product instantly.

In Viral Marketing, people that find out about a new product inform many other people voluntarily. Like the old shampoo commercial, they tell two friends, then they tell two friends, and so on. Hotmail made this famous when they advertised free Hotmail accounts at the bottom of every email sent by Hotmail users. The result was explosive growth of the Hotmail brand.

This word of mouth marketing technique can be multiplied exponentially by the power of the modern internet. Just like a spreading virus in a living organism, video clips, web-based games, eBooks, on-line reports, software, emails and images can spread across the internet like wildfire.

A recent innovation in viral marketing is the use of viral reports. A normal non-viral report (often in the form of an eBook) almost always provides useful information to the reader. Inside a typical report, solutions to the readers problems are offered for sale through affiliate links. If the reader buys a product listed in the report, the report author make a commission. Unfortunately, the reach of the author is limited to the number of people he can get to read the report.

A viral report is similar to a non-viral report in that it provides information and product solutions in the form of affiliate links. However, a viral report can be easily and legally “re-branded” from the original author to a third party. During the re-branding process, some (but not all) of the affiliate links are changed to pay commissions to the third party.

Now, with the potential to make affiliate sales, the third party has a serious financial incentive to distribute the report. Many other third parties can re-brand the same report, creating an army of highly motivated report distribution agents. This viral report can spread across the internet like wildfire, making money for the original author (through remaining affiliate links that do not get re-branded) and everyone else in the distribution machine.

This viral report technique is powerful because everyone wins. The author makes money, the people distributing re-branded reports make money, and the people reading the reports get quality information on topics of interest.



CECIL

Seomul Davis asked:


Viral marketing may sound like an offensive term. This virus is not as deadly as it sounds! An excellent way to increase visibility, viral marketing requires the right environment to grow and can replicate it self several times not only increasing in power but also effectively increases link popularity to your site.

Viral Marketing Defined

Viral marketing is described as a strategy that encourages every individual user to share a marketing message with others thereby creating a huge potential for enormous growth in the influence and exposure of the marketing message. Just like viruses, these marketing strategies are known for being able to take advantage of the rapid multiplication process to spread the message to millions of people world-wide.

In the real world, viral marketing is often referred to as “leveraging the media,” “word-of-mouth,” “networking,” and “creating publicity.” However in the virtual world, this marketing strategy is simply known as viral marketing. One of the best known examples of viral marketing is Hotmail.com.

The marketing strategy used by Hotmail.com was immensely successful while being simple:

1. Distribute free email addresses and different services

2. Attach a simple message at the bottom of every email message sent – “Get your private, free email at hotmail.com

3. As people begin to email their network of friends

4. They read the message and sign up for their own free email account and then

5. Spread the message to their friends etc and market the email service free of cost!

The ripple effect, perhaps describes a carefully designed and executed viral marketing strategy the best.

Key Principles of a Viral Marketing Strategy

It’s an accepted fact that some viral marketing strategies are more effective than others and even few work as successfully as the Hotmail.com viral marketing plan. So, here I am listing the six top pillars that you may include in your viral marketing plan. It is not necessary for your strategy to include ALL these principles, but the more you can include the more powerful results can be expected. For a highly successful viral marketing strategy include:

1. Giving away services or products for free

2. Provide for a seamless transfer to users (think RSS feeds)

3. Ability to increase in size

4. Successfully exploit common human behaviors

5. Utilize the available communication channels

6. Use resources of other people with advantage

Now let’s visit each of these principles in brief:

1. Giving away services or products for free

The term “free” is perhaps the most powerful expression in a successful marketer’s dictionary. Viral marketing usually takes help of this and products or services are used to attract attention. Whether it’s free email account, or free information, or even free basic software programs, it’s all about giving to sell. This also means lots of eyeballs and eyeballs mean conversion and revenue for you. Besides this, eyeballs ensure more email addresses, and ecommerce opportunities.

2. Provide for a seamless transfer to users

Easy to transmit, viral marketing programs target unsuspecting users. The medium to carry the marketing message should be effective in transferring and replicating. It could be websites, graphics, emails, RSS feeds or software downloads. And viral marketing is hugely successful over the Internet as this medium has immense opportunities and is easy and inexpensive. The marketing message should be succinct, and non-degradable. Think: “Get your private, free email at hotmail.com. Clearly a compelling and short message that works beautifully!

3. Ability to increase in size

In order to increase exponentially in size, the marketing message’s transmission has to have the ability to scale up rapidly without any weakness. Remember, in order to achieve scalability, you must be able to plan in advance and be ready to add fuel as required.

4. Successfully exploit common human behaviors

A successful viral marketing program is one that can take advantage of common human behaviors. And nothing drives humans as greed does. A clever viral marketing plan will use this to leverage its product and convert it into a popular, loved and highly desired one. When your marketing strategy uses universal motivations as targets for transmission, your plan is bound to be successful.

5. Utilize the available communication channels

Humans are sociable. Almost every person has at least 8-12 people in their close circuit including friends, colleagues and family. The power of human networks is undeniable and very strong. Your plan should be able to exploit these social networks and watch as your message multiplies rapidly.

6. Use resources of other people with advantage

Clever and creative viral marketing plan will use other people’s resources to spread the word. Affiliate marketing programs use other people’s websites to place text links or graphic links. And therefore, you relay your message effectively while someone else’s resources get depleted.



ALVARO