Viral Marketing & the Internet

By Michael Bloch
Posted Monday, August 30, 2004

Viral marketing increases online sales! That concept seems to pop up everywhere on Internet marketing resources. So what exactly is viral marketing?

The simplest way to explain viral marketing is to think in terms of mainstream networking. Your contacts know about you and your site and you hope to that they pass that information on to someone else. But hoping is not a good way to approach web marketing, you need to be pro-active in promotion.

By implementing viral marketing strategies, you provide an incentive for web site visitors to carry a sales message. This incentive is usually a free "carrier" tool for that marketing message or a means by which it is easier for people to spread the word about your products and services. The idea is not to push your visitors into delivering your sales message to others, but as a side effect of them gaining benefit from a utility or service that you offer.

Free email services = free advertising
A good example of viral marketing is many of the free email services available on the internet. The messages that you send from these free services invariably contain promotion for the company providing the service.

This form of Internet marketing is extremely effective. In the above example, if someone utilizes the mail service on average only twice a day, in the period of a year the service is advertised approximately 730 times. Multiply this number by the number of registered users, in the case of Hotmail approximately 30 000 000, and you have 2,1900,000,000 advertisements per year. How much would you pay for that type of coverage using banners? - ball park figure, approximately $438 million.

OK, so those are pretty huge figures that most of us can only dream of achieving, so how does the little guy utilize the viral marketing concept on a budget of say....$0.

Articles as a viral marketing tool
A very successful strategy is the development of articles and tutorials such as these. You will notice that at the end of each article and tutorial in the copyright info, I request that if the content is going to be reproduced that reference is made to Taming the Beast.net. If I am fortunate enough, a webmaster may place an article on a high traffic web site (along with the proper acknowledgement) and this will create some traffic to our web site. Using this strategy, you are relying on the honesty of the user to acknowledge the origin of the tool.

Once you have published a number of articles, you can also submit them to article directories and archives. I am still a firm believer that written content is king, and no matter what subject you choose write about, there will always be plenty of people wanting the information, especially if it's for free! If you do decide to publish your own articles, ensure that the theme is related to your web site, otherwise the traffic you receive will be of little or no value.

Ezines and viral marketing
Another very popular method of viral marketing via the Internet is through the use of ezines and newsletters. If your newsletter contains information of value, such as tips, hints, news or tutorials, you'll find that subscribers will forward it on to others.

The use of newsletters can also help build content for your web site which increases search engine visibility. After we send out a plain text newsletter, we also publish it in a html version and add it to our online archive. Our stats show a number of visits from people who have hit the archive as a point of entry.

It's very important to inform subscribers exactly what you will be doing with their details as the Internet is rampant with mailing lists being sold off by web masters. Depending on the industry and quality of list, an email address can be worth $1-$2.50, so savvy surfers are becoming more selective in what they'll subscribe to - they'll expect some sort of commitment that you won't be distributing, selling or renting their email addresses.

Most importantly, a newsletter should contain valuable information, not just sales copy - otherwise interest will quickly drop off and you'll be getting a number of unsubscribes. Worse still, your ezine will be deleted as soon as it arrives, leaving you with a valueless list that only sucks up your time, resources and bandwidth.

The ezine industry has grown at an exponential rate over the last year but the overall quality of ezines has declined. This is another good reason for publishing back issues of your newsletter online, so that prospective subscribers can view the quality of the content.

If you don't have content available for an ezine and don't have time to develop articles , there's a number of resources on the Internet where you can gain industry specific articles which are free for reproduction - just try typing "free ezine articles for reproduction" into any search engine. If you do have the time, articles that you produce yourself are the best strategy as it helps to build up credibility with your subscribers.

Ensure that you mention in your ezine that subscribers are welcome to forward the ezine on to others, but they must forward the newsletter in it's entirety. Also include directions for subscribing and unsubscribe functions.

Other free viral marketing techniques include ecard plugin services, free software with embedded banners, surveys, tell a friend forms with incentives and some referral programs. You can find some of these free services by visiting our webmaster resources section:

(http://www.tamingthebeast.net/tools/ toolscontent.htm)

Viral marketing doesn't stop online
What if you could turn all your online visitors into willing offline marketers as well? Read more about our infosheet strategy here:

(http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles2/ online-marketing-pdf.htm)

Viral Marketing creates a win/win situation for all parties. The user is provided a service or valuable information for free and in turn provides your site with free advertising. Start turning your web site visitors into part of your online sales force!

Further learning resources:
Free web polls and surveys
(http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles/webpolls.htm)

eBooks and viral marketing
(http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles/ebooksviralmarketing.htm)

Build it and they will come
(http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles/build.htm)

Search engine optimization tutorials
(http://www.tamingthebeast.net/ articles2/optimization-tutorials.htm)

About the Author
Michael Bloch

Taming the Beast.net
(http://www.tamingthebeast.net)
Tutorials, web content, software and tools Web Marketing, eCommerce & Development solutions.