Check the Article Index for more information pertaining to marketing.
This article may not be reproduced without permission.

Get more out of your web site with viral marketing

Viral marketing is just what the name implies - it is a business message that spreads like a virus. 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 dozens and then to hundreds and even to thousands.

Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. Viral e-mail marketing works great on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital formats make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Remember the K.I.S.S. standard….Keep It Simple Sweetheart. Shorter and easier to remember is always better than long and complicated.

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. Most people want to be popular, loved, and understood and in many there is also a desire to be cool. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages.

Social scientists tell us that each person has 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. An outer social network can include another 100 to 200 acquaintances. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships too and they like to stay in touch. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.

If you can design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, you have a winner.

What works and what does not work in viral marketing?

Trying to force or bribe people to forward your information to friends or family in order to be rewarded or win something has only a slim chance in today's ultra-permission-based world. Especially when you tell visitors nothing about the privacy of their friends or family in the space directly next to the e-mail form.

Adding a line at the bottom of your e-mail that reads “Please feel free to forward this message to a friend” is more likely to get it deleted than forwarded. Quality viral campaign messages get forwarded because consumers are compelled to do so by the glory of the content, not because you bribed them with points or something else.

So, What will work?

Firstly, offer something worthy of sharing like a valuable discount, then offer an incentive for sharing like additional entries into a sweepstakes or an added discount or some kind of premium service.

Relevant or timely information, research, or studies that are included in your message might encourage the recipients to share with their family and friends. Interactive content like a quiz or test, especially if it’s fun, will inspire forwarding.

Jokes and cartoons are almost always forwarded to everybody the recipient knows. Why? Because they are entertaining and entertainment is meant to be shared.

Lastly, always deliver more than you promise. You can craft the most brilliant text message, following all the rules, but if a consumer visits your site and has an experience that is less than what was expected, there will be disappointment. Word of that disappointment may spread in place of the message you designed for circulation. So be certain that your product or service is ready and is as advertised.

Matthew Barbour has been writing professionally for more than 30 years. He has written news and advertising copy for radio and television and his work has appeared in a variety of publications. He also produces creative text for web sites at Dundas Web Internet Services.