by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
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.
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Marketing is one of the most important thing for a company to run well. Every company, no matter how small or how big it is, have to figure out their best way to do their marketing. Marketing is important because it define the company sales, and of course sales is company’s most important thing to run their operation. When the marketing is succeeded, the sales will be high and keep increasing, and when the marketing is failing, the sales will be low or keep decreasing. This articles tells about six simple principles of viral marketing. Every marketer that wants to works well need to understand these simple way for a viral marketing. One of the principle that attracted me the most is the first one, it is true that the word “free” is a word that attract people, because I feel it too. Everytime I hear the word “free” I will be attracted and try to find out about it. Well, usually, the word “free” is just a bait so that we are excited and that it turns out to be not simply “free”. However, it is still a word that is important and valuable in marketing.
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree with giving away free products as an effective marketing strategy. There are many benefits of giveaways especially for new businesses that are hardly known by potential customers. With free giveaways, a business can attract new audiences by giving away information on products, it is also an affordable way of advertising. Believe it or not, advertising costs a lot of money. Instead of putting billboards on the freeway, YouTube ads, banners on a website, and radio commercials, a business can use the strategy of giveaways.
ReplyDeleteDespite its great use of advertising, giveaways can’t last for long. It usually lasts for one or two days, because if it lasts for more than that, the business will have more customer demand for its products with short supplies of the goods available. Giveaways are usually applied on low cost and non-durable goods such as food, it can’t be applied on durable goods like electronics. Just imagine what would happen if there are iPhone giveaways? With the price of approximately more than $800 per unit, it is too valuable for the company to make giveaways as they will definitely experience a huge loss on its sales.
When you have a company or running a company, or just working in a company as a marketing, you definitely have to know the six simple principles of a viral marketing. Marketing is not an easy thing and need special ability to reach a success point. However, marketing should be taken seriously because when a company don’t have a good marketing, it will not run well. This article is a really good read for the marketing people to understand the six simple principles to make your marketing a viral one. The first principle is about giving away valuable product or services. This principle has the relationship with the word “free” in marketing. Well, I have always been interested in the word “free”, because simply it is one of the usual human need of something “free”. So this word and how you utilize it can be powerful, interesting to use, and maybe boost your sales a lot.
ReplyDeleteMarketing in business is a tricky combination between science and art. By definition, marketing is a process where goods and services are transferred from a concept to customers. The science of marketing involves all the process relying on data and hypothesis to help decision-making. On the other hand, the art of marketing relies a lot on branding, color choices, etc. The article discussed the 6 principles of viral marketing which includes giving away valuable products or services, provides for effortless transfer to others, scales easily from small to large, exploits common motivation and behavior, utilizes existing communication network, and takes advantage of others resources. I think an example of viral marketing that I know is Shopee Advertisement. I notice that they use the song “Baby Shark” to market their product. This advertisement became very viral because the song “Baby Shark” was booming all over the internet. The lyrics are so catchy that I used to find myself humming to the Shopee advertisement. Nevertheless, I think that Shopee has succeeded in creating a very viral marketing among its customer in Indonesia.
ReplyDeleteI believed that marketing is one of the things that any company needs to master. Marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. This includes market research and advertising. Shortly explained, marketing is the bridge connecting the producer and the consumer. Marketing directly effects sales, so It does not matter if a company has such great product or services if they have bad marketing. Personally, I found this article really interesting. From this article we can see that viral marketing is not as simple as placing an advertisement in a blog. Yet it is a type of science where they rely on research and data gained from the economic environment. In this article we were thought that there are six principals in doing viral marketing. so for someone that wanted to learn or master how viral marketing works, I suggest you to read this article.
ReplyDeleteViral itself refers to the things or ways which is noticeable by large number of people, the idea of viral marketing itself from what I get is finding a way to make our target market or specific market segment to notice our product or service. The most apparent things which considered as a viral marketing is by using the most common or mainstream way of communication at that time. For example, nowadays it is a most common thing to do video blogging or mainly the usage of social media such as youtube and instagram, as you can see there are so many advertisement in those social media and through instagram celebrities accounts usually. It is a good thing to do and apparently the most effective way to make something viral through influencer in social media. The other way of viral marketing that for me personally take my attention very quickly is the idea of ‘free’ products or services, because people tend to get the most out of something. For example, the buy one get one free strategy that one of shoe store in Hartono mall in jogjakarta doing right now to sell more of their products.
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna discuss about U.S President: Donald Trump. But we're not here to talk about Donald Trump's political agenda, we're here to talk about his marketing approach and determine why virality matters. Donald Trump has surprised people in America tremendously. It’s very interesting how everyone made fun of him in the beginning of his campaign, yet, somehow, his campaign has proven to be incredibly successful. Whether we like to admit it or not, Trump’s campaign achieved amazing poll numbers. One can, with absolute certainty, say that this man has changed the world of politics in America by taking steps which no politician has taken, at least in the past couple of decades only by a great viral marketing strategy helped by social media. Donald Trump's marketing strategy was as unorthodox as the candidate himself; yet it worked. I don't know but if that's how politics is going to be conducted in the future, I have no idea-- crazy!
ReplyDelete