Have you ever visited a Web site and found an article, a coupon, a special, or something else that impressed you so much that you immediately sent an e-mail to your friends about it? If you have, you’ve already been bitten by the viral marketing bug! Viral marketing, which is often referred to as “word-of-mouse” marketing, is a low-cost, highly effective way to market your product or service using the Internet. Just like a flu virus in humans, viral marketing replicates and propagates itself online. Viral marketing enables you to capitalize on referrals from an unbiased third party—the consumer! The power that peers and reference groups have over the purchasing decision is phenomenal. Similar to how a positive testimonial from a reliable source can add credibility to a product or service, the opinions of friends, business associates, and family can also help influence a consumer’s purchasing decision. By implementing various viral marketing techniques on your Web site, you are provided with a dynamite opportunity to leverage the opinions of the consumers’ reference groups.

• • How you can use viral marketing to increase traffic
  • Word-of-mouth viral marketing
  • Pass-it-on viral marketing
  • Tell a Friend scripts
• • Various ways to leverage your viral marketing campaigns
• • Incentives to encourage viral marketing.

Capitalizing on Viral Marketing Opportunities

Viral marketing can be one of your most powerful online marketing techniques, using the power of associations to spread the word. Viral marketing is still evolving, but today we see three common forms being used:

• 1. Word of mouth, such as “Tell a friend,” “Send this coupon to a friend,” or “Recommend this to a friend”
• 2. Pass it on, when we receive an e-book, cool tool, or funny video, and then forward it to friends
• 3. Product or service based, when a free tool is used online and that tool includes an embedded marketing message, such as Hotmail.

Word of Mouth

You can use viral marketing techniques in a number of different ways throughout your Web site. By placing a “Tell a friend about this product” or “Share this page with a friend” button on your site, you enable users to quickly and easily spread the word about your site and your products. Visitors can click on the button, provide appropriate information in the “To” and “From” fields (including name and e-mail address of both the recipient and the sender), and a brief message. Although the message is personalized, your business can include additional information about the product, including features, benefits, the price, and a link directly to the page where the recipient can purchase the item. Because the message is personalized from a friend, the recipient is more apt to visit the site to find out more about the product than he or she would be if the e-mail came from a traditional corporate e-mail campaign.

Amazon.com is a prime example of a company that has implemented viral marketing features throughout its site. When visitors browse through Amazon.com’s 3 million plus product listings, they are always presented with the opportunity to “Tell a friend about this product.” Providing this feature leverages the effectiveness of the Amazon.com Web site and ultimately results in increased sales for the company.

In addition to the aforementioned techniques, there are many different ways that you can implement viral marketing techniques on your Web site. If you have a newsletter on your site, you can add a “Tell a friend about this newsletter” button on the site. You can also incorporate a message in the body of your e-mail newsletter encouraging readers to forward a copy to friends they think would benefit from the information included in the newsletter. You should also include information in the message on how to subscribe to the newsletter. The recipients will then be able to send a copy of the newsletter to their friends, who will in turn be presented with the opportunity to subscribe and regularly receive the newsletter. The opportunities for viral marketing are endless.

A good word-of-mouth viral marketing strategy enables a visitor to your site or a recipient of your e-mail to share your site or e-mail content with others with just one click of a button or link. The design and placement of that link or button is critical to the success of the campaign. First of all, you should look to every repeat-traffic generator you have on your site for viral marketing opportunities. Repeat-traffic generators like coupons, newsletters, e-specials, and contests all provide ideal opportunities for “Tell a friend” or “Send a copy to a friend” links and buttons. Once you have determined the viral marketing techniques you are going to use, you want to make it easy for the site visitor or e-mail recipient to spread the word.

To be effective, you have to make it obvious what you want your visitors to do. Use a call to action to get them to do it. A button with “Send this coupon to a friend” or “Tell a friend about this e-special” works well. Don’t assume that people will take the time to open their e-mail program and send an e-mail to a friend about your e-special or coupon or include the URL to the page on your Web site just because you have a great offer—it doesn’t happen! You have to make it easy.

Here are some tips to make your word-of-mouth campaign effective:

• Have a fantastic button or graphic that grabs their attention.

• Provide a call to action telling the visitors what you want them to do. • Place the button in the appropriate place away from clutter.

• Have the button link to an easy-to-use “Tell a friend” script. The “Tell a friend” script accepts the name and e-mail address(es) of the friend(s) and the name and e-mail address of your site visitor that is sending the message to a friend. You need to provide a section for a message. You might provide clickable options for this, such as “Thought this might be of interest” or “Knew you’d be interested in this.”

• Give clear instructions on how to participate; make it simple, intuitive, and easy.

• Offer an incentive to encourage them to do what you want them to do: “Tell a friend and be included in a drawing for (something of interest to the target market).”

• Leverage, leverage, leverage: “Tell five friends and be included in a drawing for (something of interest to the target market).”

• Avoid using attachments in the message you want spread. This will avoid any potential technical problems with the attachments being opened as well as allaying any fears related to viruses.

• Have your privacy policy posted. If the user is going to pass along a friend’s e-mail address, she wants to be assured that you will not abuse the contact information. Viral marketing will only be successful if the content is good enough or valuable enough to be passed along.

Pass-It-On Viral Marketing

When we find a great resource, a funny video, or a cool game, we usually forward it to our colleagues or friends who we know will be interested in it. This old “they tell two friends and they in turn tell two friends” formula works very effectively on-line to enable you (with the right content) to reach a tremendous number of your target market. For this type of viral marketing to be successful, you have to start with great content that recipients will want to share with others. It can take many forms:

1. • E-books
2. • Small utility programs
3. • Fun videos
4. • Digital games
5. • Checklists
6. • A sound bite or audiozine
7. • Articles.

The pass-it-on viral marketing methodology works best using small files that can easily be spread around.

E-Books

E-books are very big these days. If you have great content that clearly shows your depth of knowledge on a particular topic, an e-book can do wonders to create great exposure for you, your site, and your products and/or services. Ensure that you have clear references to you and links to your Web site that provide a reason for people to click through. You might provide additional resources on your site or encourage people to visit for copies of other e-books you have developed. Then market, market, market that e-book. Encourage e-zine and newsletter providers to send a copy to their subscribers, and promote it through your sig file, in newsgroups, and in publicly accessible mail lists.

You can provide a shareware or freeware program that might be of interest to your target market. Of course, you want to ensure that you reference your site throughout the program and give them a reason to visit.

Small Utility Programs

You can offer small utility programs for your target market which include your logo. For example, if you own a speaker bureau you can offer a small program that helps speakers organize their speaking engagement dates. If you are a car dealer you can offer a small program that reminds car owners of safety inspections, license renewals, and scheduled tune ups. If you are a real estate agent you can offer a program that allows the user to calculate amortization on a mortgage. Think of your target market and what might be handy and helpful for them.

Fun Videos

Nothing seems to spread faster on the Web than funny video clips. We’ve all seen the enraged employee attacking his computer and the bear taking salmon from the fisherman. Sometimes these video clips are cartoons, seen one slide at a time with embedded audio, and other times they seem to be full-scale productions.

Digital Games

If your organization can develop a digital game or you have access to the rights to use a game, incorporate your logo and link back to your Web site within the game. A good game spreads very quickly.

Checklists

If you have a checklist that others might find useful, why not include links to your site in it and then provide it to your target market for use? For example, you might have a great checklist for making your site search engine friendly, or if you are a travel agent you might provide a handy checklist for travel planning. Think about your target market and what they might find useful. Always remember to encourage them to pass it on through viral marketing.

Sound Byte or Audiozine

New technology can send sound bytes. As long as the sound byte is relevant, pertinent, and of value to your target market or people in the industry you serve, people will pass it on.

Articles

Writing articles that can be distributed as content for newsletters or e-zines is another form of viral marketing. These articles can also be distributed to be used as Web site content as well. Just make sure that you have clearly stated that others are free to use your article as long as they include it in its entirety verbatim and include the Source box. The article should contain links to your site. The Source box should include information on you, your company, and your Web site.

You should track your viral marketing rate of infection. You want to know what is working and how fast it is working. You can always include a graphic in the article or e-book or digital game that is accessed from your site. Then you can use your Web traffic analysis to find information on the effectiveness of your pass-it-on viral marketing campaigns.

Product- or Service-Based Viral Marketing

Two of the most prominent service-based viral marketing campaigns are Hotmail and Blue Mountain.

The Hotmail Example MSN.com (http://www.msn.com) has capitalized on viral marketing to the fullest extent with its Hotmail service. Hotmail is a free e-mail service that is provided by MSN.com and is used by millions of people around the world. Why is a free e-mail account a viral marketing technique? Because whenever a message is sent from a Hotmail account, a tagline is automatically inserted into the body of the e-mail message that tells the user about Hotmail’s e-mail service. The message reads as follows: Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail http://www.hotmail.com.

This small message results in hundreds of new e-mail accounts being opened daily on the Hotmail Web site. Although Hotmail doesn’t provide any commercial services (i.e., they don’t sell anything), this viral marketing technique creates mass exposure for the MSN.com Web site. Visitors typically log in to their Hotmail account on the MSN.com Web site, which creates exposure for the other product and service offerings available on MSN.com.

Blue Mountain— Taking Viral Marketing to the Next Level Blue Mountain is a site that is synonymous with electronic greeting cards or e-cards. Initially Blue Mountain received thousands of visitors daily who all sent free electronic greeting cards to friends all over the world. Today Blue Mountain still offers this service to the public, although a nominal annual fee is now charged if you want to be a member.

Initially when you visit the Blue Mountain Web site, you are presented with an array of different options such as e-cards, gifts, paper greeting cards, and downloadable screensavers. When you decide to send a friend an electronic greeting card and finally select a greeting card from the thousands of cards available on the site, you are asked to fill out the contact information for the individual who will be receiving the card.

Blue Mountain encourages the recipient to visit the Blue Mountain Web site to reply to the sender with another electronic greeting card. This again provides Blue Mountain with the opportunity to sell a membership. Through viral marketing, Blue Mountain is able to spread the word about its business quickly and in a cost-effective manner.

Virtual Postcards

Today a large number of businesses, especially those that are tourism oriented, are increasing traffic to their sites by offering virtual postcards on their Web site, which enables them to capitalize on viral marketing opportunities. Visitors can send virtual postcards to their family and friends. The postcard should not actually be sent as an attachment, but rather, an e-mail notice is sent saying that a postcard is waiting for the recipient at a particular Web address. By clicking on the Web address, the recipient is sent to the Web site to view the personalized postcard. An example of this is Carlson Wagonlit Travel (http://www. carlsonwagonlit.ca), a site that gives visitors the opportunity to send their friends colorful postcards via e-mail from different locations around the world. When you send a postcard to your friend, he or she receives an e-mail containing a link to the page where the postcard can be viewed. When your friend clicks through to view the postcard, there is also a Carlson Wagonlit Travel logo and links to other sections of the Web site. Offering electronic postcards is a great way to generate repeat visitors to your site and to spread the word about your site through the use of viral marketing.