Stephan Spencer

Ever wonder how late-entrant Google rose to overtake all of its entrenched competitors to become what’s now the most popular search engine on the planet? Or how a small upstart named Hotmail came to become the leader in web-based email to then get purchased by Microsoft for a cool $US400 million? Or how a no-name web site, HotOrNot.com, came out of nowhere practically overnight to become a sensation and one of the top 50 most popular sites on the Net?

In the case of Google, it was the ultra-relevant results that compelled its loyal following to tell the world about their amazing search engine. For Hotmail, it was the innocuous text ad that was appended to the bottom of the customers’ messages that made the difference. For HotOrNot, it was the silly but highly contagious idea of rating strangers on their looks (and, for those gluttons for punishment, for submitting your photo to have the Internet minions judge your hotness – or lack thereof) that propelled them forward.

The rise of these sites without the need for colossal advertising budgets is a testament to the power of viral marketing. With viral marketing, customers or prospects become your advertisers, indeed your evangelists, by telling friends about you and those friends in turn tell other friends, until it hopefully spins out of control and a word-of-mouth epidemic ensues.

But triggering a word-of-mouth epidemic isn’t as easy as it may seem. For example, the Auckland chapter of the Sales & Marketing Executives International (www.smei.co.nz) attempted a viral marketing campaign earlier this year with only moderate success. The goal was to promote several workshops by an internationally renowned guerrilla marketing guru. Pinpointing why the campaign didn’t light the market on fire has been a challenge. SMEI apparently covered the pre-requisites of a good viral campaign: a targeted list sympathetic to the organization or industry, a strong offer and inviting creative.

Want to spread your own viral marketing message? Here are some useful tips:

Target those who are sympathetic to your company or cause. For example, a current BMW owner is much more likely to be an evangelist for BMW than a Ford owner. Especially go after the “connectors” – those people who seem to know everybody.

Like-minded people hang out together. If you want more affluent customers, go after your existing affluent customers, as they mingle in the same circles.

Reward those who spread the word about you. Don’t require that the friend become a customer in order for the incentive to be earned, as the referrer has little control over that. The incentive doesn’t have to be expensive, just something that the recipient will value. For example, a golfer would value golf balls with his/her name printed on them.

Make it easy and obvious for people to ‘pass it on’. Ask the recipients of your email newsletter to forward it to anyone they think would be interested in its contents. On your website, include a “Tell a Friend” or “Email this page to a friend” button along with any articles, reviews, product info, and any other pages of potential interest. Even consider offering a fill-in form where a visitor could send something valuable to a number of friends at once (like the “Send It” page on www.ideavirus.com).

The message that you ask your target list to forward should not be a blatant in-your-face offer but rather an informal invitation, and it should not smack of commercialism (i.e. spam). A good offline example is a new book that includes a blank postcard with a funny cartoon on the front that references the book and its topic.

Read Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin and The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell for many more viral marketing ideas. Incidentally, Godin “ate his own dogfood” so to speak, by employing viral marketing to make Unleashing the Ideavirus the most downloaded e-book in history.

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This article was contributed by Stephan Spencer, Managing Director of Netconcepts Ltd. Find out more about Stephan and Netconcepts at www.netconcepts.com