The internet offers a unique and large-scale environment for using one of the most effective advertising techniques around: viral marketing.

From the Real to the Virtual World

It's ancient marketing wisdom, but it's still true: word-of-mouth is one of the best ways of attracting customers to your business. You don't have to be unusually cynical to ignore many marketing initiatives as hyperbolic nonsense, but most of us treat a recommendation from an acquaintance very differently. Our friends' and families' approval carries much more weight than advertising, because we trust it, and we know that these people don't have a vested interest in persuading us to use a particular product or service.

Viral marketing is any form of marketing that encourages this sort of word-of-mouth recommendation. It has several benefits. Firstly, once you've got it started, it'll can exponentially with little further effort. Secondly, if you do it well, it can have a long-term positive effect on your customers. People like the feeling of coming to a product because it's been independently reviewed as being good, rather than because they were bombarded with unsubtle advertising.

Viral marketing can also work by using others' resources to spread a marketing message in other ways. For example, attaching an advertisement to a free product can result in the rapid spread of your message to hundreds of potential customers.

Unfortunately, getting viral marketing campaigns started in the real world is hard work and can be slow. If you're literally waiting for people to tell each other, "This product is great!" you'd better have the time to wait for things to kick off. What's more, it can be very expensive: you have to produce your free product, your vouchers, flyers and so on.

However, with the birth of the internet, marketing need no longer remain in the real world alone. It can also utilise the vast array of possibilities offered by the virtual world, as well.

The Free Email Model

When Hotmail.com began, it was as a prime example of how effective viral marketing can be online. Every time someone sent an email from a Hotmail account, they also sent a little advertisement at the bottom of each email, that said "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com". Within a few weeks, there were already hundreds of Hotmail account owners. In eighteen months, it had 12 million subscribers.

Most other free email providers use the same technique. Some sneak other advertising into the signature as well – Yahoo! and Windows Live Mail feature randomly selected links to their own services, as well as offering free email signup. The clever bit is that the people sending the messages never see the advertising, so they are never annoyed by it. It's only the recipients, your possible future customers, who see the marketing message.

Gmail (or Google Mail, as it is officially known in most parts of Europe) uses a slightly different tactic, instead prompting the user to invite contacts to Gmail every time they send a message to a non-Gmail address. The additional "recommendation" quality of this system gives this marketing technique a more friendly, trustworthy, and less aggressive feel, as well as reassuring the current user that, yes, you are using a great service that you might want to recommend to others.

Viral Marketing with Free Products

Offering free stuff is a really good way of launching a good viral marketing campaign. Free email services are just a single example.

Think of all the free software out there: the Opera web browser, the Trillian IM client, Winamp media player. All of these are good-quality, cutting edge, highly featured software products, and they're all available for free. But all three companies offer paid software as well: Trillian and Winamp can be upgraded to pro versions, and Opera offers device and mobile phone browsers that come at a fee.

If you're a software company, offering a free trial of your product can be a really good way to hook some customers. Either produce a cut-down version and ask customers to upgrade to the fully-featured product, or offer the full version with a 30-day trial period licence. You can also ask customers to supply an email address when they sign up, so that you can add them to a marketing mailing list.

Other free stuff you could offer on your site: eBooks, articles, games, interactive tools (Google Maps is a great example, as are free translators), buttons, graphics, cartoons and jokes, tests and quizzes, functions people can add to their websites (such as counters and search bars), web hosting, advice etc. Any virtual product is easy and cheap to give away free. Even if you're selling physical products, you can always have articles, eBooks, jokes or games related to your product on your website. You may not get an instant return, but remember that you are building a base of people who are grateful for whatever free stuff you've given them. That's a valuable lever for future marketing.

Tips for a Good Viral Marketing Plan

- Make it super-easy and attractive for people to share your site with others. Have a "Share this with a friend" form which allows visitors to email the page to a friend direct from your website, without navigating away. Ideally, you should promise that their friend's email address won't be retained.

- Your free stuff should be somehow related to your product or service. If you're a web design company, free hosting or web templates would be a good thing to give away. "Doctor, Doctor" jokes would not.

- There is no need to stuff everything with marketing speak. The idea of viral marketing is to attract people to your website because of genuinely attractive content or free stuff. People will quickly get wise to biased articles which keep mentioning your product.

- Remember, however, to in some way include some sort of reminder about the source in your free products. For example, a link to your website at the beginning and end of an eBook, and maybe a small logo (perhaps with something like "For more free eBooks and articles, visit …") will remind people to take a look at what more you have to offer.

- Learn from the masters. For some interesting viral marketing sites, try Subservient Chicken (Burger King), Counter Counterfeit Commission (Mini Cooper), and Elite Designers (Ikea).

By Iain Ford

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