If you have read the introductory article you know by now what Viral Marketing is, at least the basics of it. Let's review some of the positive aspects of this marketing method:

1. Low Cost The costs of implementing Viral Marketing are very low; it doesn't cost anything to verbally share. As the very method of Viral Marketing is based on mouth-to-mouth communication, conducted by your prospects and customers, they actually do the marketing for you!

2. High Coverage We can reach a potentially huge audience using Viral Marketing with a very low marketing budget by providing tools people need and can promote themselves.

Let's first take a look at the simple example of how viral marketing was used to build one of the largest online communities today - Hotmail (www.hotmail.com). Hotmail is one of the best-known free eMail service providers on the planet, and they were one of the first. Their strategy was simple - give people free eMail and add an advertisement about themselves in each eMail message sent through their services. This way they reached hundreds of thousands - whenever someone received an eMail from someone using Hotmail they were also notified they can get the same kind of free service anytime they please. So Hotmail didn't have to spend much on promotion of its service - their users did that for them, for free!

But Hotmail is only a basic, almost textbook, example. One of the best examples of excellent use of Viral Marketing is provided by the Mailing List and eZine server providers like Topica (www.topica.com). They provide an easy to use service that enables eZine publishers to quickly publish their eZine and at the same time keep up their subscription database. They are using the same system as Hotmail, only this time, whenever a message is sent through their service thousands are notified of it (because of the large subscription bases). And since other eZine publishers are subscribed to eZines published through their services, they are reaching their target audience every time an eZine gets issued. They are using lists of people others have collected to promote their own program, for free!

3. Reputation Building Whenever someone gets hold of your viral publication, or whenever someone is informed of your service via mouth-to- mouth communication, your reputation gets a boost. And a good name means people will buy sooner, from you, and more often. Viral marketing can be used as a strong part of your branding strategy. Every time someone informs someone else about your service in a positive way your brand name value increases.

4. Effective in Combination with Other Marketing Methods The best marketing methods are those you can use in combination with other methods to generate the best possible results, and viral marketing can be combined with a large list of other methods to help you to your success.

Let's look at a basic example first - Viral Marketing works best in combination with eMail marketing, since eMail marketing provides Viral Marketing with a great communicational medium - the eMail. Want to go on?

How about viral marketing with database marketing? You can and should use your viral tools to build your database of targeted prospects that you can later use as an integral part of your eMail marketing campaign.

Viral Marketing works well with basically every other marketing method out there, because it is based on human interaction and mouth-to-mouth communication. It will help you reach your target audience, it will help you make a sale, and it will help you with your branding strategy and much more ...

5. Effective as a Cross-Reference Tool Some Viral Marketing tools, such as eBooks or Free Reports can actually be considered cross-reference tools as well. You can write a Free Report on something with a special promotional purpose for one product in mind and base the whole report around that. But you don't always make a sale, especially if the prospect that orders your report is interested only in the information you provide them with, and not your product. By including links to other products in your publication you actually increase your opportunity of selling at least one product; even if that product is not the product you intended to promote with the report in the first place, it just might be a product your prospect wants!

6. Tools Are Easy to Develop You can develop some basic Viral Marketing tools yourself without any cost and with very limited knowledge. Yes, yet again we speak of informational products, such as eBooks. You can write an eBook on a very specific subject you know very well and still promote things that are not connected with it in it. If your free informational product is well accepted by your public they will forward it to other people. Their promotional efforts in "sharing" the informational product will include the promotion of any other products you originally included in the information. eBooks are a very easy item to develop, and you should use them for a Viral Marketing tool, but only if you won't be selling them.

7. Third-Party Promotion Sometimes we develop things other people want to use as a special part of their promotion as well, like an original article for example. Therefore, you should always equip your articles with a resource box that tells readers about you and how they can contact you for more items that will benefit them. Some develop electronic publications strictly by using articles from other people, and then they promote them. Therefore, every time someone gets hold of their publication and reads your article you are being promoted by a third person, without any involvement from you.

Every time someone publishes an eZine with your own original article he or she is promoting you! So by developing special viral promotional tools, such as articles, we can actually have our business promoted by others.

These are just a few examples of the positive side of Viral Marketing that should give you some good insight on the method itself.

Have you ever heard of a craftsman whose products were so good that people from other countries came to buy from him? He earned a reputation of being the best in his field by mouth- to-mouth communication, and that is what Viral Marketing is really about, and about making our tools available so others can promote our products for us!

© 2000 Rok Hrastnik

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