In the last several months, over a dozen authors have written articles on this subject, chanting the proclamations of the most promising frontier in Internet marketing. In nearly every ezine you read, you will be touched by the promise from the followers of the religious experience, Viral Marketing.

What is Viral Marketing?

From the stand point of the terminology, it is a rather new idea. The term Viral Marketing has only been in use maybe one or two years.

Earlier this year, Richard Brodie wrote in his ezine, "Meme Update #33 --- Viral Marketing" : http://www.memecentral.com/mu/mu0033.htm

"Four years ago, in my book 'Virus of the Mind', I coined the term 'profit virus' and predicted that self-replicating businesses would become a bigger and bigger factor in world commerce. Now the term 'viral marketing' has become mainstream and has come to mean almost what I intended. It refers to the engineering of word-of-mouth referrals, one form of self- replication although not the only possible one. Engineering word-of-mouth has a time-honored tradition dating back to the beginnings of Christianity."

Richard pointed out that one of the most pivotal points in history was in the 1950's when the founders of Amway launched their company on the promise of the potential of Viral Promoting!

Richard Brodie wrote his book in 1996. When he created the term Profit Virus, it was a pretty fair and accurate explanation of the concept that is now called Viral Marketing.

In the evolution of the terminology that we use, the term Profit Virus became Marketing Virus, and then in 1998-99, it began to be known as Viral Marketing. Today, Viral Marketing is all the rave.

Long before the religion Viral Marketing, aka Viral Promoting, was fashionable, those of us who were marketing on the Internet were using the VM/VP techniques.

By keeping an eye on the words most frequently plugged into search engines, professional marketers have long known the secrets of drawing in internet search engine traffic. To this day, the one term that consistently makes the top 100 keywords list week after week, is the word FREE.

Why? Because most consumers on the web are looking for things they can get without paying, and Internet marketing beginners are looking for the free stuff to build their businesses with.

Thousands of items have been given away for free in order to drive traffic to sites all over the internet. Items that used to be sold for hundreds of dollars --- items that made some people a lot of money --- are now given away for free on a daily basis.

The concept is straight forward. Give away something of value, and people will take the time to get to know you. As people get to know you, they will begin to trust you and to buy from you. People must trust you to buy from you, and net statistics say that a person has to hear from you seven times before they buy your products.

Most products being given away right now are informational packages. There is nothing wrong with that. It is the easiest and cheapest thing to create. All it really costs is time. Informational products are useful in that they allow you to let your potential customers to get to know you really well.

Good concept, in theory. If people will actually take the time to get to know you, then you will likely sell them something later.

But this is where the good points of Viral Marketing end.

If you are in business on the web, you are in business to make money. Are you not?

As a publisher, I have offered free ebooks to people for subscribing to my newsletters. This technique has drawn a lot of new subscriptions. However, while monitoring the effectiveness of this technique, I made a gruesome discovery.

I tracked all new subscribers coming in when I offered the free ebook in exchange for new subscriptions. Then I tracked all unsubscription email addresses separately. And then I frightfully compared to two lists a few weeks later.

Sure, I gained a great many new subscriptions when I offered the free ebook to new subscribers. Unfortunately, 195 of 198 of the new subscribers picked up on the promotion were gone within a few short weeks, days and even hours.

These people came, collected their freebie, and went on their way never to hear from me again.

It happens far more than you think. If someone wants your freebie, they will do what it takes to get your freebie, and then move on.

Nearly a year ago, I consulted for a large company on the web. Their question to me was that they set up a free drawing for one of their products and promoted the give-away to the search engines. Their traffic went through the roof.

They went from 100 hits a month to 15,000 hits a month. In 12 months, they gave away more than $2000 worth of products. Yet one year after beginning their promotion, they had yet to sell a single item from their website! They wanted to know why.

I know dozens of people who are professional freebie hunters on the web. One of my ex-girlfriends never spent a single dime on the web, yet she won over $1500 worth of tangible products in a single year.

The people who want the freebies don't want to spend any money, and the people who will spend the money are not looking for the freebies.

Are you in the business to make money? Or do you simply want to spin your wheels giving away freebies to people who will never buy anything from you?

So let me ask you again, "Viral Marketing is powerful, but will it ever earn a profit for you?"

Maybe. If you have the right tool that people fall in love with, and they use it all of the time, always seeing your name as they use it. But if the tool is that good, shouldn't people be paying you money to use it? Otherwise, where will you find the profits that your business needs to survive?

© 2000 Bill Platt

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