When I first heard of
term Viral Marketing I thought immediately of a virus. No, not flu, a computer virus. I avoided viral marketing like plaque. I’m sure many of you are doing same thing. Every email labeled viral marketing got trashed and I immediately run an anti virus check on my computer.I actually took me long time and convincing words of a dear friend of mine to change my attitude towards viral marketing. Call it ignorance, but I just didn’t have confidence in something that sounds like it wants to harm me.
Today my whole world changed and now I’m an active advocate to promote viral marketing. The concept is not new and it was created by brightest minds in business.
Viral marketing capitalizes in sharing habits of human beings. It’s quite extraordinary. We all tent to share with friends and family bargains or freebies we were able to get. If we can copy freebie we will do it and give it to our friends and family. Take music industry as an example.
Ok, we established that viral marketing is giving out free stuff and that this free stuff will be passed around. So how do you capitalize on something everybody expects to get for free? You don’t. You just use freebie as an advertising vehicle.
See, once you started giving out software or a book for free, it will snowball from there. Granted that software is any good and book provides some value. There is no telling on how many copies of your software or book will float through internet. The only thing you now for sure, it takes some time to gain momentum.
Take Hotmail as an example. Hotmail build its empire solely on viral marketing. Every email you send had a little line at end advertising free email from Hotmail. That’s it. No expensive marketing strategy, no TV ads, nothing but a little advertising line at end of every email. It took years of building momentum, but today Hotmail is a giant pulling in billions of dollars every year.
