Viral Marketing

by Adrian Mullan, 3/31/2006

We understand if the name 'viral marketing' conjures up all sorts of evil and sinister connotations. The reality couldn't be further from the truth. Viral Marketing simply refers to a marketing message that spreads quickly from one person to another. Like the offline world, the idea is to get your message to reach as many people as possible.

Viral Marketing adds fuel to the fire by exploiting the speed and reach of the Internet. In the music world, an artist can go from being an unknown to having his or her song played on radio stations all around the world within a week. A good viral marketing campaign works just as quickly. It can start with just one person and quickly spread to millions via email.

Example 1 www.hotmail.com

Started in 1996, Hotmail is considered the grandfather of viral marketing. Although free web-mail is now commonplace, back in 1996 the idea of getting a free email account that could be accessed by anyone was a groundbreaking concept. In its first 18 months of operation, Hotmail signed up over 12 million users giving it the fastest growing subscriber base in history.

The genius behind Hotmail was the viral marketing effect of the service. When the two founders, Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia approached a venture capitalist firm to raise money, they also got some good advice. The venture capitalists suggested attaching a small message at the bottom of every outgoing email to promote the service. And that's exactly what they did.

Attached to every outgoing email was a message that read:

'Get your own free Hotmail email address'

This meant that just by using the service, every new user was in effect endorsing and promoting Hotmail. Starting with a small amount of users, the ripple effect quickly grew Hotmail into the largest email provider in the world! The effectiveness of this idea is highlighted by the fact that Hotmail spent less than $500,000 on marketing, while a competitor (Juno Online Services) spent over $20 million on traditional marketing to gain a fraction of the users.

Example 2 www.amazon.com

Amazon also implements viral marketing by encouraging their customers to send gifts to friends. When the receiver gets the package, they also get a discount flyer promoting amazon.com and encouraging them to visit the website.

Example 3 www.citroen.com

French car maker Citroen recently released a viral marketing campaign with a video that features one of their cars transforming into a dancing robot. The video clip is very entertaining and has spread throughout the world via email.

You can view the video clip here: http://uk.download.yahoo.com/ne/fu/oa/eurcncs185030.mpg

Citroen Media Release http://www.citroen.com.au/cms/default.asp?action=article&ID=8031

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