Viral Marketing

went to a meeting last sat and client shared some marketing tips and wow.. didnt know some simple stuffs we do at the tip of our hands can actually do wonders in marketing.. think i should read more on the CRM world....

some article i kapoh from a webby.....

The term "viral marketing" is offensive. Call yourself a Viral Marketer and people will take two steps back. I would. "Do they have a vaccine for that yet?" you wonder. A sinister thing, the simple virus is fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists in that nether genre somewhere between disaster movies and horror flicks.

But you have to admire the virus. He has a way of living in secrecy until he is so numerous that he wins by sheer weight of numbers. He piggybacks on other hosts and uses their resources to increase his tribe. And in the right environment, he grows exponentially. A virus don't even have to mate -- he just replicates, again and again with geometrically increasing power, doubling with each iteration:

Viral Marketing Defined
What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing." While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won't try. The term "viral marketing" has stuck.


The Classic Hotmail.com Example
The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

Give away free e-mail addresses and services.
Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and, Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates, Who see the message, Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates. Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.


Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy
Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

Gives away products or services
Provides for effortless transfer to others
Scales easily from small to very large
Exploits common motivations and behaviors
Utilizes existing communication networks
Takes advantage of others' resources
Let's examine at each of these elements briefly.


1. Gives away valuable products or services
"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, free information, free "cool" buttons, free software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the "pro" version. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing is "The Law of Giving and Selling" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic-principles.htm). "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will usually do it much faster. Viral marketers practice delayed gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit "soon and for the rest of their lives". Patience, my friends. Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! you earn money. Eyeballs bring valuable e-mail addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, sell something.


2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. The classic is: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com." The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom of every free e-mail message.


3. Scales easily from small to very large
To spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. The weakness of the Hotmail model is that a free e-mail service requires its own mailservers to transmit the message. If the strategy is wildly successful, mailservers must be added very quickly or the rapid growth will bog down and die. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished. So long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mailservers rapidly you're okay. You must build in scalability to your viral model.


4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What proliferated "Netscape Now" buttons in the early days of the Web? The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, and you have a winner.


5. Utilizes existing communication networks
Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.


6. Takes advantage of others' resources
The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others' webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else's newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own.

WEIRD

WEIRD… is such a heart breaking and a mind trashing word which had totally tampered the past years of confidence built in me.

I used to think that my words, my thinkings and my actions are truely me and friends and people around me know it, but the trashings for the past weeks and months has once again set me thinking of myself. Why am I weird? I’m weird in what way? Since when has my positives set against me and set me in total confusion. I started to get negative replies, negative comments, negative remarks for handling things.

I started to not able to communicate with others. Whatever they said started to antagonise and annoyed me cos i can’t answer the question properly even if i know what’s going on. Further questions will pissed me off and i will just show my “black face” to get over it. What happened to me?

I started to think violent stuffs, got 2 tire caps stolen this morning. In the past i will just get pissed for a while and forget about it. Today, I started cursing and swearing and hoped to bash the bastard, even till this very second. I was kinda shock myself when i started to refresh my reactions for the issue. What has got into me?

I wouldn’t want to share my thinkings anymore, maybe its becos of my communication problem, or maybe they are just not interested in my topic, its always “oic”, “oh.. ya ya..” and FULLSTOP and i’m really very very pissed with the repeated reactions. I hate that suspicious look whenever there is a coindence.

Bed is my favourite hideout. I will just hide in my blanket and tears will just flow out automatically. Why? I dun even know what i cried for. Or maybe i’ve lost myself to the unnamed fear inside me. What’s there to feared about, i really dunno.

Since when has sake, vodka and the spirits become my best friends. I used to drink with friends and family when there’s a gathering, or some happy moods. But here I am drinking myself, alone, with only my soft toys to talk to and i’ve started to enjoy it.

What’s there to stress about? I really dunno. I’ll get petty over small issues. I hate whatever around me. People, things, EVERYTHING. They are just trying to take advantage of me cos i’m the ms nice gal. Well.. NO MORE MS NICEY! From now on, I will be the selfish me, think of myself as the 2nd priorty after my family. Others, you will be 3rd.

JUST LET ME BE WEIRD!