Virtal Marketing 101: Part I - An Introduction

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I have always been a big believer in viral marketing and have spent a great deal of time in the past studying epidemiology – the study of the causes, distribution, and control of epidemics – in order to understand how viral marketing does and should work (I almost wrote a book on the subject !) Epidemiology definitely helps you develop a good understand and comprehensive model of how marketing “virus” are created and spread. Recently, I have talked about viral marketing in the context of social networks, such as Facebook, and I think now, more than ever, is a good time for companies leverage online viral marketing as part of their social media marketing campaigns. In the next couple of weeks I will share some of the concepts, models, strategies and approaches surrounding viral marketing so stay tuned for the series (if you don’t want to miss them, feel free to subscribe to the blog). I plan to cover the following topic areas:

  • Understanding Viral Marketing
  • Viral Marketing Models and Terminology
  • Creating Incentives to Spread the Viral Message
  • Leveraging Multiple Means of Distribution
  • Exploiting the Proximity of Communities
  • “Fake Organic” and Seeding Techniques
  • Exploiting a One-to-Many Infection Model

History: Forms of viral marketing have existed in the offline world for years. People referred to them as "network marketing”, “pyramid Schemes “, “Word-of-Mouth” and “vector marketing”. In the seventies, a TV commercial for Faberge Organics shampoo came up with simple but effective concept: "I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on...." . The result, …Another example of the effectiveness of offline viral marketing was MCI’s friends and family program.. The friends and family you encouraged to sign up with MCI, the lower your phone bill would be.  These, like more traditional Internet claims to viral marketing, all share some common principals, that when applied effectively as a means of customer acquisition. Models and Terminology: I have found that it always helps to illustrate a process when trying to talk about it. Tomorrow's post will do just that! I will share a simple online marketing model and talk about some of the language (and concepts) surrounding a viral marketing outbreak. Stay tuned!