Viral Marketing Articles

Awhile back I read Seth Godin's book "Unleashing the Ideavirus," in which he illustrates how we can use our own customers to spread the word about our business. If eBay, Hotmail and Harry Potter could do it, why not the rest of us?

All you need is a plan and some "powerful sneezers." (Godin works with a virus analogy.)

A plan ensures that your customers won't be embarrassed by recommending you to others. The "sneezers" are influential people who are likely to tell LOTS of others about your product or service - but only if it's remarkable, thought-provoking, important, profitable, funny, beautiful... or horrible.

Can you think of individuals with sufficient credibility who would recommend you to their wide network of friends and associates? Do you have a product or service that is likely to "wow" them? Is your infrastructure capable of handling quickly escalating sales?

If yes, let's look at a possible plan.

Say you have a website that sells exotic, hand-made soaps. Say you have formulated and produced a one-of-a-kind, incredibly special, life improving bar of soap. Or you have an incredibly special soap for a very specific niche. (Hey... how many of you bathed your kids in the one that didn't hurt their eyes?)

How do you market this new wonder soap?

Let's start with your current customers, whose names, addresses and e-mail info you already possess. When you ship their next order, send each one a sample - a reduced-size (or full size) bar of your new wonder soap. Then when they phone in or go online to place their order for this new product, reward them with a another gift - a sample that you will forward to their family and friends - free, in their name.

You pay the postage, you wrap the samples prettily and announce to their family and friends the name of the gift-giver (your customer). And you also enclose an order form so family and friends can place their own order for this irresistible product. On the order form are a half dozen spaces for them to fill in the names of their family and friends, to whom you will send free samples of your life-changing product.

You acquire additional new customers, plus names and addresses for future marketing; your customers receive not only a free gift themselves (your sample), they look good to their friends by sending them a free gift (you send it in their name). In other words, you're building your business by spreading lots of good cheer.

A variation of this approach is to bundle your products - buy a month's supply of soap and we'll send a free gift to your daughter/mother/best friend.

You may need to test this for a few months to gauge the costs accurately. Then compare the cost of acquiring new customers this way with the other marketing methods you use.

This isn't quite the customer-to-customer virus spreading envisioned in the Ideavirus book, but reading the book and meeting a local soap maker prompted these particular examples (which could be adapted for a variety of businesses, including service-oriented ones.)

When you truly have a "wow" product, offer the full version to your prominent "sneezers." If they believe in what you do, they'll spread the word for free, but you might want to consider incentives, too - whether cash rewards or free product.

The ideavirus is a compelling model for light workers to consider, not only for business, but also for spreading good will, happiness, food for thought. How many of you received the "Daffodil" letter a few months ago and passed it along to your mailing list?

You can purchase "Unleashing the Ideavirus" at your favorite bookstore or at Amazon.com.