Viral Marketing: Starting an Online Word-of-Mouth Epidemic

Stephan SpencerPresident, Internet Conceptssspencer@netconcepts.com

www.netconcepts.com

The Problem: Data Smog

• Not only are you competing with your competitors for their eyeballs and their loyalty, but also the information glut that fills the Internet and everyone’s lives.

• Hear the NPR interview of David Shenk, author of “Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut” at <http://www.npr.org/ramarchives/ne7a0301-6.ram>

Just Say No!

• Interruption marketing just doesn’t work anymore– Unanticipated, impersonal, and irrelevant ads won’t

break through the data smog• Stop marketing at people. Get out of the way

and let people market your products to each other.

The Solution: Viral Marketing

• Putting together the right offer• Who’s going to spread your message?• Making it easy…(email & web)• Potential traps and hazards• Best and worst practices• Case studies

What is viral marketing?• Word of mouth marketing augmented by digital

communication• Facilitate the process of people referring their

friends and colleagues– to purchase your products, visit your site, sign up for

a free trial, subscribe to your newsletter, etc.

Word-of-Mouth on Steroids

• Traditional WOM– Travels slowly– Dies off– E.g. recommend a book

to some friends

• Digitally augmented WOM– Spreads fast– Travels far– Exponential growth

(amplification)– E.g. Hotmail

Some New Jargon

• Sneezer, ideavirus, vector, hive, tipping point, connector, maven, promiscuous, powerful, smooth, amplifier, persistence, word-of-mouse, network effect, Law of the Few, Zipf’s Law, Metcalf’s Law, compounding effect, etc.

• Gotta love buzzwords!

Putting together the right offer

• Is your idea virusworthy?• Ideaviruses love a vacuum

Who’s going to spread your message?

• Seth Godin calls them “sneezers”– “Promiscuous sneezers” - have their price– “Powerful sneezers” - can’t be bought; difficult to predict what

will motivate them• Malcolm Gladwell breaks them out differently

– “Connectors” - masters of the ‘loose tie,’ seem to know everybody

– “Mavens” - genuinely helpful– “Salespeople” - born to sell

Divide and conquer

• Go after a demographic or psychographic group where your ‘ideavirus’ can dominate

• Like people hang out together (e.g. the affluent mix in the same circles)

• Target those sympathetic to your cause– BMW dealership - don’t target Ford owners

Observe who’s sneezing!

• Identify your top sneezers by tracking ratio of “unique opens” for each message sent– 0 = didn’t open– 1 = recipient opened but didn’t forward– 2+ = recipient probably forwarded (unless they check

mail from multiple PCs)• Reward and incent these sneezers! They’re

worth their weight in gold.

Rewarding your ‘sneezers’• Don’t insist that a referrer’s friend become a customer to

earn the incentive. That’s outside his/her control.• Make sure the incentive is relevant to the recipient.• It doesn’t have to be expensive.• e.g. golf balls with the recipient’s name printed on them • DON’T change the rules mid-campaign

Gotta give to get• Don’t just give a speech and leave

– Fly in your customers to tell their stories– Sponsor a cocktail party afterward

• Don’t just tell them how your product is safe and secure; give them a first aid kit for their car

• 3M Post-It Notes:– Secretary of 3M’s chairman sent a free case to secretaries of chairmen of

the Fortune 500• MCI Mail:

– Blew it - built friction into the system by charging instead of giving it away to build critical mass

Network Effect

• Metcalf’s Law - the value of a network increases with the square of the number of people using it

• A world with 1000 fax machines is 250,000 times better than one with only 2

Power of bestseller lists

• Zipf’s Law - #1 is MUCH more popular than #2• Stanford study: artificially boosting bestseller

status of downloaded files• Self fulfilling prophecy• If you can’t dominate one, create your own

Make it easy for people to“pass it on”

• Ask recipients to forward your e-newsletter, email, or SMS message to friends

• Include on your site “Email this page to a friend” buttons to refer your articles, products, etc.

• Make it a fill-in form that allows the visitor to pass it on to a number of people at once– e.g. Ideavirus.com’s “Send It” page

Soft sell

• Not a blatant, in-your-face demand but an informal invitation

• Should not smack of commercialism or spam• e.g. a blank postcard with a funny cartoon

referencing the book and its topic

The customer is in control

• Of the content• Of the frequency• Of the relationship

Success stories

• Hotmail• HOTorNOT.com• Quixtar• Unleashing the Ideavirus• Blue Mountain Arts

• Google• SETI@home• Budweiser parody• Absolut• Gaming company• Etc.

Hotmail

• Appended a small plug to every outgoing email: “Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com”

• Founded in 1996. By Summer 1998, had 25 million active accounts

• Signs up over 150,000 subscribers per day, each of them profiles themselves upon registering

• Founder (Sabeer Bhatia) sold to Microsoft for $500 million

• Sabeer invented the term “viral marketing”

HOTorNOT.com

• Formerly AmIHotorNot.com• View photos of strangers and rate their looks from 1 to 10 or post

your own photo• Launched by 2 unemployed Californians on a whim and with no

funding• A MediaMetrix Top 50 most visited site • Peaked at 14.8 million page views in a single day

Quixtar

• Amway e-commerce site• Distributor hands out a business card with their

referral code, required to log in to the site• MLM

“Unleashing the Ideavirus”

• Book by Seth Godin - in paperback, hardcover, and e-book format

• Free to download from the web at www.ideavirus.com• Web site also allows you to easily email it to all your

friends• Most downloaded e-book in history• An Amazon.com best seller

Blue Mountain Arts

• Online greeting card site (bluemountain.com)• Sender chooses an e-card on the site, site then

sends an email to the recipient prompting them to click on the link to pick up the card

• Recipient is encouraged to send their own e-card

Google

• Now the most popular search engine on the planet

• Came out of nowhere to dethrone the incumbents

• Spent no money on advertising • A great service - most relevant results, fastest,

and most complete

SETI@home

• Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence• Analyzing noise from space• More than 2 million PCs crunching numbers in

their spare time, for no compensation• Propagated by ‘powerful sneezers’• Persistent

Budweiser Parody

• “Wassup Superfriends”• Budweiser, wisely, didn’t interfere• Further burned Budweiser’s brand and ad

campaign into our subconscious

Absolut

• Planted attractive women as paid sneezers at bars• When men asked to buy them a drink: “Absolut gin &

tonic”• After a while, everyone was ordering Absolut gin &

tonics• Imagine now paying the bar to post a bestselling drinks

list, then it becomes persistent!

Handheld video game maker

• Gave them away to the ‘popular kids’• On the condition that they play with them on the

schoolyard

More examples

• ICQ• Ebay• Paypal• Vindigo• Napster• Hamsterdance

Ready, Aim, Misfire.

• Southwest - negative WOM spreading like wildfire

• SMEI Auckland free CD campaign - lukewarm results

• Amazon.com email campaign - signed “Big Bird, King of the World, Amazon.com”

• Email marketer’s newsletter - “Ream more”

Southwest Airlines

SMEI Auckland

• Incentive for referring workshop registrant leads: a free CD on “Guerrilla Selling”

• Auckland chapter’s first experiment with viral marketing was a non-starter

• Why? – Uncompelling incentive? Non-virusworthy product being pitched? Poorly

presented? Wrong target audience?• Had good tracking of referral sources (both partners and

individual sneezers)• www.smei.co.nz/freecd.php

In Summary

• Viral marketing dwarfs traditional WOM• Identify your best sneezers • Make a compelling offering and exploit the

sneezers’ motivations• Make it easy to spread (“smooth”) • You can influence, but not control

Further Reading

• Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell• www.digitrends.net/marketing/13640_10856.html• www.cbi.cgey.com/journal/issue6/unleashIdea.html• www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/

site_promotion/sticky_viral_site.html• www.wellsfargo.com/biz/products/resources/advisor/

archives/08viral/07viral.jhtml