Other Ways of Infection
Viral marketing is a relatively new notion that came along with digital boom and the B2C growth (business to customer). The results of a wisely created viral marketing scheme can be stunning, as the number of “infected” people will not just grow but it will explode! The Hotmail classic marketing virus seems easy, but nowadays few viral marketing schemes can boast with such results. Why? The competition grows and with every coming year you need to become more creative and find new unique ways to attract attention to your service or product. The viruses got specialized and developed into several distinct species.

Top 10 Viral Marketing Species To Start a Powerful Virus!

1. The first place rightfully belongs to the so called pass along marketing, the scheme of which was used by the Hotmail. A pass-along message usually contains a small tip prompting you to pass it along to a friend. The key to success of this marketing virus species lies in the message and how interesting and exciting it is.

2. Giving out free products or services to promote your new brand is the best strategy that exceeds all expectations and that was also used by our viral marketing classic the Hotmail. One way you could do this is to write a useful and informative report, give it away for free or at least a small fee and letting the readers pass it along to their friends. You could include “Master Resell Rights” with your give away product.

3. Our third marketing virus species is probably the most sophisticated and is known as the “undercover” or the “Stealth” virus. This scheme works as follows: a piece of exiting news, a joke, cool photos or images, dirty and compromising videos etc. are inserted into the web without any visible promotion purpose. These items are not advertising anything, they are disguised into absolutely non-contagious pieces of information and people are not suggested to spread them. But the trick is that really exiting and provoking items get spread in the Internet faster than any actively advertised item. Bright examples are JenniCam site and Christmas flash-cards.

4. Buzz or Edgy gossip marketing virus develops through discussions and controversies. The aim of this marketing scheme is in generating public excitement and general rush before the release of the product to the market. Hollywood often resorts to this scheme. Like for example creating a buzz before the latest James Bond film about the actor performing Bond.

5. Anonymous matching is a very ingenious marketing virus, exploiting universal human weaknesses. It profits from hopeful romantics searching for their significant other. Here is the scheme: each user creates a secret list of acquaintances they want to date with. But to make a match their crushes need to place those into their secret list and so become the user of the same service too. This strategy is very effective; the brightest example is the eCrush site.

6. The so-called vital marketing is also a rather effective marketing scheme. Vital marketing means that before getting a certain service you need to have another one. Although such a strategy often raises rejection in customers many popular services and products have successfully exploited it (ICQ, Real Player, Macromedia Flash).

7. Offering an incentive can increase the speed of the virus spreading dramatically. An incentive scheme occurs when the customers are involved in the process of promotion. They are motivated to pass the information about your goods or services by a reward. In other words one customer recruits another customer and is either paid for that or gets free services. For example, I pay out 85% in commissions to affiliates who promote and make a sale for my CopyAndPasteGraphics2 product.

8. There also exists a, so to say, combined virus species, the most enduring and effective one. It occurs when a wise promoter designs the campaign using several basic scripts listed above. Hotmail, Amazon and ICQ can serve the perfect examples.

9. There exist very popular marketing viruses that may work for quick money-making, but will not last. Such viruses are called guile viruses. Their strategy lies in involving and motivating the promoters, but not the customers. The company recruits a great number of promoters. The promoters actively push the product resorting to any dirty and extreme measures making the customers swallow the bait.

10. And the last marketing virus species I would call a “brand-killer” or a “vile” virus. It is a naturally appearing and spreading virus, based on the dissatisfied customers’ exchange of negative experiences. Many services have suffered a fiasco because of this virus (Real.com, Apple Newton, Crystal Pepsi).