Multiply Your Marketing Like a Virus

In today’s Inter­net, con­ver­sa­tions are crop­ping up all over the place. Peo­ple are talk­ing. They are talk­ing about prod­ucts. They are talk­ing about busi­nesses. And they are cer­tainly talk­ing about their expe­ri­ences.

When you look at how blogs, forums and social net­work­ing sites have exploded in the last few years, you can see how pow­er­ful word-​​of-​​mouth is. But the ques­tion is, is it all really impor­tant? Can it really help your business?

Yes.

And I’m not talk­ing about traf­fic. And you don’t need to be con­tro­ver­sial, either. I’m talk­ing cre­at­ing sys­tems to lever­age, man­age and profit from the “buzz.”

Word-​​of-​​mouth is one of the most pow­er­ful lead and busi­ness gen­er­a­tion processes there is. Online, some peo­ple call it “word-​​of-​​mouse.” But we know it more as viral marketing.

Viral mar­ket­ing is the process of imple­ment­ing means or tools through which the knowl­edge of your exis­tence self-​​propagates. Like a virus, your vis­i­bil­ity spreads through­out a net­work of peo­ple who refer you to each other.

Notwith­stand­ing the power of back­link­ing, traf­fic and SEO, viral mar­ket­ing is key for a num­ber of rea­sons. Suc­cess in the offline world is “loca­tion, loca­tion, loca­tion.” The Inter­net is no dif­fer­ent. Your suc­cess depends highly on the num­ber of loca­tions you appear online — places on which your site, link, com­pany or prod­uct name exist.

In essence, to expand your reach, you need to be in as many places as pos­si­ble, talked about by as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble and be in front of as many eye­balls as possible.

With viral mar­ket­ing, there are three ways of doing it:

1. Cre­ate content.
2. Cre­ate applications.
3. Cre­ate systems.

The first is self-​​explanatory. Your con­tent may be con­tro­ver­sial or buzz­wor­thy. It may cre­ate rag­ing fans — or enraged enemies.

The sec­ond is sim­ple: you cre­ate an appli­ca­tion — whether it’s a video, audio, file, soft­ware, doc­u­ment, etc — that peo­ple can pass around, and thus pro­lif­er­ates the knowl­edge of your exis­tence on the web through other people’s efforts.

I might write about these two at a later time. But for now, the one on which I want to focus is the third: cre­at­ing a system.

Before I give you some exam­ples, let me explain why word-​​of-​​mouth works won­ders. Those who get to know you or to know about you through a third party grant you a higher level of con­fi­dence, cred­i­bil­ity and loy­alty. Accord­ing to Dr. Robert Cial­dini in his amaz­ing book, “Influ­ence: The Psy­chol­ogy of Per­sua­sion,” this is social proof in action.

Remem­ber a dic­tum a men­tor of mine once told me, which is: “Impli­ca­tion is far more pow­er­ful than spec­i­fi­ca­tion.” In other words, if you tell peo­ple you’re the best, that you’re the leader in your field, or that your prod­uct is the best solu­tion to their needs, your self-​​serving pro­mo­tional bias makes it all suspect.

How­ever, if some­one other than you — whether it’s on a blog, in an email, on a social net­work­ing site or in per­son — says to another that you are indeed the best or that you do have the best solu­tion to their prob­lems, how much more believ­able will that person’s state­ment be? How much more cred­i­ble and trustworthy?

The answer is “def­i­nitely more.”

Accord­ingly, word-​​of-​​mouth is not only impor­tant because it cre­ates an aware­ness of your busi­ness (let alone traf­fic), but also it is impor­tant to the degree to which third party mar­ket­ing indi­rectly com­mu­ni­cates greater cred­i­bil­ity, supe­ri­or­ity and value of the prod­ucts or ser­vices you offer.

In his book “The 22 Immutable Laws of Brand­ing,” Al Ries stresses the impor­tance of lead­er­ship and how that lead­er­ship is communicated.

Accord­ing to Ries, peo­ple never buy the best — they only think they do. They usu­ally buy the leader (or what they per­ceive as being the best). And that per­cep­tion is often molded by what they are told and by what oth­ers do, not by what is fact or by what is being advertised.

Coke, for exam­ple, out­sells Pepsi. But accord­ing to Ries, taste tests reveal that Pepsi is the bet­ter tast­ing brand. So, why does Coke still beat Pepsi in sales? It is not because it is the leader in the mar­ket­place or pro­moted itself as such but because it is known as the leader. And the rea­son it is known as the leader is because Coke was the first cola “in the mind” of the marketplace.

It is the one most talked about, even to this day. When a per­son is intro­duced to cola for the first time, they are often told to try Coke. Restau­rant patrons still ask for “coke,” even when Pepsi is the only cola served. Why is that? While other colas are bom­bard­ing them with mar­ket­ing mes­sages, peo­ple have heard of Coke first, and most likely from other people.

Con­se­quently, if peo­ple hear about you from other peo­ple, and not some adver­tise­ment or pitch, this social proof will cre­ate not only a cer­tain buzz­wor­thi­ness about you but also an almost instant trustworthiness.

How do you do that? The most sig­nif­i­cant method is to be the first. If your busi­ness or web­site is unique, focuses on a niche or is the first in some cat­e­gory, the knowl­edge of your exis­tence will spread quite nat­u­rally, almost like wild­fire. It becomes viral in and of itself, in other words.

Now, I’m not say­ing you need to be new. I’m only say­ing you need to be unique. Or bet­ter yet, you need to be the first. Whether it’s cater­ing an exist­ing prod­uct to a new niche, or adding a new twist to an exist­ing prod­uct, you become the first.

I said it before: don’t be the best, be the first. But more impor­tant, as Ries pointed out, “Don’t be the first in the mar­ket­place, be the first the MIND of the marketplace.”

That said, there are ways to use sys­tems that will lever­age the spread­ing of that mes­sage, on the other hand, which helps to mul­ti­ply your mar­ket­ing punch. Such sys­tems both sim­u­late and stim­u­late word-​​of-​​mouth advertising.

Net­work­ing sys­tems, for exam­ple, include strate­gic mar­ket­ing alliances, joint ven­tures, and affil­i­ate pro­grams. And unlike the more tra­di­tional traf­fic gen­er­a­tors such as ads and search engines, these spe­cific tools are much more effec­tive since they are used by third par­ties and not by the orig­i­nal advertiser.

In these cases, peo­ple don’t find you. They are told where you are because some­one told them about you — espe­cially if that “some­one” is a per­son whose opin­ion they value.

If you received a call, let­ter or email from some­one you know (and espe­cially trust) refer­ring you to a par­tic­u­lar com­pany, how much more cred­i­ble will that refer­ral be when com­pared to a bla­tant adver­tise­ment com­ing from the com­pany itself?

You got it. A lot more.

When we think of viruses, we remem­ber when “Melissa” and “I Love You” hit the scene in the late 90s and early 2000s. No, they weren’t some kind of adult-​​oriented web­sites, but com­puter viruses (or is that virii?).

But here’s why they were so effec­tive: the devi­ous (or per­haps even bril­liant) way these viruses worked was that, after open­ing the email attach­ment, it sent more virus-​​infected emails to the first fifty peo­ple in your address book with­out your knowledge.

While we are bom­barded with spam and phish­ing attempts, and anti-​​virus warn­ings telling us to never open an attach­ment from an unknown per­son, how can we resist doing so when the email appar­ently comes from some­one we actu­ally do know (since the virus uses address books to mul­ti­ply itself and even per­son­al­izes the email with that person’s name)?

We can cer­tainly learn the way viruses work — and, in the same way, apply that process to online marketing.

How? Remem­ber that good ol’ fash­ion process called “net­work­ing”? Accord­ing to Jill Griffin’s won­der­ful book “Cus­tomer Loy­alty: How to Earn it, How to Keep it,” we are more open, trust­ing and loyal when doing busi­ness with or being mar­keted by peo­ple we know — and we cer­tainly refer them to oth­ers more often as well.

Net­work­ing grants you the abil­ity to reach cor­ners untapped — areas that would have been unreach­able oth­er­wise. I per­son­ally don’t advo­cate tra­di­tional net­work­ing (the sim­ple, “I’m open for busi­ness” kind) because, in my expe­ri­ence, it hasn’t brought me any­thing sub­stan­tial in return. While it can be a fan­tas­tic mar­ket­ing tool, the way in which net­work­ing is con­ducted is often the rea­son why it does not pro­duce any favor­able results.

When you’re only net­work­ing, more often than not peo­ple will want some­thing in return — oth­er­wise, they will lose inter­est or stop send­ing refer­rals if you don’t take the time to rec­og­nize their efforts. A way to con­sis­tently reward oth­ers is to turn your net­work­ing efforts into sys­tems — in other words, to develop strate­gic mar­ket­ing alliances.

There are many ways to accom­plish this. But the most effec­tive forms of net­work­ing are those that are systematized.

A tra­di­tional net­work is one in which qual­i­fied leads that you can both share, or infor­ma­tion about each other that is pro­moted to each other’s mar­ket, clien­tele or sub­scribers. This way, you can effec­tively cross-​​promote or share mar­kets with each other. As long as your alliance log­i­cally shares a same tar­get mar­ket but with­out directly com­pet­ing with you, it could be poten­tially rewarding.

On the Inter­net, this tech­nique is one in which a sys­tem­atized method of cross-​​promotion between you and your alliance through a unique, joint mar­ket­ing effort is cre­ated. It is also often referred to as a “joint venture.”

For exam­ple, this includes the cou­pling of com­ple­men­tary prod­ucts or ser­vices in a sin­gle offer that’s exclu­sively mar­keted to each other’s mar­ket. While dif­fer­ent, these offers are com­bined and mar­keted under the ban­ner of a sin­gle promotion.

Whose prod­uct or offer can you bun­dle with yours to cre­ate an entirely new and dis­tinct package?

In its sim­plest form, if your alliance sells a prod­uct to a mar­ket that matches yours, they can add to their offer addi­tional prod­ucts, ser­vices or bonuses from you, which may include an exclu­sive spe­cial offer for one of your prod­ucts as an upsell.

But the best method I’ve found is when you cre­ate an entirely dis­tinct prod­uct with those from two or more strate­gic alliances, amal­ga­mat­ing exist­ing prod­ucts from all com­pa­nies into a sin­gle offer that’s sold simul­ta­ne­ously from your part­ners’ sites.

For exam­ple, you sell cook­ware online. You can eas­ily team up with a pub­lisher spe­cial­iz­ing in cook­books and throw a book in the mix. While you raise the price and split the prof­its with the pub­lisher, you instantly raise the per­ceived value of the cook­ware through a co-​​branded approach or a com­bined pack­age of non-​​competing prod­ucts or services.

Best of all, each of you mar­ket the “new” prod­uct sep­a­rately while shar­ing in each other’s traf­fic, mar­ket, lead-​​base and referral-​​sources (i.e., your own respec­tive net­works, includ­ing affil­i­ates, “fans” and even sup­pli­ers) — thus dou­bling the reach with the same mar­ket­ing effort.

If they have their own dis­tinct affil­i­ate pro­gram, net­work of affil­i­ates and fan base, includ­ing their own blogs for instance, they can lever­age the knowl­edge of your exis­tence quite rapidly. And vice versa.

Ulti­mately, by lever­ag­ing the efforts of oth­ers you not only prop­a­gate the knowl­edge of your exis­tence on the web, but also you cre­ate trust and cred­i­bil­ity. And if you cater to a new mar­ket, or offer a new prod­uct by tak­ing an exist­ing prod­uct and giv­ing it a new twist, you also give your­self an extra dose of buzz­wor­thi­ness, too.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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