Viral Marketing. What is it? How do we implement it?
To many, Viral Marketing sounds a bit repulsive and nasty. Who wants to be associated with a virus? A virus’ are evil. Their point of attack it direct, brutal and unforgiving, first by infiltrating the host and then infesting to the point where there is no going back and making it near impossible to wipe out. It is for this reason that we lovingly refer to this process of online marketing as viral marketing.
Off the internet there are varying terms for viral marketing such as buzz marketing, creating a buzz, word of mouth, network marketing, ect. Basically, and as monosyllabically as possible, viral marketing is a rapid multiplication of a message. Viral Marketing is any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a message, much like the game ‘telephone’, and creates potential for a constant rate of growth in the messages’ a constant rate of growth of exposure and authority
A great example of this would be marketing technique used to sell Radiohead’s album In Rainbows. To the shock of just about the entire music industry Radiohead announced early in October that they would be giving their album away free. That’s right free. However, while downloading the album there was an option to donate any sum that the fan felt was appropriate. Within two weeks radio head ‘sold’ over 1.2 million albums for approximately $9.6 million in gross. The genius of this move was probably that this marketing technique cut out any middleman that would have sold their album and had practically no budget.
So, what can we learn from Radiohead about viral marketing?
People love offers for free stuff.
Free is the most powerful word in a marketer’s vocabulary. If you want to draw traffic to your idea, message, product, service or what have you, you need to offer them something that they either can’t get anywhere else, or for free.
Message easily scales from small to large.
While Radiohead accomplished this by stepping out of the mold and using a radical move like selling their product for free. There are many ways to do this but we need to keep in mind that when we are innovative and step out of the mold people will take notice.
Make is simple
All Radiohead fans had to do was download their music. Of course, the easily accessible donate option was there for all to see. Who wouldn’t want to promote music that’s free. Never mind that the average downloader donated about $9, which is about the full price of a CD. Because if this is promoted then more musicians are likely to implement free downloads.
Radiohead not only made a profit through this marketing maneuver but they also gained attention and trust from an old and new fan base from which their alternative income will reflect.
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