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Combined with the case Hotmail.com mentioned in the previous article, let us first briefly examine the six elements of viral marketing.
1. Provide valuable products or services
The most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary is "free." Most viral marketing projects give away a valuable product or service to get attention. Free email, free information, free "cool" buttons, powerful but slightly inferior to the professional version of free software. Wilson's second law of Internet marketing is the "Law of Giving and Selling." "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate interest, but "free" usually comes faster. Viral marketing employs a strategy of delayed gratification. They may not make a profit today, and they won't make a profit tomorrow, but as long as they can attract gushing interest with free stuff, they know they will, "instantly and forever." Be patient, man. Free will attract attention. Keep your eyes peeled for those precious gadgets you are selling, and then, with lightning speed, you will make money. Eyeballs can bring valuable email addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give something away, sell something.
2. Provide simple and convenient communication methods
During cold season, hospital nurses will offer wise advice: stay away from people with coughs, wash your hands frequently, and don't rub your eyes, pick your nose, or chew your nails. Viruses only spread if they can spread easily. The medium carrying the marketing message must be easy to disseminate and copy: email, website, image, software download. The reason why viral marketing is so popular on the Internet is that instant communication is becoming easier and cheaper. Electronic formats make copying easy. From a marketing perspective, you have to simplify your marketing message so that it spreads easily and doesn't spoil. The shorter the appointment, the better. The most classic one is: "Get your personal free email from http://www.hotmail.com/ ." This message is eye-catching, short and concise, and is copied below every free email.
3. The scope of information transmission can easily spread from small to large scale
The delivery method must be able to grow from small to large quickly in order to fly like wildfire. The weakness of the hotmail model is that free email requires a mail server to deliver messages. For this strategy to be quite successful, you must add mail servers quickly, otherwise the growth will stall and die. If the virus kills its host in order to reproduce before spreading, it will not achieve anything. As long as you plan ahead on how to quickly add mail servers, you'll be fine. Your virus model must have upgradability built into it.
4. Leverage shared motivations and behaviors
Smart viral marketing taps into people’s common motivations and behaviors. What made the "Netscape Now" button spread in the early days of the Internet? It's the desire to be cool. Greed drives people. The same goes for the desire to be famous, the need to be loved, and the desire to be understood. The resulting impulse to communicate has spawned millions of websites and billions of emails. Base your marketing strategy communications on shared motivations and behaviors, and you'll succeed.
5. Leverage existing communication networks
Most people like to socialize, not the nerdy computer science graduate living in the basement. Social scientists tell us that everyone has a close network of 8-10 people, including friends, family, and colleagues. A wider network may include dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending on their social status. For example, a waitress may interact with hundreds of customers on an average week. Internet marketers understand the power of interpersonal networks, whether they are strong and intimate relationships or distant network relationships. They collect email addresses and favorite website links. Affiliate programs like the use of consent mail forms take advantage of these networks. Learn to fit your message into existing human interactions, and you'll greatly speed up the spread of that message.
6. Make use of other people’s resources
The most creative viral marketing uses other people's resources to achieve their goals. For example, an affiliate program places text or images on someone else's website. The author who provides the article for free wants to put the article on other people's web pages. A piece of news may be picked up by hundreds of magazines and form the basis of articles read by hundreds of readers. Other people's newspapers and web pages become your marketing messengers. You're consuming other people's resources instead of your own.
Put it into practice to test
I agree with every reader copying the article you are reading now on your website – The Six Simple Laws of Viral Marketing. But it’s just this one, and it can’t be changed in any way. Please also include a copyright statement. If you have a marketing website or a small business website, this will provide you with great content and help your visitors learn important strategies.
When I offered this article to my readers in February 2000, many accepted it. Six months later I received a call:
“I want to find the viral marketing boss!”
“I’m not the boss,” I hesitated, “I just wrote an article about viral marketing a few months ago, that’s all.”
“I looked all over the Internet for viral marketing,” he said, “and your name was the one that came up. You must be the boss.”
Success! Even five years later, this page still ranks first in "viral marketing."
To a greater or lesser extent, all viral marketing strategies generally use the six rules listed above. Learn and master these six rules, and you will have continuous wealth in your life.
Successful cases at home and abroad
Kogi:
America's first viral restaurant
Kogi's main food is fried tacos, and its main tool is a mobile food truck. Korean fried tacos are nothing new, and Kogi cars are not high-end products. What is it that makes Kogi a miracle? This has to be attributed to the Internet.
It turned out that they reported the location of Kogi in real time on Twitter, and soon received unexpected results. When the police chased Kogi off a street corner, Roy would use Twitter to tell users where his next stop was; when the truck was late, he would send a message like, "Wait for us 10 more minutes, okay? Forever fried." Tacos." The diners who started to waver continued to line up, waiting for their delicious meal.
With the power of websites such as Twitter and viral word-of-mouth marketing, in just three months, Kogi quickly conquered the stomachs of countless Los Angeles people and became one of the most well-known mobile restaurants in the United States. Even the BBC, "New York Times" and "News" Weekly magazines have made it the subject of coverage.
"I can prepare food for 100 people in one night, but Twitter can bring 5,000 people together every second, increasing the publicity effect of word-of-mouth recommendations by a million times," founder Roy said.
In addition, Roy also asked followers to help design T-shirts and name Kogi's food truck, and fans' photos and YouTube videos were posted on their official blog to gain greater publicity.
Some people may say that if he were born in China, Kogi would be just a mobile vendor who is chased by urban management every day. However, in Los Angeles, USA, thanks to the viral word-of-mouth marketing triggered by Twitter, in just 3 months, Kogi has become one of the most well-known mobile restaurant brands in Los Angeles and even the United States.
"Generally speaking, Kogi's successful experience is to perfectly keep up with the times - unique marketing methods, preparing novel proteins for the stomachs of post-modern people who crave authenticity." Ge Hui, general manager of Shanghai Fanbo Co., Ltd. told The reporter explained.
Youlemei milk tea
Xizhilang company's cup milk tea
Youlemei conducted a series of three rounds of strong promotions with Jay Chou's endorsement as the core, and finally succeeded in getting a piece of the big cake of cup milk tea.
First of all, in the first round of "viral marketing warm-up", Youlemei had already put the behind-the-scenes of Jay Chou's commercials on the Internet before the Youlemei TV commercials were broadcast to attract the attention of target consumers. Next is the most critical strengthening process, which is to promote through traditional media such as TV advertisements, so that target consumers’ memory of the brand will continue to increase. “You are my Youlemei” once became a widely circulated saying. Buzzwords. In the third round of promotion, Youlemei created a brand community with Jay Chou as the dean of the academy, and cultivated consumers' brand loyalty through some interesting online activities.
Three months after its launch, the "Youlemei Academy" website achieved 15 billion brand exposures, 110,000 online product redemptions, and 40 Wanbei directly redeems products and has 490,000 loyal website members, turning the target consumer group of Youlemei into a preference for the brand.
It is understood that the website is still in operation, and the number of users who have registered on the website by purchasing products and obtaining product serial numbers has increased to more than 800,000. Without any investment in promotion, the website currently adds nearly 3,000 members every day and has become an important platform for interaction with consumers.
Viral marketing has become the most unique method of online marketing and is successfully used by more and more businesses and websites. Currently, many similar companies are thinking about how to make viral marketing products exude lasting appeal after a short period of attention.
This article is compiled from guaniu, the original address.
Translation source: Tech2ipo Please indicate the source link when reprinting.