NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Viral Marketing at its Best
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Viral Marketing at its Best
Rafe Furst (rafe_at_pickem.com)
Thu, 1 Oct 1998 11:17:09 -0500 (CDT)
"Ken Schafer" <ken_at_domesticscience.com> wrote:
> I just finished customizing the new personalization tool at
> CDnow and it strikes me that it contains one of the nicest
> pieces of "viral marketing" to come along in a while.
...
> I'd be interested in hearing other examples of outstanding
> viral marketing. (And did I mention to check out my sig
> file?)
Ken, I was so infected with the virus I just bought you a
bunch of CDs :-) In all seriousness though I am a big fan
of this concept as well. It seems like enabling such fast,
effective word-of-mouth promotion is one of the big keys to
the power of the internet from a marketing perspective.
Other examples that I think are of this ilk are things that
people put on their website which by their very "coolness"
encourage others to also put the same on their website. They
include: downloadable applets, compliance-to-standards
logos, web-rings and link-exchanges, and (simply) links to
interesting sites. Clearly the "virulance" of the particular
strain has to do with how interesting or useful the item in
question seems to people who come across it and how easy it
is to replicate it for themselves.
At my company we are just starting a viral marketing
campaign to make people aware of us, by letting people
download a configurable java ticker for their website
(http://www.pickem.com/ticker-dist/). This is something we
considered trying to charge for, or requiring registration,
but we have decided (for the moment anyway) that we might
benefit more by letting as many people as possible put it on
their site with as few barriers as possible. The applet has
a credit and link to our site. Incidentally, I'd be very
interested in feedback from others who have tried this sort
of thing and/or specific comments on our approach.
One thing that seems like a tough call is how do you decide
whether to charge for something that has "viral marketing"
potential or not? If you believe that virulence has to do
with compellingness, then the most successful viral
marketing tools also have the potential to be sold rather
than given away. I tend to think this would be *trading*
total reach and other strategic goals for cash in hand.
Plus you may kill the word-of-mouth and "coolness" effect
completely by charging at all. Anyone have experience with
making this decision and how you went about resolving it?
--Rafe
ps, While I don't know who coined the term "viral
marketing", I recognize the concept as an instance of
Richard Dawkins' notion of "memes", which are the mental
analog of genes. Memes and genes are the unit of
replication in a generalized view of evolutionary processes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rafe Furst .......Pickem Sports....... www.pickem.com
rafe_at_pickem.com Real Traffic - Real Revenue (650) 858-2711
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