NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Viral Marketing at its Best
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Viral Marketing at its Best
Kim Brooks (kbrooks_at_bardo.seattle.wa.us)
Tue, 6 Oct 1998 17:49:19 -0500 (CDT)
>I'd be interested in hearing other examples of outstanding
>viral marketing. (And did I mention to check out my sig
>file?)
Since you ask...
We developed a program for Real Music
(http://www.realmusic.com) that qualifies as "viral." The
"Bring-A-Friend" promotion rewards visitors for bringing
newcomers to the site. Register for the program, then tell
people about it. When they register and mention your email
address as the referrer, you get a point. Earn ten points,
get a free CD. Up to 30 free CDs, shipping included and
everything.
Real Music is a small but successful independent label that
specializes in New Age, instrumental and "world-beat" music.
Our thinking is that fans are most likely to know someone
else who likes the same kind of music. So by nature, they
send the invitation to visit RM to a perfectly targetted
audience. "Remember that CD you liked at my party? Check
out their site and sign up to give me a point!"
The promotion has been great success so far and we plan on
trying a similar but more challenging arrangement with
another client, Swiss Army Brands, starting this holiday
season.
And a second idea, to build on Fast Company's comment about
propagating free stuff then get revenue later:
While working with U.S.News & World Report on their initial
site 3 years ago, I developed a program that gave away
"content" to anyone. We created one-page newsletter-style
summaries of the news that partners could put on their sites
for free. Different categories were available -- like
Financial News, College News, and Politics. Of course, at
the end of each one paragraph news summary was a link to the
full story on our site. The resulting visitation & ad views
were great -- we had alot of partners on college sites, and
few biggies like InfoSeek. But the print people were really
uncomfortable with the idea "giving away" content, so it was
eventually killed.
Thanks for sparking this thread. Viral Marketing -- or
word-of-mouth, or spawning, or whatever you call it -- is
absolutely the coolest aspect of web marketing. It's the
web's biggest advantage over traditional media, but sadly
the least used advantage.
Kim Brooks
Bardo Internet Marketing
http://bardo.seattle.wa.us
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