Understanding the power of viral marketing online

The story of how Hotmail moved from zero to a couple of million
subscribers in a few months is one that is often told in many
sites all over the net. However it is a story that many do not
quite understand. If they understood it, we would be seeing many
more online success stories and fewer online failures. Because
the word has also been over-used by hype peddlers, many times
people associate the word viral with spamming and other online
activities bordering on the illegal. 

Viral growth and marketing has always been with us

They fail to realize that viral growth and marketing is not
something new to the human race. In fact it has been there since
the beginning of time. The human race began with two people,
Adam and Eve. Today the human race has filled virtually every
corner of this huge planet. Many religions of the world started
with a single person but were quickly “virally marketed” to
reach millions. 

Even the now World Wide Web started off as a few computers,
mainly used by researchers, linked together. But as they
continuously enjoyed their experience and as new software and
technology was made available for more people to join this small
“web of linked computers” it suddenly started growing. The
growth within a very short time has been explosive and it has
all been viral. So let us be clear that viral marketing was not
invented or created by the net, the net in fact used it to grow
to what it is today. 

Viral marketing will only work with something useful

As many MLM and network marketing people have discovered, viral
marketing will not work with products that people do not find
useful. Some marketing experts have always turned to viral
marketing in the form of MLM or network marketing to push and
clear stocks of a product that has totally failed in the market.
Where they think they have succeeded, they have only ruined
their credibility and that of their businesses as folks have
ended up with massive stocks of some useless item stored in
their garage because they believed somebody who told them they
would make a lot of money. This is the chief reason why
Multi-level Marketing (which is pure viral marketing) has such a
bad name with many people. 

The internet is a natural for viral marketing

The reason why Hotmail was so successful so quickly is because
the net actually multiplies and speeds up the viral effect. In
real life you may forget the name of the movie you liked so much
when you are telling a friend about it, or the name of the book
you read last year. 

On the internet, forwarding an interesting article usually
involves a few quick clicks and even if you forget the title of
the book, a quick visit to your favorite search engine armed
with the few keywords or just the name of the author will yield
the book for you complete with the current online specially
offer price for it. 

If you want to succeed online you can’t avoid thinking
viral

Anybody who wants explosive growth and success in any online
endeavour cannot avoid thinking “virally” in all their marketing
plans. Failing to use this powerful marketing method, that has
been successfully used since the beginning of time, will be a
very unfortunate thing indeed.