Viral Marketing - Getting Your Customers To Promote Your Product
Statistics claim that a customer who is satisfied with his or her purchase of a product will tell an average of three other people about it in glowing terms. Conversely, a customer who is dissatisfied will shout even louder and tell an average of eleven other people about it in very negative terms.
This is an effect known as viral marketing. This tends to happen whether or not we want it to. Of course, some of the time there is also a kind of neutral effect where the customer is satisfied, but not overly so, and therefore doesn’t bother to tell anyone of his or her feelings either way.
Smart marketers long ago realised that they could exploit the viral effect to their advantage. The trick is to create a product that almost guarantees that the customer is satisfied to the point where he or she will go out of their way to tell others about their good experience. However, this is not so easy to achieve.
One way is to give something away for free. If it is useful and has the possibility of making the “customer” money as well, then it’s likely that they will be very satisfied indeed. The “price” of getting the free product is usually an email address, which most people will gladly give in anticipation of a product that may change their lives.
Armed with the email address of many similar “customers,” the marketer can later make a profit on the back end by sending out offers to the list. As Wikipedia says about the process:
“Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.”
This is admittedly a simplified breakdown of the process. There needs to be some promotion at the beginning to get the ball rolling. But once there are a few satisfied people, they start telling others and it takes on a life of its own. This is viral marketing, and many use it to excellent effect.
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