What is Viral Marketing? Will this Generate Long Term Income?

A Virus?

Is this the virus of marketing? Before I started researching viral marketing it sounded like something my prospects thought I had when I confronted them before they ran from me.

Defined (1)

It refers to marketing techniques that use preexisting social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes.

The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral campaign programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential and create Viral Messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have high probability of being passed along.

Here Are Its Six Elements

• Gives away products or services
• Provides for effortless transfer to other
• Scales easily from small to very large
• Exploits common motivations and behaviors
• Utilizes existing communication networks
• Takes advantage of others' resources

Is a One Off Campaign

That sounds like it ends. It's true viral marketing is not sustainable. How could this possibly help the network marketer? It can't long term so there is something called a viral expansion loop that gives the network marketer a means of doing exactly what it implies, loops which are continuous. This will give the MLMer what s/he is looking for, long term sustainability.

On the Internet

It has proved to be more successful as its emphasis is less on actual advertising and more on brand development. Viral marketing encompasses a “word-of-mouth” type system as visitors to a website are given the option to send-to-a-friend.

The Ponzi Scheme is an Example

Everyone can relate to this illegal form today. What happens is investors are paid interest from the principal deposits of later investors.

Early investors are so enthusiastic they recruit their friends resulting in exponential growth.

We all know what happened when new investors stopped. As we all know this was a highly illegal form of viral marketing, but I think it demenstrates the campaign aspect of viral marketing. (bad humor illistration)

A Very Simple Example of a Campaign, as I See It

I am going to use a very simple example of how some might fail when they think they have a system in place that is sustaining when it is really a campaign that will end.

Let’s say a product offered through the network marketing company is nutritional products. Now let’s add several types of professional folks such as acupuncturist and a chiropractor.

These professions are considered to give more holistic treatments and their clients are more likely to use nutritional products. Therefore will purchase them.

The professionals are introduced to a product that is distributed through MLM and they get involved. They are using the product themselves and now they would like to share the product with others and build a downline.

At first this may seem to be a perfect fit, but what do these professionals really have? They have signed up customers, not anyone who is looking to build a business through network marketing.

They sign up their current customer base with great enthusiasm then start wondering why they are unable to grow their MLM business. They do not have a steady stream of new leads which is key to growing the business.

I see this process as a campaign because growth is not sustainable. Most of the time they do not have an endless supply of new customers.

They may not have had anyone join their downline who actually wanted to grow a business. Now they have many customers, which is also good, but not the residual income they were expecting.

Do you see the problem if the intent was to build a business? A campaign ends and your business stops growing. The MLMer needs to have a steady stream of new leads.

NOTES:(1) Reference for viral marketing