Viral Marketing for Web 2.0 Services by Ryan Pitylak
A friend of mine was discussing with me whether his product was viral or not. Ultimately, the definition of viral is either too loose or too tight. In his case, it’s too tight. In the case of most VCs it’s also too tight, which makes the entrepreneur wax “tight” as well.
Ultimately, 1 person telling another person IS viral marketing. Is it viral? That’s another question…. Does it virally grow on its own without any additional push? For every person who joins, does at least 1.0001 additional person join above anyone else who leaves? If the answer is yes, the over time, you will see growth organically. We’re not talking about traffic from search engines, redirects, or other places. We’re talking about straight direct traffic that delivers new visitors. That’s viral.
But, do I think that someone who tells someone else about a product isn’t viral, no. That’s also viral. It may be harder to understand how to capitalize on the opportunit, but it’s certraintly viral.
Ryan Pitylak and viral marketing.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:30 am
Mike Maples, Jr. gave me a good explanation of viral marketing a while back. He talked about it terms of a “host” and then how others get “infected”. There needs to be a way for the virus to be transmitted naturally without having to incentivize the user with points or rewards.
One of the first examples of viral marketing was Hotmail. At the bottom of every email it said, “Get free web based email from Hotmail.com” (or something like that). No one had to intentionally or explicitly tell other people about it - the act of using it as designed (sending email to other people) caused the message to spread. eVite is another great example - in order to use eVite to manage an event, you put in the emails of all your invitees and they get an email from eVite that drives them back to the eVite site.
August 20th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Great analysis Josh. Add on some sticky site factors to ensure that those referred people become members, and you’ll have the perfect recipe for a successful site.