© 2000 by Gauher Chaudhry, All Rights Reserved.

When you think of a virus, you usually think of something that is unpleasant. The dictionary defines a virus as:

vi·rus (vrs)

n., pl. vi·rus·es.

* Any of various simple submicroscopic parasites of plants, animals, and bacteria that often cause disease and that consist essentially of a core of RNA or DNA surrounded by a protein coat. Unable to replicate without a host cell, viruses are typically not considered living organisms.

* A disease caused by a virus.

* Something that poisons one's soul or mind: the pernicious virus of racism.

* Computer Science. A computer virus.

Most recently, I am sure that most of you have now heard of the "Love Bug" virus that has been disabling computers. It got its nickname as "The Love Bug" virus because it comes in an email with the subject "ILOVEYOU". The message contains an attachment that immediately affects the system by overwriting any MP3 files and destroying JPG graphic files. Not only that, but it will go to your mail program and send an email to all your friends in your address book with the virus. So far I think it is only mailing out email messages to computer users that are using Outlook Express. How is that for rapid growth?

A virus, whether it be organic or digital, does not even have to mate like most creatures on this planet in order to survive. 

All it does is replicate itself moving from host to host, growing at an exponential rate. So what does this all have to do with Internet marketing? The term "Viral Marketing" is derived from this form of rapid growth. Viral marketing is essentially a marketing strategy that grows the marketing message at an exponential rate without any effort on behalf of the marketer.

Viral marketing has really been here all along. The world's first form of viral marketing really was "word-of-mouth". You tell people who go on to tell other people and so on.

Probably the best example of successfully implementing viral marketing is Hotmail.com. Hotmail grew a subscriber base more rapidly than any other company in history. By giving away a free web based email account with a tag line at the bottom of every outgoing email that read "Get Your free, private email at www.hotmail.com...", their promotion is on auto-pilot. Their message for free email is being spread out by all their email users. It is an online form of multi-level marketing but without any additional costs to incur. What made Hotmail take off like a bush fire? The fact that they were one of the first web-based email providers. They had an innovative product that people would want to use.

Viral marketing uses people like you and I as the host to transmit the marketing message. The marketing effort will not survive if we do not pass the message along. How do you think joke lists grow a large number of subscribers? You receive a joke that you like and pass it along to a few of your friends.

This continues on and on, each time a reader seeing the subscription information for the joke list.

There are many obvious types of viral marketing that I am sure you have come across. Did you ever receive the "dancing baby" via an email message? Do you know how many people passed that around? Look it how many chain letters you receive requesting you to pass it along to five or ten friends to avoid bad luck.

Unfortunately, viral marketing is one of the fewest understood and used forms of online marketing. Most people are content with spending their money on automatic submission software or banner advertising. Unfortunately, these methods of marketing are not effective enough in getting satisfactory exposure.

Writing this article and reading about the speed of the "Love Bug" virus got me thinking about how I could implement viral marketing in promoting my companies services and products. I have come across a few ideas that I will introduce in next week's issue. But in the meantime, you should sit down and brainstorm how you can implement viral marketing into your business strategy to help blow your competition away.

Gauher Chaudhry is editor of Cool Cash Ezine. You can subscribe by sending an email to subscribe@freecoolcash.com with "sub-art" in the subject.

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