Viral Marketing for Business to Business (B2B)

Summer Cold?
No, It's Just Viral Marketing

By Jennifer Beever

You've heard the latest buzzwords in marketing: so-called "viral marketing." But before you dismiss it as just that - buzzwords - I'd like to suggest that it might have some use and value for B2B marketers.

The basis of viral marketing has been around for many, many years. The idea is that you incite your customers or referral sources to pass on something about your business to their network of colleagues and friend. Those that pass on your information get something in return. That something may be a gift or service related to your business or simply the knowledge that they have added value for others.

Now viral or word-of-mouth marketing has become that much hotter because it has a new medium: the Internet. According to one venture capital firm, 80% of new business plans have the words "viral marketing" in them. Using email makes it incredibly easy to pass information on to a friend or colleague, especially if it involves something fun or free. With millions using the Internet worldwide, the potential for exponential growth is tremendous. And, what's great about viral marketing is that it is low cost and works virtually by itself. Once you make an offer and provide the facility for referrals, viral marketing spreads by itself.

The viral marketing example most commonly sited is Hotmail's free email. Hotmail offered free email, and to those who signed up they attached a tagline promoting the same to every email sent to friends, family, and colleagues. This viral marketing attempt began in July 1996, and, as of July 1999, Hotmail had 40 million users with 150,000 signing up every day.

Viral marketing is not just for the B2C community, as in the Hotmail example. But how can B2B providers use viral marketing without sacrificing credibility and quality? Viral marketing can work for B2B providers, as long as the following is true.

There are several factors that have to exist for viral marketing to succeed. First, the product and service has to add value for the transmitter and receiver. Second, the offer has to be deliverable. You don't want to offer a product that you can't deliver if demand grows rapidly. Third, the offer has to be easily transferable to others. Email and web pages provide the best medium to facilitate this. Fourth, the best viral marketing campaigns use existing networks to move the message along.

The first place to start is with your client base. Incite existing clients to refer new ones. Second, go to your referral sources. Service providers, your outside network, colleagues, can be encouraged to provide referrals that lead to business.

You can offer free hours of your service or an add-on assessment for those who refer new business. If you use a free assessment for your clients, it just may turn up additional needs that require your expertise. Or, if your clients and associates are typically stressed, tired, business-owners, offer a reward that provides relaxation and leisure, like a weekend away or a personal service that will save them time.

One very scalable viral marketing effort is to allow others to post articles that you've authored on their web sites. You should require that they use your copyright information and link back to your site. You don't have much to lose in allowing this as visitors already have the ability to cut and paste your words for their use. Alternatively, ask your alliance partners and associates to post articles on your web site and send their network (via an email message and link) to your site to read them. Traffic to your site and exposure to your products and services increases with little effort on your part.

Another way to encourage visitors to spread the word about you is to provide a link or button on each web page that they can click on to forward your URL. Provide this capability at the end of one of your great articles, and you have a very qualified recommendation. After all, the recommender read the entire article! You can create your own link or button, or, there are utilities available to help you facilitate viral marketing on your web site. Whether or not we can call them free is subject to interpretation.

Recommend-it.com (http://www.recommend-it.com) allows you to cut and paste a button to your site. The button allows visitors to click and key in email addresses and names of others they'd like to refer to your site. Apparently Recommend-it.com's revenue model is advertising sales for e-zines offered on their site. Recommend-it.com comes with four panels for a recommender to fill out, including areas where they can 'opt-in' to free e-zines or be entered in drawings for prizes.

Letemknow.com (http://www.letemknow.com) is a free utility to facilitate recommendations for your website. As with Recommend-it.com, you can use their button and form to allow visitors at your site to click and key in referrals with whatever message they'd like to send. At Letemknow.com, they claim they don't use the emails of recommenders and referrals for any purpose other than to build traffic at your site.

A third resource, Bignosebird.com (http://www.bignosebird.com/cgi.shtml) claims to offer free code for web designers who want to create their own recommender button. Before you use any of these 'free' utilities, conduct your own investigation to thoroughly understand what recommenders may be subscribing to when they provide email addresses. You don't want to subject them to possible 'spam' or other invasions of their privacy.

In conclusion, while some may use 'viral marketing' as mere buzzwords, there is substance for B2B marketers. You can approach satisfied clients and referral sources in a credible manner and ask them to spread the word. Keep the reward related to your business and appropriate for the size and type of referral. Make sure that your offer adds value for the referrer and for those that are referred to you, and you'll have a cost-effective marketing tool to grow your business.

This article may be reprinted with permission of the author. Please contact Jennifer Beever at 818-347-4248 or by email, jenb@newincite.com, for permission. Proper acknowledgement of the author, including name, company, and contact information, must be made with use.

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