Success Story #1:
Hotmail – From 0 to 30,000,000 in 30 months

MSN Hotmail’s viral marketing success story is practically in the realm of folk lore… actually I guess it is in the realm of Internet folk lore.

Back in 1995, when Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith approached the venture capital firm of Draper Fisher & Jervetson with their idea for a free email service, the firm liked the idea but wondered how they would attract members and build a company around it. Today there are more than 30 million active members.

The Hotmail user base grew faster than any media company in history faster than CNN, faster than AOL, even faster than Seinfeld’s audience. Hotmail tripled its size in one year. The current sign-up rate for new memberships often exceeds a million per week.

Tom Draper is the one who actually suggested that they should append an advertising message to every outbound email: “P.S. Get your free email at Hotmail” and called it viral marketing. It was a very bold move at the time. Would users balk at having this automatic addition to the content of their private messages? Hotmail tempered the idea by clearly marking the promotional plug and removing the “P.S.”.

Still, every outbound message conveyed an advertisement and a subtle implied endorsement by the sender. The recipient knew that the sender was a Hotmail user and that this new free email thing seemed to work for them. Each new user became a salesman and the message spread like…well….an extremely contagious virus.

Of course, if Hotmail had been only mediocre and not provided a terrific free email service, no amount of advertising, paid or free, would have turned it into the wildly successful thing it is today. Hotmail’s recipe for success is pretty simple. It delivers the qualities consumers really want in an e-mail service: speed, reliability, ease of use and a rich set of features

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8 Ways to Create Buzz

Buzz marketing is the vehicle that will take your new business to dizzying heights. Here are a few suggestions to help you make that happen.

1. Pursue what’s happening now. James Dean made rebels out of all of us and Madonna caused nice girls to wear a bustier. So…how did that happen? It happened the same way that Rosie’s Tickle-Me Elmo happened. They started a commotion. A commotion can send the world on a buying spree. You need to get the right person to “sneeze” to spread your viral message. For instance, sell the president of the Realtors Association on your house-painting service or gets the urban kids to make your streetwise electronics cool. Just get your message to the influential people who can start the buzz.

2. Give them something to talk about. It makes people feel smart to know something that others don’t know. “I know where you can get a terrific deal on software” or “My carpet guy can get those stains out”. They know the answer. Give your first customers a great product and you become their brag. In order to get them talking, you must fill a need. Remember the first time you saw a Walkman? What IS that and where can I get one? Now you’ve got them talking.

3. Package your product or service tightly. Your buzz or viral blurb needs to be short, sweet and make the point. “They sell beautiful shoes” or “You’re kids will love this” are the kind of things that don’t get lost on the tip of a tongue. Make it easy to remember. Describe what you do right now until you say it virally right. If you can’t do it, your customers can’t either.

4. It’s like a cold in kindergarten. The best way to spread your message is to “sneeze” it in the right direction. It needs to be aimed at your target customers and in the places where they can be found. Once you get your “sneeze” aimed in the right direction and at your general pool of potential customers, the next thing to do is identify the “Typhoid Mary’s” in the group.


5. “To register your own (whatever), click here”. You have just received one…now buy one yourself. From Bouquets to “gifts for the fisherman”, “share-me” products give you the opportunity to spread your message inside what you sell. The product becomes the pitchman. Brilliant! You can find marketing services on the Internet that can create a customized e-newsletter package that will spread your business message to target users all through the Internet grapevine. Your customers will continue to love your product because they will tell and sell others.

6. Pay it forward. You can generate more sales pretty easily. “Thanks so much for your business. Share this coupon with a friend and she will receive a complete facial at 20% off. To receive your free gift, please sign below.” That’s business author Jan Norman’s magic. She just helped you land a customer you’ve never met, and rewarded another one to boot. Just little things like “remember to tell your friends” at the bottom of an invoice are simple, easy and free ways to boost sales and start a buzz. On your web site offer something free for new names on your mailing list and your customers will join your sales force.

7. Because she’ll tell two friends and they will tell two friends, and so on and on….Forget the fancy marketing theories. Buzz marketing works because it is heard from a friend who liked it and not from some paid pitchman who will sell anything for a buck. If your customers are happy with your product or service, then devise a way for them to share that joy with their friends. Help your customers to tell each other and your product will sell itself.

8. Overcome their resistance. Problem solving guru, Jordan Ayan, points to persistence as the key ingredient to championing your business idea. Like that winter flu that some people don’t get until May, some customers will need many exposures before they “catch” it.

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The Concept of Buzz




Everybody knows certain urban legends. They have never been marketed….nobody ever spent the first dime to let the world know that there are alligators living in the New York City sewer system….big ones….albino ones. So how is it that we all know stories like that? Better question….what if it were my product or service that enjoyed such common knowledge?

The grapevine, rumors, the whispers in your ear are what buzz is all about. Those little bits of information that people share over a cup of coffee….the outrageous occurrence that someone just saw and can’t wait to describe or the incredibly cool product that a friend of a friend just bought are the heart and soul of buzz…and buzz marketing or viral marketing, depending on what you want to call it.

Gigantic billboards rate barely a glance but we all still read the scribbling on a bathroom wall…ah ha! Buzz! In today’s cyber –joined reality, every “have you heard” can get clicked on a zillion times by others faster than you can download the latest compromising picture of Madonna.

We all know what a computer virus is. It spreads from one computer to another in the blink of an eye. The next thing you know it is everywhere. Now “Buzz” is the virus of marketing… it spreads to other customers and causes an epidemic of sales of your product or service.

It could be that “e-mail this to a friend” button that is just calling to you to click it, or a pair of real (and very satisfied) lips whispering persuasive endorsements into receptive ears, buzz marketing can transmit your business message at warp speed and do it at no cost to you. How cool is that?

By starting a buzz you can turn your new business into the next urban legend….that latest piece of juicy gossip that people can’t live without.


Message boards, blogs, email listservs and product review sites are the conversations that consumers have with one another and represent the largest collection of word-or-mouth or buzz advertising that has ever existed. It is the old party line phone system taken to the umpteenth power. People talk to each other. They willingly share their opinions on most any subject you can name but especially about products and services that they avail themselves of on the internet and in their brick and mortar worlds.

Consumers listen carefully to what others say about a product they are researching and intend to actually purchase. Users read the recommendations that other users post.

They really like it when other users post pictures or videos….these seem to have the most direct influence. Producers of products and services are slowly beginning to realize that what Consumer reports say about their products and services is not nearly as important as what consumers say to one another about them. Hence we have the ballooning of viral marketing…..word-of-mouth…or buzz.

Buzz has always been an important element of marketing/selling/branding. So how does what is happening now differ from what went on before and why should marketers embrace it?

The answer is that the impact of work-of-mouth or buzz advertising has increased dramatically. Ten years ago, a diabetic patient would have struggled to find other diabetic patients to communicate with. The internet solves that problem by allowing people with similar interests to find and interact with one another.

It is not a coincidence that all of the reports coming out that are showing that word-of-mouth or buzz is becoming more and more important to consumers. It is because the internet has made the whole idea work better and faster than ever before….and it only gets better as the internet expands.

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Viral marketing is unique and quite extraordinary. We share with friends and family the bargains or freebies we were able to get. If we can copy the freebie we will do it and give it to people that we know. Everybody knows somebody and just like rumors, these freebies can spread fast.

You can advertise your newsletter, your web site, products you’re selling, anything and you will make a profit if somebody clicks through the advertising on the freebie. I will spare you the details of why the same ad advertised through viral marketing is so much more effective than regular advertising.

It is a great feeling when you receive something for free.

As you can see, viral marketing is giving out free stuff and in turn, this free stuff will be passed around to other people. What better advertising could be accomplished in such a simple manner?

The process is actually very simple. All you have to do is find resources where you can download free stuff, then turn around and give it away to your visitors. There are numerous resources where you can download the freebies. For example, you may get started off by offering your visitors free e-books and free software.

The software might cost a substantial amount of money to develop, but in the long run it’s a one time fee for a decent stream of visitors. This is only one idea of many. You will find that the options are endless. Find something your visitors want and watch them roll on in!

Free web hosting is another form of viral marketing. You can provide this for free on your server to small businesses or beginning internet marketers. In return, you place a banner ad at the top of each site advertising your products and web site.

This will increase the number of visitors to your web-site and is an effective means of advertising with little expense.

In summary, Viral Marketing by definition is any form of advertising and/or marketing techniques that "spread" like a virus without you having to do anything.

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Viral marketing is like a sneezing into a crowded room without covering your mouth. The idea is to get people to pass it on. Viral marketing can be done in many ways…..email was the first way that viral marketing was used but since the beginning other ways have developed that encourage people to pass along to their friends and relatives information about products, services and internet sites… even jokes and video clips.

Viral marketing can be a very good thing for internet businesses, especially small ones that are just starting up. It can, also, sound the death knoll for those same businesses. You cannot force a product to “go viral”. If it is good enough…or bad enough, that just happens. You can, of course, use viral marketing but you can’t force the viral thing to happen. People love to share good things with their friends and families…but they will be just as quick to share an unpleasant experience or the name of the company they think ripped them off…..maybe even quicker.

Should you try to capitalize on viral marketing? You certainly should! You would be the worst kind of fool not to use everything at hand to market your product or idea. Without one doubt, you should reap the benefits of reaching more than just your target audience and stretching those advertising dollars as far as they will go. It is important, though, for you to realize that viral marketing is a strategy….just one tactic. One, however, that does work toward achieving your campaign objectives.

Oh….and just one more word of caution. You can craft a brilliant offer and a great message, and follow all the rules of Viral Marketing 101, but if a consumer visits your site and has a bad experience or even a not-as-good experience as expected, you will defiantly achieve viral marketing….the kind you don’t want.

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