"Friend-Tell-Friend" Viral Marketing

By Mark Sceats

A very simple and effective online viral marketing technique that works is known as “friend-tell-friend”. Basically this is where you simply ask the reader of a website or email newsletter to recommend it to others.

Clearly they will only do so if they think it's of benefit to others because there is no underlying greed motive to drive them. Consequently the audience they generate is likely to be more relevant and targeted than incentive-based viral marketing.

Here are a couple of examples of "friend-tell-friend" viral marketing...

1) Website friend-tell-friend promotion

You may already have noticed this technique is used on this website. At the bottom of most pages is the following image link:

(Click to see what happens)

We do this using a Perl CGI Script called "BlueSend". We've tried a number of scripts & like this one best. You can download this friend tell friend script from BlueSparks.com. (It's free).

2) Email friend-tell-friend promotion

In email newsletters this sort of message is often included:
 

"We encourage you to pass this newsletter on to others, as long as it is sent in its entirety"

As you can see “friend-tell-friend” is a simple and effective technique you can use to get your marketing message passed on to others. An important point to understand however is that it will only work if the content of your web site or email newsletter is good enough and fresh enough for people to want to recommend it to their friends and colleagues.

This brings us back to the fact that one of the essential elements to driving traffic to your web site is having useful content (that ‘content is king’ message again).