Case Study #1

"How Hotmail grew to 12 million users ... in just 18 months!"

When Microsoft launched their Hotmail e-mail service, they wanted to grow fast. So they launched an extremely clever viral marketing campaign:

Hotmail attached a tiny advertisement to the bottom of every e-mail people sent using their service, offering FREE e-mail accounts.

Here's what it looked like:

So every e-mail sent by a Hotmail user became a word-of-mouth referral for the company!

In just 18 months, Hotmail grew its subscriber base from zero to 12 MILLION users -- faster than any company in any media in the history of the world!

In the process, they built a multimillion-dollar business...

... and blew other free e-mail providers, with their ultra-expensive ad campaigns, right out of the water!

ISSUE: Unless you have a product people MUST share to use, this viral marketing technique will be difficult for you to implement!

Case Study #2

"How Burger King attracted
442 million visitors... in 17 months!"

When Burger King wanted to boost it's visibility in the lucrative teen and early-20s market, they turned to an innovative viral marketing campaign to draw their attention to the company.

They set up a website tha they named "The Subservient Chicken" (www.subservientchicken.com) where visitors can type commands into a text box, then watch a person in a chicken costume obey these commands.

Was it silly? Yes! Did it have anything to do with selling burgers? Not really! Was it successful? Absolutely....

Through word of mouth alone, the site received more than 442 MILLION visits in just 17 months! And each one of the visitors was exposed to the Buger King logo and message.

ISSUE: How did this goofy guy in a chicken suit actually SELL burgers? Silly viral campaigns like this are HARD to translate into actual sales!

Case Study #3

"How Seth Godin convinced more than 1,000,000 people to download his eBook!"

At the time, the information that Godin gave away in this book, formatted as a simple PDF file, was considered fresh and groundbreaking -- and people were blown away that he was giving it away for FREE!

But this was a key strategy in Godin's viral marketing campaign...

He invited readers to send unlimited FREE copies of his book to their friends... download more copies from his web page... print out as many copies as they liked... and if they wished, buy a hardcover, print edition.

In the end, Unleashing the Ideavirus was downloaded by more than 1,000,000 people!

ISSUE: Seth distributed this eBook as an unsecured PDF file... so while a lot of people READ it, he had no way of following up with them all -- because he didn't have their contact information!