arketing is about getting people to think and feel your way about your product or service. You can do this through advertising, e-mail and direct mail, but think about it: On some level, your audience knows the message comes directly from you and your company and recognizes that it's somewhat biased.

But what if a trusted friend, associate or role model delivers the same information?

Let's use an easy example. You see an ad or a trailer for a movie. It looks interesting. Do you rush out and buy tickets? Probably not. Instead, you read the opinions of reviewers you trust, check to see how many stars the movie received, and (this is the viral marketing part) listen to what friends and co-workers say about it.

And if by chance, the buzz around the office is that you absolutely must see this great new flick, chances are you'll put it at the top of your list. You perceive the movie in exactly the way its marketers would like you to perceive it: as a must-see.

This is viral marketing. It's a method for creating a positive buzz about your company, not a bug to be feared. It capitalizes on the fact that communication from friends and colleagues usually brings with it credibility that mass-generated messages cannot.

Viral marketing is word of mouth, customer-to-customer and referral marketing turned into a new art form and is found more and more at the heart of many successful marketing campaigns.

How It Works

The principle behind viral marketing is simple: turn happy customers into your sales force. There are several ways to do this:

Narrowcast

Often you will find target audiences in groups that share a special interest. Whether in a Web zine or blog, reading a special interest publication or mingling at a trade show, you can find large numbers of opinion-shapers in one "spot."

Think GS Online. On The Green Sheet's MLS Forum on www.greensheet.com, ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs) are pretty clear about their experiences and opinions.

Why not find satisfied customers or spokespeople and provide incentives for them to say nice things about you? Or, create a referral program and reward your spokespeople for new customers that come from their zine, blog or trade show.

E-mail

The crackdown on spam has forced marketers to find new ways to capitalize on the cost, flexibility and reach of e-mail. Viral marketing is becoming the method of choice.

What could be better than getting friends to pass on your message to other friends? With no spam involved, there's an increased likelihood that the e-mail will be delivered, plus it includes the implicit endorsement of the sender.

And all you have to do is make sure that your message is something your customers will want to share with others. How? Include a great offer, gift certificate or some kind of inducement for responding (see below).

Web

Your Web site contains proprietary comments and information about your company. Why not add testimonials from satisfied customers? Why not add positive press coverage or product reviews?

Making It Work

Ultimately, the success of your viral marketing campaign will depend on your ability to get customers to talk about you in a positive way and to as many people as possible. How do you make this happen?

Obviously, your customers' experiences with you should all be positive. In order for viral marketing to work, your customers must feel that you do what you do well. In order for it to work even better, customers should feel special, valued and appreciated.

Basically, you need to go that extra mile to provide a completely enjoyable buying experience for them. Send them thank you notes after their first orders and send small gifts after multiple orders; remember names and preferences or anything else to make customers feel singled-out. These are the details that will make a difference.

Large companies invest in the resources necessary to get into their users' heads, creating profiles for each customer and tailoring messages based on those profiles. The result is that customers feel known and appreciated and therefore much more likely to speak to others about their positive experiences.

The next step is getting them to do just that. And that's the part marketers seem to have the most difficulty with. Turning your satisfied customers into your evangelists might be as simple as providing an incentive, such as a prize or cash reward.

Paid viral marketing is risky, however. Eager to "win the prize," your participants will work hard to spread the word, but the quality of that word is likely to diminish exponentially.

On the other hand, finding the "right" reward for your customers will deliver results both in quality and quantity. For busy retailers, for instance, offering certificates for dinner for two or free laundry pick up and delivery might be just what the doctor ordered.

Similarly, customers will be more likely to share your message with friends if there is a benefit to both sender and receiver. If, for instance, you want as many people as possible to attend an event, include a raffle ticket with each invitation and 10 raffle tickets for anyone who brings five or more guests.

The key is to meet your users' needs. With tons of companies using incentives to reward customers, find a motivator that your users, and the users' associates and friends, really want.

Know Before You Go

By now the benefits of viral marketing should be obvious. It's a very low cost way to spread a message with a built-in endorsement. However, as you also know, nothing is without risk. And the risk inherent in viral marketing is a loss of control.

Count on customers to spread a message to their friends, and you can count on them to confuse it. It's like the old game of Telephone. The more a message is passed on, the greater the opportunity for it to be altered.

You can hedge your bets a little bit, though. The trick is to control the process and let the message take care of itself.

That means making sure you know everything possible about what others might say about your product or service, perhaps through research, an e-mail questionnaire or simply by accompanying a sales person to a few clients and prospects.

Try to determine what makes people choose your company over the competition. Listen to the questions they ask and to the answers that please them.

Monitor your zines, blogs and GS Online's MLS Forum, and prepare to act promptly and appropriately if someone airs rumors, misinformation or customer complaints.

Most of all make sure your products, services and staff are worthy of rampant chatter. That's the best way to be sure that, when people talk about you, they say what you want to hear.

Nancy Drexler is the Marketing Director of Cynergy Data, a merchant acquirer that provides a wide array of electronic payment processing services while continually striving to develop new solutions that meet the needs of its agents and merchants. In addition to offering credit, debit, EBT and gift card processing, along with check conversion and guarantee programs, the company offers its ISOs the ability to borrow money against its residuals, to have Web sites designed and developed, to provide merchants with free terminals, and to benefit from state-of-the-art marketing, technology and business support.

Founded in 1995 by Marcelo Paladini and John Martillo, Cynergy Data strives to be a new kind of acquirer with a unique mission: to constantly explore, understand and develop the products that ISOs and merchants need to be successful, and to back it up with honest, reliable and supportive service. For more information on Cynergy Data contact Nancy Drexler at nancyd@cynergydata.com .