This is Part 2 of an article entitled Viral Marketing. Part 1 can be found here.

The term meme is a shortened version of the Greek “mimeme”, meaning something imitated. Memes pre-date the internet as a marketing strategy. Hell, they pre-date almost everything as a marketing strategy. Chain letters were around long before I was (send a nickel to every name on this letter. Mimeograph it and send it to…). And yes, I used the word mimeograph. I loved the smell of Gestetner fluid in the morning.

I was a teenager when Herbal Essences first hit the market. Their advertising theme was “I told two friends, and they told two friends, and they told two friends”. For a while, that phrase was in common usage, and everyone knew who it belonged to. It was a meme, plain and simple.

So what? Here’s what: the marketing principal is important. The delivery system is not!

Hotmail is credited with creating the first internet based meme. They forced every message that went out through their system to contain an invitation to the recipient to get their own Hotmail account. And they told two friends, and they told two friends and….you get the idea.

Everyone gets all excited about the internet. Internet this, internet that. It’s just a medium, folks! Marketing and advertising have been around forever. The only things that have changed are A) what you can get away with, insofar as content is concerned, and B) which medium you use to deliver the message.

When you are planning to market yourself, or your site, forget the internet. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What are the strengths of my product?

• Who do I see as my market segment?

• What is the message that I want to get across to them?

Once you have answered those questions, and have developed your strategy, then ask yourself “How can this be adapted to the Internet?”

I know I have oversimplified the marketing process, but the point is, think marketing first, and internet second. Get creative, Develop a killer promo, and then figure out how to use the ‘net as your medium.

This post was written by Bob Johnson of The Blog Experiment