Word of mouth marketing, i.e. Viral

Kasparoff · 08-24-2007, 11:22 AM

Interesting, but Google never heavily advertized its search services on the web. Nevertheless, its brand name got spread out quickly via word of mouth. This is remarkable since Google wasn't a pioneer of web search (Altavista was).

Can someone give me some ideas on how Google did it? I think it is a very interesting case.

zibblu · 08-24-2007, 11:55 AM

i think it happened because they offered a superior service. i'm pretty sure i heard about google via word of mouth... a friend told me to use or something like that. i don't really remember. i've been online regularly since '95 ... but i have a very hard time remembering what the web was like in the 90s. i mostly just used ... what today would be very simple things like irc, newsgroups (which google now owns), ... i don't even really remember using search engines ... i guess i did. Hm.. this hasn't been helpful. sorry about that. I am curious to hear from people with a more clear memory of how the google beast grew.

woodcs82 · 08-26-2007, 06:35 PM

That brought a great search tool to the table (that was better than every other SE) and virally they went from nothing to 10,000 hits a day and virally it exploded.

I have a book on google.

If you can deliver something that is high in demand, and you do it RIGHT, people will find you.

Sure you can do SEO,purchase contextuals etc. But if you dont have quality content and a quality product/service with good supporrt, you will NEVER make it!

jmoe · 08-30-2007, 01:47 PM

Word of mouth advertising is one of the best ways to get noticed. However, it can work either way. If people hate your service, they will talk about you and if people love your service, they will talk about you. Either way, it is publicity, but one will kill you business.

Google improved on what other search engines were doing and people talked. It spread like wildfire and they are the entity they are today...

sanuja2 · 08-19-2008, 09:31 PM

I think web developing community is very important and very useful.And I think this is very useful for the web marketers.I think they can get something for there activities.
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sanuja
Socail media marketing

swapw · 08-19-2008, 11:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by woodcs82

That brought a great search tool to the table (that was better than every other SE) and virally they went from nothing to 10,000 hits a day and virally it exploded.

I have a book on google.

If you can deliver something that is high in demand, and you do it RIGHT, people will find you.

Sure you can do SEO,purchase contextuals etc. But if you dont have quality content and a quality product/service with good supporrt, you will NEVER make it!

This is actually not necessarily true. Just because you have a great tool, that doesn't get you recognized. I think it has to do with their management team and having the fund to really advertise to get themselves exposed.

Many times you can have a great site, but if you aren't exposed in that massive scale or the funds to support it many have sold their stuff cheap as a result.

- Swapw

webcosmo · 08-20-2008, 09:09 AM

When Google started business, there were not too big of a competition; plus they came us with that showing relevant ads idea which was sort of new.

If we just wanna have the word-of-mouth thing work for us these days, that simply would not work unless we have high demanding unique idea. Competition is way too high now, too many sites, too many people. So best option is work hard and spend money on marketing plus a good product.

drrtuks · 08-20-2008, 11:48 AM

I agree with webcosmo - when google exploded into the limelight the net was not as populated as it was today. Using the same approach probably would not work as things have evolved at breakneck speed.

Interestingly, as I recall Yahoo had the chance to buy Google in 2001 but passed it up because they thought the price was too high.

webcosmo · 08-20-2008, 11:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by drrtuks

Interestingly, as I recall Yahoo had the chance to buy Google in 2001 but passed it up because they thought the price was too high.

I didn't know Google was on sale.

Few months back I was watching a tv show on Google, how they established the business. On that show they were saying Google stole the idea of showing relevant ads on SERP pages. I am not sure how true it is, but possible.

LogoNav · 08-20-2008, 04:45 PM

Hotmail is a good model to follow as well with respect to the viral aspect. They were one of the first to give away free e-mail back when AOL was charging. Google jsut did it better and asked for nothing

swapw · 08-20-2008, 08:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by webcosmo

I didn't know Google was on sale.

Few months back I was watching a tv show on Google, how they established the business. On that show they were saying Google stole the idea of showing relevant ads on SERP pages. I am not sure how true it is, but possible.

Most sites are copies of one another, obviously there are upgrades to make one better then the other. To say that a site has complete new concept where it was not inspired by another site or something else is crazy.

- Swapw

webcosmo · 08-20-2008, 09:13 PM

Talking about Hotmail, you know who recently using the same concept? Mobile phone companies. If anybody reply an email using a mobile phone, at the end of the email it says "sent from xxx". I see that with Blackberry phones mostly, may be others do that as well.