Viral Marketing is one kind of marketing which is being increasing heard in e- commerce circles. Though the word was christened after hotmail’s success, there have quite a number of advocates for this type of marketing. A few good books have also been written on this – The anatomy of buzz, Tipping Point to mention a few. Advocates of viral marketing have always said that buzz for any product or service is a drama where there are 3 characters in the play.

Passion, Fun and Vision, they say are the vital ingredients of a successful company, irrespective of its stage in a business life cycle. One of the most important things that these 3 depend on is Communication levels in a company. Tomes have been written on how to effectively communicate, how to see to it that all the employees in a company use tools to communicate among each other, collaborate, voice out their opinions.

° Traffic (hits) is the best way to measure a website. The truth is that without metrics to convert the hits to sales, or hits to market share, you’re wasting time. ° You can sell stuff on the Web if you invest enough in a secure server. Focusing on infrastructure, instead of marketing, gives you a store with no sales. ° The search engines are the key to traffic to your site.

Today I happened to listen to a good business case, the story of 2 barber shops(Lets call the owners of the respective stores as Mr. A and Mr. B ) which opened simulataneoulsy at the same time, in the same locality, Now this was the perfect setting to witness the market dynamics. The owner of one of the shops whom I visit frequently , Mr. A , happened to narrate his store’s evolution from a no-branded place to a decently popular store.