January 25th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Video marketing stands virtually alone as being one of the more popular of recent marketing trends. Yet, to many, there is little science behind the act. Some webmasters create a video ad or viral video feed, submit it to a few video submission sites, and then hope it proves popular enough to go viral. However, as with any form of guerrilla marketing, the greatest results will undoubtedly be offered to those willing to put in some serious time and energy in ensuring that the video gets good exposure and from the right channels.
Seeding
When we look at viral marketing, we need to concentrate more on creating an effective seeding campaign. Seeding is the first step a viral marketer takes. Planting the seed well means that others will propagate that seed for you. They will pass on your message by word of mouth and through links, tags, and bookmarks. When this happens your marketing has officially gone viral.
Planting The Right Seed In The Right Soil
Planting a positive seed within the right community and geared heavily towards your target market can help you to achieve your viral marketing goals. Again, though, this typically needs to be more in-depth than picking a video sharing site and just submitting the video ad. Using multiple networks, including the like of YouTube as well as smaller networks, is vital to help ensure that you get the right blend of propagators and viewers. It also enables you to track results and determine the best networks for your marketing needs.
Organic Seeding
Organic seeding is the natural process of others promoting your viral video for you. While it is free to publish a video to the main feed sites, it will take creativity, knowledge, and energy to get the best results. Paid seeding possibilities also exist and complementing or kick starting an organic campaign with some paid seeding is not an inherently bad thing.
Integration With Paid Placement
Initially, your video ad is unlikely to attract the kind of audience that it needs. There’s simply too much competition and way too many variables that dictate the effectiveness of a video marketing campaign. As such, it is often the most prudent approach to use paid seeding in order to give your video that initial push.
Considering The Alternatives
Paid placement videos get the most prominent positions on most networks and while the more popular, better established of the networks demand large amounts for a good placement, this isn’t necessarily the case with the smaller networks. Find several that fit your needs and enquire about prices to determine the best ones.
The Effectiveness Of Video Advertising
Surfers have evolved and, on the whole, are looking for less static and more dynamic content. As such, video has become a major draw for a lot of people that regularly use the Internet. While we have become blind to static and animated banner advertisements, it is widely contested that this isn’t yet the case with video banners. They are hard to ignore and the better ones can generate exceptional results for any website.
October 19th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Video marketing is a quickly growing market and is a great way to make money online.This method has become a well known and viable way to get people attracted to you and visit your website.It also is the best way to get people to pay attention to you.This is the highest converting marketing tool available on the internet and it’s time you take your business to new heights.
It is the next big thing in the world of Internet marketing. This type of advertising entails the use of video for conveying your message to the audience. Video made for a TV can never replace video that is required for the Internet.Video is dynamic & can capture interest like no other medium.
Video is dynamic & can capture interest like no other medium. Video marketing is simply promoting or selling a product, service, or any other cause using a video. This is very effective because of its vast potential reach at a minimal time and cost.
Youtube
Youtube has fast become one of the best free methods of marketing your web site by using videos. YouTube for one will pave the way for newer and more viral video superstars.YouTube and Google Video are among the two most popular video depositories with YouTube ranked the third most popular website in the world by Alexa.
YouTube just happens to have all that inclusive while being free. And as Youtube’s popularity continues to increase daily, using youtube as a method of free traffic generation for your site, it’s a sure recipe for success.
For the online entrepreneur (the web site owner seeking to make money online) the purpose of your youtube video is to bring traffic to your site. The Youtube video site is a phenomenon which has taken the internet by storm and unless you’ve been off in a far away place, you will not doubt have seen one of the many videos which have been popularized by the site such as Tyson the rollerskating dog.Did you know that YouTube gets twice as much traffic as Google. That means that youtube alone, gets one million hits a day.
There are tons of them out there such as dailymotion, and they get just as much hits a day as youtube does. The more videos that you create, the more successful you will become on youtube.
Traffic
Statistically, video marketers with a high amount of videos get more web traffic than video marketers who have a low amount of videos. Its an incredible opportunity to use video marketing to increase your traffic, leads and sales.
The explosion in video marketing is based on the way technology has delivered the means to create and distribute video on next to nothing and this “lo-fi” approach to video production has gained traction as an easy way for new and smaller niche players to enter the medium.
Viral video marketing: Viral video marketing is the gift that keeps on giving. Internet video marketing is going to be the next big thing in SEO. The “on-demand” characteristic of video marketing is another great benefit. Why video marketing is the most powerful and effective method to earn profits The truly simple steps to get setup in a flash and add videos to your web pages Why you’re suffering, even if you don’t know it, if you’re only using other advertising and promotion techniques. The big reasons why video marketing is so effective and how you can capitalize on them and so much more.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:14 am
Viral marketing. It sounds like something you want to avoid like the plague. But it’s really something you and your business need to catch now.
If you’re not yet familiar with the term “viral marketing” let me give you a basic definition. Viral marketing is simply a strategy that encourages individuals to “willingly” pass on a marketing message to others. It takes advantage of rapid multiplication to explode your marketing message to thousands or millions of people.
A viral marketing virus acts similar to a biological virus. But, the big difference between a viral marketing virus and a cold or flu virus is that people willingly pass the marketing message on. Not too many people really want to share their cold with others, but they’ll be more than happy to spread your “digital virus”. And when they spread it, they can spread it much farther than a biological virus. Your message can spread around the world in a matter of hours.
To summarize the benefits of viral marketing:
1. It’s cheap. You can create your own viral marketing message in the form of an e-book or video and then it costs you little or nothing to get the message out.
2. You can reach a huge audience. There is no other way your message can spread so quickly to a large audience for so little cost than with viral marketing. And the best part is that people are passing your message to their friends and associates so you get an implied endorsement from them.
3. You can build your reputation. If you create good, quality information that’s being passed around, you can quickly be recognized as an expert. And when you have the reputation as being an expert in your field, you sell more products. You “build your brand” faster with viral marketing.
4. You can combine it with other marketing methods. This is a method you absolutely should be using with your email marketing and affiliate programs. Email is still the most effective way of spreading your virus. You can also use it with off-line advertising such as direct mail, classified advertising, or display advertising to drive people online.
5. You can sell products other than your original target product. You may create a viral message to sell one product but find out that your potential customer is interested in another of your products instead.
6. Viral marketing tools are easy to develop. There are easy ways to create e-books even if can’t write (or think you can’t). There are also easy tools to create viral marketing videos. It doesn’t take a big budget or a lot of talent to create a viral marketing virus.
These are the major benefits of viral marketing. When you use it you may find others that are unique to your business.
The concept of viral marketing really isn’t new. Off the Internet it is essentially any form of “word-of-mouth” advertising. It also works similar to “network marketing.” However, just like all things Internet, it can’t have a normal name. Before the Internet who would have imagined naming a company something like Yahoo! or Google? Or how about using words like “spam” other than for an unidentifiable meat product. Regardless of how it sounds, the term viral marketing is the perfect descriptor of this Internet marketing method.
Just exactly how viral marketing on the Internet started could be somewhat of a debate. Where it became the most effective moneymaker is probably not so debatable.
Likely the first effective use of viral marketing was with the free e-mail service Hotmail, which is now owned by Microsoft. Hotmail was started by two guys named Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, who were upset that they couldn’t use their employer’s email system to send email to their friends.
After they started the e-mail service, word of the e-mail service spread like wildfire and they had over 22 million subscribers within 24 months. Microsoft later bought Hotmail for around $400 million dollars.
Why did the news of Hotmail spread so fast? Simply because they gave away free e-mail addresses and services and at the bottom of every email sent was a tag that said: “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com”.
Everyone who opened an email saw it. And when they passed on the email to their friends or associates they saw it too. So a single email could multiply and spread just like a virus. It turned into a “Viral Marketing Pyramid.”
When your viral message gets passed to someone, they become a “Host” for your virus. Then they become a “sneezer.” When they “sneeze” (send out your message), they spread the virus. For viral marketing sneezing is a good thing. The more people you have spreading your virus the better.
Of course we can’t all hope for the same success as experienced by Hotmail. But you can still be wildly successful even if your marketing message spreads to only a tiny fraction of the number of people Hotmail’s did. To be successful, however, your viral marketing campaign should contain the following elements.
Viral Marketing Example
Let’s looks at an example of how you can put viral marketing into practice. Say you have a sales letter-type web site that is selling a single product (sales letter web sites are the best way to sell a single product).
The web site at www.viral-video.com is a perfect example of using this technique.
1. First you bring targeted traffic to your new web site through pay-per-clicks or other search engine techniques. Or you can send an email to your distribution list if you have one. You can either advertise your site directly in your email or use a graphic display ad at the end of the email similar to the way Yahoo! does it with their free email.
2. Place a link to a webpage on your site that has a video people can view. The video needs to be something related to your product. Perhaps it’s a demo or just something really entertaining that relates to your product.
3. You’ll place a link at the end of the video pointing to a Tell-A-Friend page on your web site. You’ll create the video so at the end of the video a webpage with a Tell-A-Friend script pops up that easily enables people to send the link to the video they just watched to five or more of their friends. After they send the email to their friends then you’ll have the Tell-A-Friend script pop up your home page again.
4. Now when the friends get the email they are taken directly to your video (not your home page). Once they watch the video they can send the web address of the video to their friends. Of course the Tell-A-Friend script sends them to your home page.
5. In case someone doesn’t want to send an email to their friends, you’ll place a button on your Tell-A-Friend script that says “Click to Close This Page.” This button takes them directly to your web site. You could also create a pop-up on exit page that takes them to your web site if they don’t click the “Click to Close This Page” button or send an email to a friend. So regardless they would be taken to your home page.
6. You’ll also set up an affiliate program so others can sell your product for you. You need to set up an affiliate web page that lets your affiliates download your video to place on their web sites. Of course, at the end of the video it redirects the viewer to your web site. You’ll need a way that your affiliate can change the “redirect” web address in the video so it contains their affiliate identification number. Then when the video sends traffic to your home page they get credit for any sales that result. You’ll want to make sure they can’t change the entire address since you want the traffic sent to your site. A product like ViralVideo at www.viral-video.com will enable you to set this up.
Once you implement viral marketing in your business, you’ll wonder how you got along without it. It’s a marketing method that most marketers really don’t understand or use very well yet. You now have a better understanding than most of your competition so you have an edge. With that edge you can propel your business to greater heights than you ever imagined possible.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
Viral marketing used to rely heavily on email but it has grown substantially in recent years to take in many other forms and strategies. A successful viral marketing campaign can be created in many different ways including:
Email
The most traditional and simple method of viral marketing was email and it is still a
viable method today. There can be restrictions on email and spam filters can sometimes get the better of you, but the results can still be outstanding often resulting in viral emails being sent all over the world with little being done by you.
Newsletters
Newsletters build upon email viral marketing but they allow you to provide even more information to prospective customers. Newsletter are generally sent to an audience interested in a particular topic, the information you send will be based on that topic therefore capturing their attention A fantastic newsletter can also assist with website traffic.
Blogging
Possibly the most powerful of all methods in recent years, blogging allows website visitors to interact with your site and you can also interact with other bloggers so cross promoting is easy and effective. Blogging also allows easy customer feedback through comments, leading to increased word of mouth sales.
Chat Rooms
Having a chat room on your site means customers can chat to each other and hopefully recommend your products. You can also conduct tele-seminars which can attract prospective buyers. Cat rooms are a great way to build up a relationship with our customers and something they can tell their friends about and spred the word about your site.
Tell-a-friend Scripts
As long as you include a privacy policy, tell-a-friend scripts are a powerful way for people to quickly and easily pass on information to their friends as a recommendation for your products or services.
Video clips
Posting videos on sites like YouTube or even on your own site can get the viral machine pumping. People love video as they can digest information easier. If you create a good video, it is likely that people will pass this on to others interested in the same topic.
Flash games
Flash games get passed around through email and if you can include a small unobtrusive message in the game about your site, you can literally get thousands of visitors. You can also submit flash games to big game sites or social sites like Facebook where they can be accessed by millions of people.
Viral marketing has so many possible methods and implementations that it is impossible to ever run out of ideas. By combining several methods together, your word of mouth marketing campaign is sure to bring results.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
More and more advertisers are adopting video as broadband continues to rise and ad-serving technologies become more sophisticated.
Online video advertising is really taking off. Users’ attention can be captured and ads stand out from the crowd in an increasingly ad-cluttered online environment.
It is true that video formats cost five to ten times more to serve than standard banners and they involve a lot more production and implementation work but they may well be worth all of that if they achieve greater response rates.
Where to use online video if wishing to maximize its effect, is what advertisers must carefully consider.
Video to be used on the Internet should be information and communication focused while video to be used on television should be focused on entertainment.
Like everything else, there are good ways and bad ways to use video advertising.
Right now most marketers are incorporating their audio-visual content into existing embedded ad formats like banners or over-content formats like pop-ups.
Though this could reach a potentially large audience, viewers are likely to be less captivated and more annoyed by these disruptive and distracting placements.
Cached or streaming video on a specific destination site offers the best chance of interesting consumers in brand messages, but it is not likely to reach a large audience unless it generates a viral outcome.
Whatever you come up with, don’t forget to make it easy to open and distribute.
File size is important, as is the media format. If your viral video has been created for a particular type of software that not many people use, how will you get people to spread it like wildfire?
Also, if you’ve made a video the impact will be better if you send the clip as an attachment rather than stream it. It’s cheaper and, if you’re not hosting it, it’s more viral, too.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
More and more advertisers are adopting video as broadband continues to rise and ad-serving technologies become more sophisticated. Online video advertising is really taking off. Users’ attention can be captured and ads stand out from the crowd in an increasingly ad-cluttered online environment. It is true that video formats cost five to ten times more to serve than standard banners and they involve a lot more production and implementation work but they may well be worth all of that if they achieve greater response rates.
Where to use online video if wishing to maximize its effect, is what advertisers must carefully consider. Video to be used on the Internet should be information and communication focused while video to be used on television should be focused on entertainment.
Like everything else, there are good ways and bad ways to use video advertising. Right now most marketers are incorporating their audio-visual content into existing embedded ad formats like banners or over-content formats like pop-ups. Though this could reach a potentially large audience, viewers are likely to be less captivated and more annoyed by these disruptive and distracting placements.
Cached or streaming video on a specific destination site offers the best chance of interesting consumers in brand messages, but it is not likely to reach a large audience unless it generates a viral outcome.
Whatever you come up with, don’t forget to make it easy to open and distribute. File size is important, as is the media format. If your viral video has been created for a particular type of software that not many people use, how will you get people to spread it like wildfire?
Also, if you’ve made a video the impact will be better if you send the clip as an attachment rather than stream it. It’s cheaper and, if you’re not hosting it, it’s more viral, too.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
Viral marketing is an Internet marketing trend that is being used by most webmasters online today. It is inexpensive and some Internet Marketers swear to their success because of it.
The advantages of using it are many. It requires little effort on the marketer’s part to sustain it once it has been started. The reason is simple, the visitors who like the media can pass it on to others who, in turn can pass it on to still others. Hence the term “viral”.
But, why would you want to use it? What would it cost to start it?
The truth is, viral marketing covers a huge area and has many methods. The starting cost can range from free to a reasonably low cost. One of the most common forms of viral marketing can be in the form of article marketing which can be free. A submissions service can also be used to get a wider audience. They are reasonably priced.
The added benefits of this form of advertising can also be in the form of page ranking in the search engines as the articles often turn up in searches before the site they represent do.
What are the advantages of using viral marketing?
Probably the first and biggest advantage is the fact that it can be sustained with little effort on the part of the marketer. What this means is that after its initial exposure, the viral portion of this will grow pretty much on its own. How? Through the visitors who have begun the process of sending it to their friends and family.
It is this viral quality that makes this kind of advertising the success it is. Of course the marketer will continue to promote his or her media product.
Another highly desirable quality is its flexibility. What does this mean? It simply means that viral marketing comes in many forms of media. It can be an e-book, free reports, video, flash games, etc. The list could go on. One thing that is a must with each of these forms is that the media must be of high quality and contain useful information.
Another advantage is cost. If you are good at producing video or writing an e-book or report, the cost can be very minimal. If not, the costs can rise. But this need not be of too much concern. If you are working with a budget, you may wish to start with something lower in cost, like a free report to give away. Paying to have a report such as this written is more cost effective than one might believe.
One form of viral marketing that deserves special mention is affiliate marketing. In this form of marketing, the owner pays his affiliates a commission for each sale made through their affiliate sales page. Obviously, the more generous the commissions, the greater the motivation will be on the part of the affiliates.
Taking a look at each of these advantages, it is easy to determine the benefits of viral marketing. The only real choice is to decide what form your viral marketing will be in. Once, you decide that, it will be only a matter of developing it and promoting it.
