When it comes to tapping into a marketing technique that seems to capture the attention of many, viral video marketing capitalizes off of the power of visual suggestion. This particular method takes advantage of already existing social networks to create a successful boom in brand awareness. While viral marketing had its start passing from one to another through word-of-mouth, today, the most impressive approach is provided through video. Many enjoy utilizing this type of marketing because it can reach a large amount of people in a quick amount of time.

One of the most increasingly popular ways to enter viral video marketing is to establish a blog on a website and continuously add images, words, and videos. Even amateur videos are making headlines on websites across the Internet. This interesting and rather entertaining approach towards advertising has brought attention to a wide range of services and products that might not have enjoyed the focus if viral video marketing was not used. It is the creativity of amusing video clips, interactive Flash games, and moving images that add to the appeal.

Viral video marketing is often chosen as a way to promote a site because it is quite easy to accomplish. When compared to direct mailing, the cost is also lower. Viral marketing helps attract a target audience, and is known for establishing a response rate that is high and fast. Also, a larger number of people become engrossed with little cost to the webmaster.

Examples of Viral Marketing

Using videos and interactive visual games to market products, services and websites has been an effective method of advertising for many years. For instance, the Dancing Bush 2001 interactive game led a campaign to bring an enormous wealth of attention to what would become the largest private entertainment site on the Web. Sunsilk hair care products gained increased consideration when a YouTube video titled “Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out” surfaced. Additional examples of viral video marketing includes companies and products, such as Halo, Blair Witch Project, Xbox 360, The Ring movie, Sony, Playstation, and FX Networks.

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Imagine a world without television. Can you do it? Chances are if you were born in the last 40 years or so, you can’t. Everywhere we turn we are bombarded with video images, first on television, but now on everything from desktop computers to cell phones. In fact, videos are so popular online they sometimes are passed around and create a viral marketing effect; that is what makes them interesting to marketers. This article will share a few ways you can jump on the band wagon and use these viral video techniques to bring traffic to your site.

A popular way to get into the world of viral video marketing is to build a blog and frequently add videos. Use amusing video clips, interactive Flash games and moving images since these are most likely to catch your visitor’s attention and be shared with others. The Dancing Bush 2001 interactive game brought massive attention to what eventually became the largest private entertainment site on the internet. Sunsilk hair products gained attention when a YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) video “Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out” went viral. Companies the likes of Halo, Blair Witch Project, Xbox 360, The Ring Movie, Sony, Playstation and FX Networks have all benefited from viral videos.

On effective way to make sure your video draws attention to your web site or brand is to include the site name (and URL) within a video as part of the entertainment. The more integrated the inclusion, the less your video is going to look like an advertising ploy. Of course, you might want to refer to your site or brand more than once, but don’t go overboard. On the other hand some successful viral campaigns, like Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” didn’t mention a web site or brand anywhere; but people knew where the video came from and it attracted massive attention on the web.

Another way to make sure your viral video drives traffic to your site is to include a link close to the video on YouTube and Google Video. This will allow viewers to easily identify the source of the video and find their way to your site.

So once you have all this traffic on your site, what are you going to do with them? Well first off, be sure to encourage visitors to pass your video to friends. Then if at all possible add some means for the video to be emailed or added to a social bookmarking site. If you have built your site on a blog like WordPress, there are plugins to add that functionality to your site for you.

So get out there and start spreading a virus, a video virus that is.

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Before we get into the meat and potatoes of how you can use viral marketing to help get a buzz going about your small business, let’s start with a definition of exactly what “viral marketing” means.

According to the Wikipedia, “Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use preexisting social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, images, or even text messages.”

If you’ve ever had a hotmail, yahoo or G-mail account, you’ve participated in a viral marketing campaign every time you sent an email to someone – because the company inserted a small (and usually discreet advertisement) at the bottom of all of your outgoing emails – inviting the people you were communicating with to receive their own free email account.

So how can you put a viral marketing campaign together for your own business – and more importantly, do you even want to?

Let me answer that second question first, okay? YES! You definitely want to take the time to brainstorm your own viral marketing campaign – even if you don’t someday want to be as big as hotmail, yahoo or Gmail.

Why? Because according to a recent survey done by Forrester Research, people are almost 65% more likely to trust a review posted by a peer – or even a complete stranger – than they are to trust the marketing or sales information put out by the company.

Don’t believe me? Check out Amazon.com and I-tunes. Why is this the case? Because as consumers we tend to think that the average “Joe Blow” has less of a personal agenda when posting his review about the latest “Dixie Chicks” album and so we give it more weight.

And, by the way, this is a normal reaction – it’s one that’s kind of hard-wired into all of us. People have always shared the things they like – or hate – with their friends and family members. Back in the 50′s and 60′s, our grandparents used to talk to their neighbors over the “back fence,” call each other on the phone or tell their friends during lunch. The difference is, these days we use the Internet and cell phones.

What’s interesting though, is that with the popularity of the Internet, our trust – and believe in “social proof” – has become even stronger.

By creating your own viral marketing campaign, you’ll be doing more than getting the word out about your new affiliate product. You’ll be gathering social proof – and that will help your sales to go through the roof.

So how do you set up your own viral marketing campaign? The first thing to do is to get back to the basics.

Here’s the real “secret” to making a lot of money with affiliate products. Have the right product, with the right message to the right people in the right time.

So start with your affiliate product. Make sure that there’s a hungry audience for whatever you’re selling.

Then make sure that you’re sending out the right message – and in the right way. If you’re marketing a product to teens, you’ll want to make sure that it’s something they want – and you’ll have to reach them where they’re hanging out. That might be on MySpace, twitter or even Friendster.

What’s the right message? Maybe it’s a special report. But it could just as easily be a video. Or an audio mp3 file. Match your message to your audience. And finally, make sure that you’re getting your message out at the right time – when your audience is ready to buy it.

Make your viral marketing campaign stand out from the crowd – because that’s how it’s going to get passed around and become viral. By understanding the basics – who your audience is, what they want, how they want to get it and when they want it – all you have to do next is to create something that your audience loves – or hates – or finds interesting enough – to pass around to their friends. And because your product comes with an implied endorsement – social proof – those people will pass it around to other people – and the buzz goes on and on and on and you’ll start hearing the “ka-ching!” of your cash register going off a lot more often.

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