April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
With mass communication being achievable with just the click of a mouse, the internet has become the world’s biggest marketplace. That is why most advertisers believe that viral marketing is the most effective way to get customers to buy your product. As Tom Kinnear, executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan tells Forbes.com, “It [viral marketing] can be referred to as word-of-mouth on steroids.”
The movie “Snakes on a Plane’ is a good example. While the film didn’t do so hot at the box office it got a huge amount of buzz when people started writing songs and creating videos based on the title. When the media picked up on it, word of mouth for Snakes on a Plane took off like wildfire. This required no effort from the filmmakers after their initial advertising push. That’s the essence of good viral marketing.
You may not have a movie studio or Samuel L. Jackson to help you out but there are ways you can adapt viral marketing to your internet business.
The Fun Page
If you are a serious marketer, and you don’t have enough funding for a major advertisement, this is one of the best techniques that you can use. Make a page on your site with funny or interesting videos or images, or even create a mini-game that is focused on your product. Be sure to include a ‘tell a friend’ link to ensure that your ‘fun page’ gets circulated. Creativity is the key. If your ‘fun’ page is cool enough, you can be sure that you’ll get more hits for to your website.
Kind of Weird
Remember the Subservient Chicken? Burger King created a webpage that contained a ‘video camera’ with a command line below it. On the site, you just typed what you wanted the subservient chicken to do, and voila, the chicken did it. People were born curious. If you have some idea in your head, do it. The Subservient Chicken became so popular that people forwarded the links to their friends, and all Burger King had to do was to maintain the website. The downside is this strategy might create ‘bad’ publicity but as the old saying goes, bad publicity is still publicity.
Email Forward
Create a message with funny pictures or a video, and then send it to your friends or list of subscribers. If it is funny enough, you can be sure that this little message will reach a lot of people. Remember that the images or video should contain at least a brand logo or a website address. The best thing that you can do here is to include your ‘name’ on the video itself, like for example a guy wearing a t-shirt with your brand name on it, or a bunch of funny pictures dealing with your products. Most forwarded e-mails are viral marketing strategies. In this technique, you can always be sure that your e-mails are going to be opened, because they came from the friends of the e-mail owner.
Free is Good
Most people search the internet with ‘free’ as one of their keywords. Free stuff can boost your website’s popularity. There are a lot of items out there that you can give out for free. Creating a downloadable Flash game is one of the most used today. But of course, you should make it interesting, and make the people think that without this free stuff on their desktop, they’re missing out a lot.
Viral marketing may not answer all of your promotional needs, but it will surely help you in creating a buzz. It’s cheap, easy and very effective. What viral marketing does so brilliantly is fuel our irresistible urge to tell somebody about a good experience. It’s hard to find any advertising better than that.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
With mass communication being achievable with just the click of a mouse, the internet has become the worldwide marketplace. That is why most advertisers believe that viral marketing is the most effective way to get customers to buy your product. As Tom Kinnear, executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan tells Forbes.com, “It [viral marketing] can be referred to as word-of-mouth on steroids.”
The movie Snakes on a Plane is a good example. While the film did not do so hot at the box office it got a huge amount of buzz when people started writing songs and creating videos based on the title. When the media picked up on it, word of mouth for Snakes on a Plane took off like wildfire. This required no effort from the filmmakers after their initial advertising push. That is the essence of good viral marketing.
You may not have a movie studio or Samuel L. Jackson to help you out but there are ways you can adapt viral marketing to your internet business.
The Fun Page
If you are a serious marketer, and you do not have enough funding for a major advertisement, this is one of the best techniques that you can use. Make a page on your site with funny or interesting videos or images, or even create a mini game that is focused on your product. Be sure to include a tell a friend link to ensure that your fun page gets circulated. Creativity is the key. If your fun page is cool enough, you can be sure that you will get more hits for to your website.
Kind of Weird
Remember the Subservient Chicken? Burger King created a webpage that contained a video camera with a command line below it. On the site, you just typed what you wanted the subservient chicken to do, and voila, the chicken did it. People were born curious. If you have some idea in your head, do it. The Subservient Chicken became so popular that people forwarded the links to their friends, and all Burger King had to do was to maintain the website. The downside is this strategy might create bad publicity but as the old saying goes, bad publicity is still publicity.
Email Forward
Create a message with funny pictures or a video, and then send it to your friends or list of subscribers. If it is funny enough, you can be sure that this little message will reach a lot of people. Remember that the images or video should contain at least a brand logo or a website address. The best thing that you can do here is to include your name on the video itself, like for example a guy wearing a t-shirt with your brand name on it, or a bunch of funny pictures dealing with your products. Most forwarded e-mails are viral marketing strategies. In this technique, you can always be sure that your e-mails are going to be opened, because they came from the friends of the e-mail owner.
Free is Good
Most people search the internet with free as one of their keywords. Free stuff can boost the popularity of your website. There are a lot of items out there that you can give out for free. Creating a downloadable Flash game is one of the most used today. But of course, you should make it interesting, and make the people think that without this free stuff on their desktop, they’re missing out a lot.
Viral marketing may not answer all of your promotional needs, but it will surely help you in creating a buzz. It is cheap, easy and very effective. What viral marketing does so brilliantly is fuel our irresistible urge to tell somebody about a good experience. It is hard to find any advertising better than that.
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.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Weblebrity “Nalts” of YouTube.com fame has put out a free ebook titled:
How To Become Popular With Out Any Talent
I have been subscribed to the Nalts channel for sometime (I have two YouTube.com accounts), not only have I gotten some great laughs out of the videos but I have also learned a thing or two from the marketer turned webrity. If your looking for information on how to make an impact with videos this is a great read.
One of the basic principles that many people do not understand when they start out on YouTube.com is that it is all about comminity. I learned this with my first Channel on YouTube.com (BrianOnVideo) when I started passing messages and videos back and forth with other members of the video comminity.
Keven goes over this in great detail, as well as understand basic concepts in what is popular and the “big finish”. You can pick up this easy read over at Kevins website will video for food (another great resource).
October 20th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Chef Pete, or is that “video whore marketer Pete” checking in. It has now been about three weeks since I start to regularly upload cooking videos to various online video sharing sites like youtube.com, revver.com and blip.tv
These first few months will be devoted to developing a following on Youtube.com and building up a large library of cooking videos. Already I can see progress is being made, I have been contacted by two “newer” online video sites who would like me to join their programs.
However at this point I am focusing on YouTube.com (has the largest base of people) and other sites that are linked up with TubeMogul.com. Using Tube Mogul is very helpful, upload one video and it is syndicated to the top tier video sites online. I just don’t have enough time to spend uploading to any other sites.
I have also been featured about three times on Crackle. Never heard of crackle.com? Your not alone, even though my videos have been featured (added to top level cooking / food category) the videos are only getting about 200 views or so.
I Am Wearing A Lot Of Hats Right Now:
• Chef
• Film crew (with my wife helping now and then)
• Editing guy
• Webmaster
• Ect …
Most of my cooking videos are around 10 minutes (a no no according to many viral video experts) and are large coming in at about 99 megs. So spending time at another site is really not doable right now.
My focus right now I to understand YouTube.com, and to gain subscribers. Having subscribers who rate and comment on your videos can help those your videos do better on youtube.com searches.
I also am having a ton of fun, watching some very creative videos and chatting with many fun people. I am trying to learn the ropes, I have had plenty subscribe in a short time and several unsubscribe as well.
One of the things I am struggling with is my “youtube channel identity” seams some people think I should only be adding videos about cooking to the channel. Well the channel names is:
CookingRecipes @ YouTube.com/CookingRecipes
However I am a complex guy and I also enjoy the “community aspect of youtube.com”. I have sent some “video responses” made some silly videos I hope would make people laugh (some have told me they did) and have also probably made a fool out of myself.
Hey remember this is an experiment and I am trying to learn about this stuff and what works and what does not.
I had one woman send me nasty mail followed by nasty messages because she did not like my “subscribe” messages. It got to the point where as I had to blocker, shame but I don’t need any negativity …
I also set up “playlists” on my youtube.com channel. This way if people only want my cooking recipes they can simply subscribe to that playlist. However I am sure I will worried I will get additional comments down the road.
All in all however lots of people are really enjoying my videos are learning a lot (about cooking) and things are going well. Important to understand were talking about one person and 160 are subscribed.
So the community aspect of youtube.com is a blast and if you have time you might want to seek out other people who enjoy your hobbies or interests, send them a friend invite or subscribe to their channel if they have some videos up (I have subscribed to about 200 cooking channels on youtube.com). Then over time you can truly “participate” on youtube.com by uploading and watching.
To Your Success,
