February 8th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
It seems as if viral marketing is one of the most successful strategies that one can employ with Internet marketing.
Viral marketing is an Internet marketing practice that employs referrals, recommendations, and reviews in order to quickly spread word about a product or service. Gmail, Utube, and various viral videos on the Internet have all been transmitted by the viral marketing technique. These online entrepreneurs have enjoyed immense success by employing the viral marketing technique. Think about it as an exponential effort once launched its benefits and effects only get stronger.
The Zagat of Internet Marketing
Viral marketing has been able to successfully allow marketers to increase the value of free services online, because referrals are the major way that most people market with free services. So, these tools of Internet marketing have been able to allow people to significantly pursue various affiliate programs in order to increase the value of these free services. When free services are everywhere to be found, they lose value. Therefore, viral marketing solves this problem by making people refer one another to a various product or service. When people receive referrals, they believe that a service is more valuable. This is simply a part of human nature. Therefore, viral marketing is a great Internet marketing tool that marketers can use to increase their web exposure.
In this way, many new companies have been able to compete with old-timer companies simply by employing the viral marketing strategy. In this way, people recommend one another to another service, such as gmail, and then their friends sign up for gmail. This is a great way to market your product. You can boost your Internet marketing campaign by employing viral marketing.
We Already Know That Referrals Work
If you look at the statistics, you will see that referral marketing is a highly valuable form of Internet marketing. In fact, it is so valuable that we will see referral marketing dominate the Internet marketing world in the future as well.
This is a great way to get the word out about your product, and it’s more organic and useful. People like it more, it’s less in your face, it’s more encouraging and delightful to use.
No one clicks on banner ads anymore; people have gotten smarter than that. It’s almost useless to use banner ads nowadays. It’s a waste of money and time. No one likes it when someone is shoving a product in their face. Always when marketing put yourself in the reader’s shoes the best marketing is that type of effort where you lend a hand or give advice. However, if a friend recommends a product to them, they are more likely to buy it. This is why viral marketing works so well.
Email is another great way to market your product, but unfortunately, The Spam Crisis created a lot of firewalls that prevent marketers from reaching their customers through email. So, if you’re going to employ email as an Internet marketing tool, use opt-in lists or safe lists.
Referral marketing dominates Internet marketing. Use it.
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
This article will give you eight hot ideas for your new viral marketing campaign. Viral marketing, or word of mouth marketing, is the most inexpensive form yet potentially the most powerful form of marketing you can use.
Rebrand a Viral eBook
You can buy ebooks which include rebrand rights that allow you to pass on the book for free with your name as the author. This is a great way to get autoresponder sign ups and a nice way for people to spread your book around the internet.It is a simple process that can be done over and over again.
Set up a Forum
A popular forum will get great search engine rankings and will attract many people in your niche to ask questions, comment and review products. Forums are a powerful viral marketing medium.
Use Facebook
Facebook has grown into a mega social network with over 70 million users. If you can tap into just a tiny percentage of these users then you have hit a
goldmine. Methods of marketing on Facebook include creating free applications, games and creating Groups with information about your website.
Create Templates
Creating free website and blog templates with your website link in the footer is an easy way to virally market your site. Most people will leave the footer intact, instantly giving you backlinks and ecognition.
Create a Video
Posting a video to YouTube can bring in millions of viewers and visitors. You can post some subtle marketing messages, some tutorials or any other
content you believe your readers would be interested in. Make sure you include a link to your site in the video.
Write an eBook
Writing your own ebook (or paying someone to write it) is an instant way to gain credibility. You can give it away for free, thus creating a completely
viral stream as more and more people pass the book on to friends. You can include some one time offers of upsells in the free ebook.
Write some Articles
You can write articles and give them to webmasters within your niche to publish on their sites. As long as you have a link back to your site, you’ll always receive credit for the articles.
Use Social Bookmarking Sites
Sites like Stumbleupon, Digg, Technorati, Twitter, Myspace and others give you the chance to create a brand, give away free ebooks and generally provide people with a way to talk about your site. This is powerful word of mouth marketing.
These eight viral marketing ideas can help your website take off in no time.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
Viral marketing is a very powerful way to promote your online business, it is like having an army of people promoting your website for you, the idea is to create something that will grow and spread by itself with very little promotion from you.
There are many ways to use viral marketing to promote your business, some work better than others but the main points you should be focusing on is how it will spread as far as possible and how it will help you.
Here are some viral marketing ideas you can use to promote your business:
Creat a rebrandable ebook. You can create an ebook with links to your products inside it and allow all recipients to “rebrand” it with their affiliate links, this is an excellent way to promote your products as it 1) Gives people a good reason to spread it for you, they can make money, 2) It recruits an army of affiliates for you and 3) It will promote your products to every person that reads it and involves no extra work on your part.
Create a video. If you are going to use video to promote your website then you must make it so that people will want to tell others about it, you can do this in a number of ways such as making it interesting, making it funny, making it mysterious or simply allowing others to “rebrand” it with their affiliate links. People like to tell their friends about things that they are interested in, so you have to find a way to appeal to them. Funny videos work exceptionally well as people love to laugh and they will want their friends to enjoy it too.
Build a community. A community is somewhere that people enjoy visiting and participating in, you can simply build a forum for people to interact with each other or you can build a large membership site with lots of great information, products, videos and so on. The main point is that you must make it so that people will want to tell others about it, forums are excellent for this as people will want their friends and family to join and talk with them on the forum.
Start a competition. You can tell all your website visitors that the person who sends you the most sales/signups/visitors will get a cash prize or a free product or something that they will want, just give people a great reason to start promoting your website on a large scale. This is an extremely easy idea to implement as all you have to do is tell people to start sending you visitors through a tracking link and whoever sends the most gets the prize, then all you need to do is send it, very little work and can result in a frenzy of promotion from many people.
Create anticipation. Tell people that you have something really, really big in the works and it will be revealed to everyone soon, this will make people interested and will make them want to know what you are planning, this usually results in them telling others that something big is going to happen or asking people if they know anything about it, the main point is that it will get people talking and spreading the word.
Create a games section on your website. Most people enjoy playing games of some sort, they like to relax and play a little game and this is an excellent opportunity to get them to come back to your site again and again and also get them to tell others about your great gaming section. You can get free games all over the internet and they are not hard to install, once you get them up and running they will work for you as more and more people find them.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
Viral marketing is an Internet marketers dream. If you have a product, service or web site that you’d like to draw attention and traffic to, then viral marketing can help you enormously if you plan it properly.
So what is this new form of marketing, and how can it help you and your business?
Viral marketing is simply a free form of advertising, whereby a piece of software, an article, a piece of audio or a video file are passed around the entire Internet for as many people view or listen to as possible.
Millions of people each day participate in viral marketing, passing around things they find on the Internet to their friends, family and co-workers.
You’ve probably seen your friends send you funny emails they like, photos of their holidays, stories they’ve written, things they’ve recorded – well these people are all spreading the news in the same way, but probably don’t know what it’s called.
For the person or company that created the file being passed around, this is an amazing opportunity to reach thousands or even millions of people absolutely free of charge.
The good news is if your campaign is something that is of interest to men, women, children and companies, then it will spread even faster than if it was written (or made) just to target one section of the community.
Here are some tips on viral marketing for you:
1. If you would like to use this type of promotion for your own web site, product or service, create something that is valuable to others and give it away.
There is nothing like a really good free product or service that you can use and also pass amongst your friends as well!
2. There are many things you can create and give away such as articles on a specific topic, some software, even music or videos. No matter what you decide, make sure you create something that is valuable, funny, informative or unique and that it is easy to transfer via an email or a link on a website.
3. Sometimes it can take days or even years for your new strategy and plan of attack to work. Do not expect all of your viral marketing ideas to work brilliantly each and every time, however if you have just one good idea it will usually lead you to much success (and cash in the bank if it is business related).
The truth about viral marketing is this: – it works, and it works VERY well if you carefully craft your campaign and then launch it to it’s targetted market.
The more of this kind of marketing you do, the better you’ll become at being able to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.
People love marketing, people thrive on reading the press, listening to the radio, gossiping among their friends and relatives – let’s just hope it’s you and your promotion they’re talking about next time around.
