January 30th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
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.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
Wikipedia defines viral marketing as a technique that uses pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in awareness through self-replicating viral processes. Basically it is marketing that appears to work much the same as a cold virus, spreading from person to person explosively.
The best part is that you can take advantage of this marketing technique without expensive software or technological expertise. Here are 6 techniques that will start a viral storm of traffic to your site, if you use them properly.
1.Give away information to your customers and include back links to your site. You can post these books or special reports on ebook directories, give away sites and use JV partners to give to their list. Encourage people to pass the information along to their friends who have an interest in the topic. If your information is accurate and helpful you’ll find many people be passing the book to friends.
2.You can use a Tell-A-Friend script on your site. Essentially you give your customer and visitors a way to easily share your website. Depending upon your market you may find that offering an incentive to tell a friend or two will encourage more traffic. Incentives can be free information that is delivered directly after the tell-a-friend script has been executed. Assure your readers that you do not collect email addresses when they enter their friend’s address. They are not opting their friend into your ezine.
3.Do you get funny video clips from friends and family? This is viral marketing. Although the clip may not be selling anything the concept of passing from person to person is viral. Now, putting your imagination to work, can you create an idea around your niche that would be interesting? Something that would be passed from person to person? All you need is a digital camera. Videos without the professional ‘feel’ lend themselves to authenticity. You only have to look at the popularity of reality TV to realize how much people like ‘peeking’ in on the lives of others.
4.Are you trying to get your information out to your public quickly? You can generate an Internet Press Release to draw in your readers. This is a method that can have far reaching effects when done with creativity and panache. Bring your readers to your page and send them out with a video or ebook to share with their friends.
5.Undercover marketing, done well, can be fun and intriguing. You create a mystery surrounding your niche. There are questions, mystique, a potential for danger and people keep coming back for more. It becomes fun and interesting. Your readers keep coming back for more and sending their friends to figure out the mystery. Yanik Silver has been doing this for sometime with his Underground Marketing Seminar. He doesn’t release the name of several of the speakers, the attendees are undercover agents and the information is highly confidential. The whole event is cloaked in mystery.
6.Social network sites are here to stay. They often evolve around a particular topic. MySpace, the most popular network site, is a general forum where people discuss anything from monkeys to marriage. The information on these sites is searchable. You can easily develop a list of people interested in your topic or niche and release funny exciting information that they are encouraged to pass along to their friends.
7.Buzz marketing is creating a ‘buzz’ about a particular subject, video, website or writing. In 2001 Morgan Westerman discovered a poem in the public domain that he published to the Internet. It was a feel good poem that people started passing from friend to friend. Then the Twin Towers collapsed and people in the U.S. started searching for answers and encouragement. An Interview With God blossomed into a mega-hit. As he realized how much more traffic his site was receiving Mr. Westerman redesigned, added music and graphics. Later he sold screen savers, cards and inspirational books. This was a matter of pure chance. Mr. Westerman did not anticipate 9/11 but he was able to rethink his use of that public domain poem and has created an industry unique unto itself.
These were seven of the low technology techniques you can use to start a viral storm of traffic. They are easy to learn and to develop. Use them to your advantage!
April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
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.
