July 20th, 2009 at 9:52 am
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.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am
Usually the best viral marketing ideas are also the simplest.
Hotmail got where it got to today by offering a free email account and including a brief message at the end of each email that got sent saying “Get your free email account here”. Very simple viral marketing. Very effective as well.
Anything that people actually want to give away works well for viral marketing. Of course, it has to offer value to the person who gets the free item. Generally speaking, nNo-one wants to pass on something that shouts out “I’m an advert”.
Of course, there are exceptions even to this rule. They’re usually exploited by large companies with impressive budgets – Burger King’s subservient chicken advert springs to mind here.
So how do you, the little guy, come up with a great viral marketing idea?
If you’re a video wiz then you could submit a video to YouTube. At least one guy has managed to get his record released this way. Plenty of people have used viral video marketing to promote their sites. Ideally, you need something memorable or funny.
If you’re not up to creating a video, don’t despair. That’s not the only great viral marketing idea you can use.
Audio tracks can also go viral. One site I know of created a set of 6 hypnosis CDs. These were sold with master resell rights. The start and end of their CD mentions their website. You can trip over these CDs all the time on eBay and other sites. Which is very nice viral work on their part – getting other people to distribute their name and website.
Articles like this one can go viral. If you produce a top quality article, other sites will use it and the links at the end of your article will point to your site or product.
Ebooks and reports are also a great way to use viral marketing. They fall into the “added value” area and are quick and easy to produce.
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.
