Posts Tagged ‘viral marketing’

Viral Marketing: Cheap and It Works!

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Entering the 21st century, humans now live in a wired world.  Every aspect of a person’s life is somehow connected to fast-evolving technology and the great information highway called the Internet.  One can work from home via telecommute, check investments with a few clicks, purchase goods from online stores, and even apply for fast cash loans with no paper documents to fax.  Indeed, this may be the best time to build wealth and make a profit from connectivity.  Many are taking advantage of fast internet, like broadbands, its easy and available access, like free WiFi zones, and the easy-to-set-up webspaces to do online retailing, trading, and marketing.

There’s a range of products and services sold and bought online by millions of Internet users.  Success stories have been heard as well as disastrous failures in taking on online-based businesses and jobs.  The difference between success and failure in any business—whether offering a product or a service—is the marketing strategy.Viral marketing, or word-of-mouth, is the perfect strategy to use online.  Whenever people receive a good comment or recommendation about a product or service from their family and friends, they are most likely to try it for themselves.When customers like a certain product or service, they would tell an average of 10 friends about it, as market research shows.Customers can also tell their family and friends about products and services they don’t like.  They would also tell other people about what they didn’t like about a product or service, thus, making it harder to sell the product and get repeat customers. 

That’s why, blogs and other social networking websites are becoming powerful marketing and selling venues since the strategy directly or indirectly utilized here is a potent one, that is, viral marketing.  According to marketing gurus, there are five most common types of viral marketing: pass-along, buzz marketing, a user-managed database, incentive viral, and undercover marketing.  Many websites became successful using the pass-along technique.  One of the first success stories is Hotmail.com.  It used an effective tagline attached to every email sent: “Get your free, private email at www.hotmail.com”.  People went to their site and signed up since it was free and the registration took only a few minutes.  Nowadays, even websites that offer payday advances use one-liners to advertise their fast and efficient services.

Starting a viral marketing campaign need not be as expensive as the traditional marketing done by established companies.

3 Tips for Getting Online Content to Go Viral

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

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Getting online content to go viral is just about any Internet Marketer’s dream. You create something and it gets spread all over the Internet by other people. Within the content is some type of plug for your online business. So, everyone who sees the viral content automatically sees the plug for the online business, though it’s not seen as marketing by most people that see it. This is the ideal situation but it’s not easy to get content to go viral. To help with this, here are 3 tips for viral marketing.

Focus on the Audience

The first of the 3 tips for viral marketing is to focus on the audience. You really have to think about who your potential buyers will be. Then you need to design your product (that you want to go viral) specifically for those people. Concentrating on a specific audience will help your chances of actually getting the product to go viral.

Make it Easy to Share

The next tip for viral marketing is to make it easy to share. This sounds like a no-brainer but a lot of times it isn’t made clear that something can be shared and how to share it. So make sure everything you create makes it clear that it can be shared and how exactly to share it.

If it’s a video then you can always put a simple instruction to share the video when the video is end. If it’s an eBook then make it clear the eBook can be shared at the beginning and the end of the eBook. Whatever you might want to go viral, make sure you let people know that they can share it and how they can share it. And make sure you make it very easy for people to share.

Forget about the Money

The last of the 3 tips for viral marketing is to forget about the money. You don’t want to directly ask for money anywhere in the viral content. Guide people to a site where you can earn money from them. Don’t come close to making it seem like what you are doing is advertising or marketing. If you do it, no one will recommend others to try what you created.

There you have the 3 tips for viral marketing. You want to focus on a specific audience, make it easy to share the content, and forget about the money. Following these 3 tips will help you to create content that is likely to go viral and eventually make you a lot of money.

Why Website Marketing Must Be Applied To Every Business

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Even if you have the best looking website, if people don’t know of your website, it doesn’t matter, and you will not be successful online. But that is not the worst, your business could just get killed in the process.

While there are so many methods and schemes used by so many e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that might bge able to setup your website to receive more and more traffic.  One of these online tools is called Viral Marketing.  While the term Viral easily depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary it just might kill you. Everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spywares.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pas on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.  Whether you are looking to learn how to start an online business or even if you are interested in knowing tips on how to do stuff, you should definately look into incorporating viral marketing in your online promotion strategies.

The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them moiré popular. Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had many success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail.

Act now and reap the benefits. Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.

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Do You Need Assistance Buzzing Your Business?

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Before you hire a viral marketing agency, take a moment to look objectively at your website. With a proven technique, marketers may be able to drive millions of visitors to your site. However, you are defeating the purpose if your website does not or  does not have the capability to sell your products or services.

There are literally hundreds of companies to choose from if you have a great product and website. You can even take a course and learn how to implement it yourself. Take time to do your research and look around. Read about the company’s techniques and see if it is something that you could apply. Try to establish how many people are in the network. Research any available testimonials.

There is one company that operates somewhat under the radar. The techniques that they use may be ok, but sites like YouTube would not approve of them. Moreover, their services can not be customized. They recommend the same strategy for all of their customers.

If they are to effectively grow your business, a viral marketing agency should tailor their solutions to suit your products or services. They should offer ways to keep top of mind with your current customers and have a technique or method to help turn your clients’ associates and friends into your new customers.

A highly effective technique is a regular newsletter, sent via email. If you have no clients, you may need to purchase a list of quality email addresses. Some of these lists were created by other successful businesses. They survey their clients to find out if they would like to receive communication from affiliates. If the customer says “yes”, the company adds them to the list.

You may be able to find a viral marketing agency that provides this sort of list, along with their other services. To be highly effective, you should create your list that is targeted to include people in your niche market. For example, if you sell toys, parents are your target market. It would be a waste of time to send dozens of e-mails to senior citizens.

Some of the things that you can do yourself include “social networking”. Join an online club, message board or forum, whose members have interests that “fit” with your niche. If you have yet to identify your niche, you may need a little more help than a viral marketing agency can offer. Everyone has a specific niche or target market. Sometimes, it’s just hard to see it, from the inside, looking out. Someone located outside of your company could assist in finding your niche and growing your business.

The Elements of Success - Getting Noticed Online with Viral Marketing

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Do you really need viral marketing software? Let’s review the five best elements of any effective strategy. After you learn these, you may realize that what you require is something completely different.

Offer something of value for no charge. What you offer may be information, an e-book, a software program or something else entirely. For example, you could offer a limited function or basic software program at no charge. But, in order to get the “premium” version, the customer would have to pay.

Video game providers often use this technique. You may play these games free, but to get certain features or limited time, you must pay for the “complete” version. People that love the game and get addicted to it in the trial, will often pay for the extended version. Viral marketing software cannot tell you what to give away. Only you yourself, or a specialized company that offers personalized service could determine that.

The second element is to create a method that allows your free offer to be transferred effortless from a single person to all of their friends. In most cases, this is executed via email marketing. When a person surfs the net and comes by something useful, funny or interesting, they tend to share it with on average up to 6 friends, according to surveys. The number of people that you can speak to grows exponentially, this takes us to the next element.

You have to make sure that you would be able to handle the new spike in business without your customer service having to suffer. You may need to have an auto-responder set up or other virtual “assistants” in place. You may need to upgrade your website to handle the traffic or increase your stock, if you are selling an item. If you are providing a service, you will need to figure out what your ability is to handle new clients. Can viral marketing software do that for you? No.

The fourth element is to use common reactions to your advantage. So, for example, a reaction to a picture of food that looks tasty is hunger. If you sell food, you want photos in your e-mails and on your websites that would make even a full man hungry. Another example is the “what can it do for me” mentality. People don’t care to know every detail showing that a car has reinforced side beams. They want to know that the side beams protect their family during an accident. Show and tell a potential client what your product will do for them and you will have a new customer.

The last element, is to take full advantage of existing communication networks available. That’s the one thing that viral marketing software might be able to do for you. For various reasons, it cannot provide the tools that you need for a highly successful campaign.

Increasing the Epidemic Nature of Your Marketing Campaign - Going Viral

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

The viral marketing business model was first described by Tim Draper and popularized in 1997 to describe Hotmail’s practice of adding advertising to the outgoing mail of their users. In different terms, viral marketing has been around for as long as people have had items to sell. Basically, it is word-of-mouth advertising.

It relies on the average person’s tendency to “tell their friends”. The reference or terminology is the only thing that has changed. Surveys tell us that the average person has at least six close friends. If they have a great experience with a product they will on average, tell six people.

Those same surveys tell us that when an internet user finds something valuable, informative, funny, interesting or free on the internet, they will share that with 12 of their “online friends”. The internet is the platform for the most successful viral marketing business models out there.

Great marketers often remark that in order to sell anything in large numbers, you should consider giving away a free item. I recently downloaded a free e-book with great dieting tips. It made a lot of sense. It was written by the head of a supplement manufacturing company. He put forward the idea that you share the book with everyone you know. His goal, was to sell as many supplements as possible.

He could have sold the book. It contained as much information as many of the diet books out there, but he realized the importance of giving something to get something. Most people have a tendency to like companies that give them something of use, especially when they do not have to pay for it.

You will see numerous software programs on the web that offer a free version and a “pro” version. This is another example of a viral marketing business model. When one person sees this free software program, they will tell at least 12 of their friends online about it.

Social networking is becoming increasingly popular. People on MySpace and Facebook literally have hundreds of online friends and they “share” things with them on a daily basis. If you can provide something that they want to share, then you may have a viral campaign waiting to happen.

There are other elements of a successful viral marketing business model. The key element is designing the free item campaign for something free that people can share with others.

Talk May Be Cheap - But Watch Out For The Next Big Internet Viral Marketing Campaign

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

Internet viral marketing comes in many shapes and forms. People use videos, simple text links, email and large banner ads. They could be purchasing mailing lists or getting free lists. If you want to be truly successful using this campaign, you should follow certain steps.

First, of course, you need to have a good product or service to sell.  You probably feel that you have that. Initially, you need to isolate what sets your product or service apart from thousands of others.

Once you isolate those features, you need to spin them into benefits for your clients. That is how you will write unique content for your site.  You could attract millions of visitors to your website with an internet viral marketing campaign, but if the copy on your website does not “sell” them, then it really won’t increase your business.

Assuming your website is top notch and what you have to sell is too, the next thing to do is identify your target market or your niche.You might have quite a few. 

For instance, pretend that you have written an e-book that will help men build muscle and dump excess fat.  Your target group is men, obviously. Specifically, it is men who need to lose weight or really want to build muscle. People that might be interested in your book might also be interested in health and fitness. 

There are many social networking groups you can find.  If you can’t find a group that encompasses your target market, you can create one.  Groups, clubs and forums serve as a backdrop for internet viral marketing.

When you send mass e-mails, be sure that what you have to say is relevant, unique and interesting.  Otherwise, you are wasting your time. The email must be grammatically correct. Spelling errors should be corrected.  If English is not your “forte” get someone to read and edit your communications for you. While some people might not take notice, it will stand out to others. 

While this type of campaign does not require a huge monetary investment, it does require an investment of your time. If you have little time to get started, look for companies that can assist you.  Internet viral marketing can be a great way to grow your business. Make sure you are prepared.  It can be a little overwhelming.