Reach Your Sales Prospects for Pennies on the Dollar through Power of Multiplication
By A Distinguished Panel of Viral Marketing Experts
With the Internet and advancements in home office technology (iPads, iPhones, smart phones), viral marketing is all the buzz and considered one of the most effective forms of advertising for businesses. We’ve all heard the term, “viral marketing,” but what does it mean, what must be in place beforehand, what are the methods to going viral, and how can it help increase awareness of your products and services and ultimately increase sales in your home business?
Drawing on their years of experience, a panel of viral marketing experts provides the answers to these questions. Their expertise can help new and experienced home business owners launch successful viral marketing campaigns. Learn the “what,” and “how” of viral marketing, and implement the suggested strategies to “go viral” in 2013.
WHAT IS VIRAL MARKETING?
By Michael Cohn
In our world, where the most available medium is the Internet, viral marketing is a very effective form of advertising. Before the Internet, this type of advertising would have been spread by your customers through word of mouth.
Viral Marketing Defined
What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages people to communicate a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, if not millions of people.
Outside of the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as “word of mouth,” “creating a buzz,” “leveraging the media,” and “network marketing.” But on the Internet, for better or worse, it’s called “viral marketing.”
Viral Marketing’s Purpose
The purpose of viral marketing is to entice customers with a product or service that you can give them for a trial period or for free altogether. The attraction to the customer is that there are no strings attached. However, before the customers can use the free product or service, they have to sign up through your website. Now, you have a win-win situation. The customer is now able to use the product or service, and you have generated a new lead for your business. Your list of leads sends messages to people who have experienced your product or service and will be able to tell their friends about it. Subsequently, those friends will tell other friends about your products and services. If your customers have had a positive experience with your products and services, most likely, they will become loyal customers who keep returning to you in addition to bringing in more prospects.
Key Points of Viral Marketing Strategy
A viral marketing strategy doesn’t necessarily have to contain all of these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be.
- Give away valuable products or services. Attract the attention of the existing and potential customers by offering free email services, free information, or free software programs that perform sophisticated functions but not as much as you get in the “pro” version. Free attracts visitors. Visitors then see other desirable things that you are selling, and you start to earn money. Visitors bring valuable email addresses, advertising revenue, and ecommerce sales opportunities.
- Make people feel something. A most important strategy is to create a very strong emotion. You need to have an opinion, to express an idea with commitment and dedication. You want people’s blood to be pumping with excitement. Viral marketing is 100% about emotions.
- Do something unexpected. If you want people to notice your campaign, you have to do something that stands out — something unexpected.
- Provide for easy transfer to others. Viruses only spread when they’re easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: email, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works very well on the Internet, because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital formats make copying simple. Use compelling short messages and place them at the bottom of every email message.
- Do not try to make bad advertisements. Viral marketing is all about a good story. Forget about you, your product, or your company. Focus entirely on creating a good and interesting story. Of course, you can add your product or service into the mix, but it must not be the most important thing.
- Have a good understanding of your customers.
If you know your customer base, your viral marketing will be more successful. You should track and analyze what induces them to want to pass along your message. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, and you have a winner. If you can identify who your customer is, this viral marketing can be quite inexpensive and highly effective. Questionnaires and online surveys and can also be very helpful in getting inside of your customer’s head. Giving meticulous consideration to your customer’s needs and the promise to meet those needs are what will ultimately make your business a success.
Copyright by CompuKol Communications. The original article can be found at: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/viral-marketing-what-it-is-and-how-to-apply-it-to-your-business-1677275.html . Reprinted with permission. Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications (http://www.compukol.com), a consulting company specializing in developing communication strategies for small businesses that require expertise in promoting a unique business voice and vision on the Internet.
BEFORE “GOING VIRAL”
By Steve Scarlett
Businesses are becoming aware of the impact of the Internet and the potential for rapid growth with viral marketing. Certain things must be in place before “going viral.”
Core Principals
A solid viral marketing campaign will make use of some core principles. You want to hammer the marketing from all corners ensuring fast, targeted traffic but also long term positioning. The fact is, not every business can go viral, because it takes a certain special little something to drive online consumers in the millions to pass it on.
Worthiness
Is your business actually worthy of going viral, meaning are your products or services so amazing that people will have no other choice but to share them with their online peers? You need to stand out from the rest…That includes your services, design, and all-around image online.
Website Optimization
You want to make sure your website is optimized to go viral, with all of the social media plug-ins and sharing options. Then you want to start a targeted advertising campaign using optimized PPC methods and the main networks such as Google and Facebook. At the same time, you need to make sure you have a solid search engine optimization (SEO) campaign in place for the long term stability of your website rankings.
Ad Campaigns
Your Ad campaigns will need to stick out but also make sense with what your business is offering. Contest, humor, or tugging at the heart strings all work well in terms of viral marketing.
Video
Video gives your potential consumers more of an idea of who you actually are, what you represent and if they like you or not. Being great on camera can be huge for your business. Your videos can then be made available to your customers on your company’s website and on other sites, such as YouTube.com or Vimeo.com.
When everything is put in place properly, you’re getting the targeted PPC traffic; mixed with the SEO and social media traffic, you are on your way to making your business go viral.
Steve is the founder of the Viral Marketing Firm, http://www.ViralBee.com. He is an expert at online marketing techniques including SEO, PPC and Social Media Promotion. For more information visit http://www.ViralBee.com ; email Info@viralbee.com; or call 604-302-5172.
METHODS TO GOING VIRAL
By Patti Malone
You can use viral methods to market your newsletter, your Internet site, your products, and services, practically anything you promote.
Tell-A-Friend/Referral Marketing
This viral technique is simple: You tell a friend in person or by text or phone call about an ebook or a video course that you found on the web, your friend tells two of his friends, and they each tell two of their friends, and so on. It’s a geometric progression that ultimately might supply hundreds or thousands of subscribers to your list. Also out in the marketplace are tell-a-friend software packages and scripts that will achieve this identical goal electronically.
Tell-a-friend marketing works because it is heard from a friend who liked it and not from some paid pitchman who will trade anything for a buck. If your clients are happy with your product or service, then produce a way for them to share that joy with their friends. Help your clients to tell each other, and your product will sell itself.
Using e-mail is a fast and very easy means to pass information on to a friend or colleague, particularly if it involves something fun or free. Once you make an offer via email and make it easy for your customers to send the same email on to their friends and clients, this viral method spreads your marketing message like a virus — the good kind, of course.
Just remember, putting a message at the bottom of your email that says, “Feel free to forward this message to a friend” is certainly not viral marketing at its best. You should offer something worthy of being shared — a valuable discount, vital and timely information, a bit of humor, or a no cost ebook.
Ebooks
People love free ebooks. Whether you give away an ebook you’ve created yourself, downloaded from the Internet, or rewritten from private label rights information, be sure that it includes your marketing message and a link to your Internet site. Once a customer uses the information for his own benefit, he will tell his acquaintances and maybe even pass the ebook on to them. This method uses the multiplication effect to explode the distribution of your message to many others by willing participants.
Articles
Articles can have a double effect in your viral marketing program. When you write original articles that pertain to your product or service, you build credibility with your readers and after you’ve published a number of them, your readers will come to feel that they know and trust you. Just make sure you add your resource box at the end of the website article, along with a link to your Internet site or your opt-in page. Let your readers reprint your articles with your resource box intact on their webpages, in their e-zine, newsletter, magazine, or blog.
If done correctly, high quality articles can be passed on and on, from one reprint to the next, each time creating an additional online link back to your webpages with no further effort from you.
Blogging
You can use your own blog to promote your products and services to the web community. You can also ask a high-traffic blogger if you can contribute a website article or post to his blog. Make sure you write a great blog post that will get people’s attention, and be sure to include a resource box or link that traces back to your own Internet site.
Patti Malone, Your Online Biz Genie, is an Internet marketer, writer, and webmaster with tons of ideas to put Magic into your Marketing! Email bizgenie10@gmail.com ; visit http://www.CrushMakingMoneyOnline.com. Learn more about viral marketing and how to kickstart your online business, download your Free Internet Marketing Library at http://www.InfoProductPowerhouse.com . Here you will find seven content-filled ebooks with tons of ideas to generate traffic to your website and at the same time start yourself off on the right foot to a thriving online business.
ADDITIONAL VIRAL MARKETING METHODS
By Michael Cohn
There are additional viral marketing methods from which you can choose.
Social Networking
Most people are social. Each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person’s broader network may consist of hundreds or thousands of people, on online forums and social sites such as through Facebook and Twitter. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you will rapidly multiply the viral marketing dispersion.
Comments
Another important concept is to connect with your audience. Remember, you got their attention, they are excited, and now they want to talk. Comments are one of the most effective methods to do this. Keep in mind that the best viral marketing campaign is one that creates a strong emotion. You have to welcome both positive and negative opinions in your comments, but, at the same time, you must prevent individuals from waging war against each other. In addition, connecting with people through comments means responding. Do not add comments if you do not want to participate yourself.
Affiliate Programs
The most creative viral marketing plans use other people’s resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on other websites. Someone else’s resources are depleted rather than your own.
Copyright by CompuKol Communications. The original article can be found at: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/viral-marketing-what-it-is-and-how-to-apply-it-to-your-business-1677275.html . Reprinted with permission. Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications (http://www.compukol.com), a consulting company specializing in developing communication strategies for small businesses that require expertise in promoting a unique business voice and vision on the Internet.
HOW VIRAL MARKETING CAN HELP YOUR BUSINESS
By Sacha Whitehead
Here are four ways how viral marketing can help increase awareness of your products and services and ultimately increase sales in your home business
1. Increased Exposure: Your company attains the widest exposure feasible in the shortest amount of time. Let’s suppose you launch a video campaign of your business right this minute; You share it with friends on Facebook or Twitter, they are so impressed that they share it with their own friends and so on, causing your video to spiral. In one day, it can have reached a wide range of potential consumers who are now actively aware of your business and clicked on the call to action.
2. Saves You Money: Your company will save essential financial resources whilst providing productive results. Promoting a company with viral marketing is considerably cheaper than traditional advertising techniques. Viral marketing gets the word out about you and your services with a minimal investment. Customers and followers will talk about your product and start to voluntary endorse you.
3. Motivates Your Audience: It can be easy to motivate people to respond to your viral marketing message and call to action. Increasing the engagement of your customers and prospects helps them remember your business and feel connected to your company. Engagement and motivation will have positive effects on your business.
4. Unlimited Global Audience: Viral marketing knows no geographical boundaries and so enables you to reach your target audience anywhere in the world. You can expand your audience base and generate leads for your business no matter where people live or where you are located.
To learn more about viral marketing and online methods to help your business, go to www.market-your-business-online.com, Fill in the form on the first page and watch the videos to see the top online marketing tips that will help your business today.
Sacha Whitehead is a Social Media and Online Marketing Consultant (http://how-to-market-your-business.com). She is a member of IMMACC one of the world’s largest Online Marketing Training Schools and helps businesses increase their leads, customer base and profitability with strategic internet marketing strategies. For more information, visit www.aNewFitMe.com or call 403-532-9232.
The 3 Guardians of Viral’s Holy Grail
By Barry A. Densa
If you’re a marketer, three indispensable components must be present if your marketing message and your product will ever be disseminated at anything close to viral speed.
- One, you must have a quality product – one that eminently satisfies a proven and measurable need or hunger. It must have value beyond its price.
- Two, your marketing platform and creative have to match and cater to the personality and sensibilities of your target market. You must understand them, speak like them, and walk some distance in their shoes. You must have a passion to help, not to just make money.
- Three, your target market has to be clearly defined and approachable. It can be delineated by gender, age, income or any other demographic or psychographic attribute, singularly or in combination, so long as its members communicate with one another and can be reached initially by you. A communication network must be in place.
The degree to which the above three met, will determine the light speed and the distance at which your message and product will travel.
Barry A. Densa is a freelance marketing and sales copywriter. Read more of his irreverent musings, and download a FREE copy of his NEW eBook, containing 21 of his most outrageous rants, when you visit his blog: Marketing Wit & Wisdom! At www.marketingwitandwisdom.com.
Viral Marketing Campaign Follow-Up
By Chad Diemel
Evaluate, monitor, as well as maintain a record of all your viral marketing campaigns. These activities can help you recognize those techniques that get results along with the ones that don’t.
Follow up on your viral marketing campaigns, and when you are ready to kick off another marketing campaign, you’ll be a little more cautious in steering clear of the mistakes of the earlier campaigns.
Your viral marketing efforts will likely become less complicated as you achieve more experience. Be cautious, however, and do not get carried away with the process. Should you try too hard in advertising your content and in anticipating your content going viral, you may not know it but the truth is you are spamming everyone. So perform everything with balance and in moderation. HBM
For more techniques on how to get visitors to your website, visit How To Get Website Visitors at www.howtogetwebsitevisitors.com.
GO VIRAL!
Viral marketing can do well for your home business. It can help generate more traffic and more income. Although viral marketing can be an extremely effective tool to include in your list of online marketing strategies, the basic marketing rules still apply. As effectively summarized by Michael Cohn, “Understand your products and services. Understand which demographics you are targeting. Have a clear understanding of your customers’ needs and on which products and services they will most likely spend their money as well as what will make them continue to return to you as customers. And, most importantly, figure out what you have to offer them that will make them bring their friends with them to you when they do return.” Whichever type of home business you operate, go viral with your marketing efforts and achieve success in 2013! HBM
