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Follow the Steps of Big Companies – Effective Viral Marketing Online
Do you really need viral marketing software? Here’s a look at the five elements of an effective strategy. After you learn these, you may decide that what you need is something else.
Offer something free. What you choose to give might be simply information, an ebook or even software. 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 use this technique to the full extent. You can play their games free on the web, but to get certain features, you must buy their “complete” version. People that enjoy the game will often pay the price for the extended version. Viral marketing software cannot tell you what to give away. Only you or a company that offers personalized service can determine that.
Another element is to create a methodology that would enable your free offer to be accepted if others were to receive it. Most often, this is done through 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 must be able handle the increased business generated effectively. Oftentimes, this means that you need an auto-reply generator or other “assistants”. You might need to increase your stock, if you are selling an item or even overhaul your site to handle massive traffic. If you are providing a service, you will need to figure out what your ability is to handle new clients. Is is possible that viral marketing software do that? No.
The fourth element is to take advantage of common reactions. For example, a common reaction to a picture of food is hunger. If you sell food, you want every photo on your site and in any email communication that appears so tasty looking, it will create a feeling of hunger. Another great example is the “what will it do for me” mentality. People don’t care to know every detail showing that a car has reinforced side beams. People just want to know that their family is protected in the automobile in the event of 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.
The Appeal of the Viral Marketing Online Business Model
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. Viral marketing had been around for ages. In so many words, it is word-of-mouth advertising.
It is in the nature of a 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 good experience with a product or a service provider, they will tell those six people about it.
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”. Thus the internet is the backdrop for the most successful viral marketing business model.
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 complete sense. It was written by the marketing department of a supplement manufacturer. He suggested that you share the book with everyone. His goal, of course, was to sell supplements.
He may have sold the book. It contained just as much information as some of the diet books out on the market, but he realized the value of giving something away, what he would get in return would be far greater. Not only do people love free stuff, they have a tendency to “trust” people or companies that give them something with no strings attached, especially when that something has value.
You will see countless software programs on the web that offer a free versions and a “ultimate” version. This is another example of a viral marketing business model. If a person sees any free software program, they usually share it with up to 12 people they know would like to try it as well.
Social networking has become extremely popular in recent months. People with a Facebook account have thousands of online friends and they communicate with some of them daily. 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.
Free Viral Marketing – Get Some Today
If you do a web search for free viral marketing, you will see the system at work. Offering something at no additional charge is part of the methodology. No companies can actually offer free advertising. They may offer free information. It could be just enough to make you interested and want to get more information.
Reports, trials, test-runs and lead generation are things that they offer. Of course, if you want more, you will have to pay. That is how this type of advertising campaign works. It is what you decide to do with your company, too.
Whatever you are selling or whatever service you provide, you need to identify something that you can give away. Perhaps you are an expert carpenter. You can offer do it yourself advice and either publish on your website, an online magazine or create a newsletter for people that are interested in carpentry. Then find a way to let people in on your information offering.
The only way to do free viral marketing is to do it on your own. You would need to create or buy a list of e-mail addresses. Join clubs online like twitter and get posting on the social networks. Post on forums. You can buytarget e-mail addresses and some other companies offer a sample at no charge. Giving something away often generates customers interest.
Success of any campaign depends on reaching a big group of people and offering a free item. But, your success depends on the quality of the item or service that you have to offer. A product can only reaches virus proportions if people really dig it or they think that they must get it, in order to be “in”. The excitement aspect wears off. Valuable items stick around.
Actually, I’m giving you free viral marketing advice right now. Do some businesses charge for this kind of information? There are actually classes that you have to pay for and what they teach is what I have just told you. They always go into great detail to make you feel that the seminar was worth your hard earned cash. But, there is not much to learn.
Do companies charge out to do the all marketing for you? Yes. These kinds of advertising campaigns are especially time-consuming, so you might not want to attempt them. Your website might not even possibly be ready for the amount of business that a viral campaign might generate. If you read some more about free viral marketing, you’ll see what I mean.
Create a Feeding Frenzy for Your Product Using Great Viral Marketing Strategies
Before you hire a viral marketing agency, take a moment to look objectively at your website. With a good technique, a marketer may be able to drive tens of thousands of visitors to your website. But, it won’t do any good if your site does not sell your products or services.
If you are confident in your site and the products that you sell, there are hundreds of companies to choose from. 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. Read all the testimonials that are available online.
There is a business that operates totally 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 highly recommend the exact same strategy for all of their clients.
If they are to effectively grow your business, a viral marketing agency should tailor their solutions to suit your products or services. To be worthwhile, they should offer ways to keep in contact with your existing clients and help convert your clients’ friends into your customers.
One of the effective techniques is a regular newsletter, sent to your client’s e-mail address. If you do not have any customers, you may need to buy a list of e-mail addresses. Some of these lists were created by other successful businesses. They ask their existing customers if they would like to receive information and monthly communication from their affiliates. If the customer says “yes”, they become part of the company database.
You might find an agency that specializes in viral marketing and could also provides this sort of list, as well as offering other services you may want to engage. To be highly effective, you should create your list that is targeted to include people in your niche market. If you are selling a toy, parents would be your target market. It would be a waste of time to send dozens of e-mails to senior citizens.
Some of the easier methods that you can employ include “social networking”. Become a member of an online forum or group, whose members have interests that are similar with your target. 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 outside of your business might offer solutions to help you find your target market and grow your business.
Do You Have an Effective Online Viral Marketing Strategy? If Not, Here’s How to Start
What is online viral marketing? It is called a successful advertising campaign. The phrase was a creation of a business school graduate, made popular by the media and a media critic Douglas Rushkoff. This refers to your ability to reach millions of people by starting out with only a few.
If you tell me something that I think is interesting, I will tell my friends about it. They will tell their friends as well if they like it. They are associated to people that I am not familiar with. So, the potential of growth is virtually limitless. Many years ago, and even today, it was called work of mouth advertising.
The main difference between word of mouth advertising and online viral marketing has to do with the sheer potential number of people that someone can or does speak to daily. Using me as an example. In my “real” life, I talk to my close family members every day. I may talk to my extended family members and my friends once a week.
Some of them I haven’t talked to in years, “live”. But, via e-mail and social networking sites, I communicate with all of them, every single day. If I find something that I believe in…something that moves me, I will share it with at least 30 people.
Surveys indicate that the average person shares this type of thing with 12 people max. So, I may be a little outside of the loop. The point is that the 30 people that I know will share with others. With very little effort, the information moves through this mass of people. Will the wave eventually crash?
If you have an effective online viral marketing strategy, you may be able to generate numerous waves; when one crashes, another forms. There are countless different strategies, but all of the effective ones isolate one key element. There is something “free” of value for people to share.
In some cases, it is simply a well-done commercial. Sony created one a while back. It was posted on YouTube and people got it out there to people they knew. To date, it has had hundreds of thousands of views. How many people made a purchase? Who would possibly know?
Here is the point. In order to reach hundreds of thousands or millions of people in the past, you would have had to pay for television advertising. Of course, you would have to buy space on the highly watched shows and the costs are astronomical. With online viral marketing, you can reach that many people for next to nothing.