Viral Marketing Strategies

Posted on: 2005-11-09 11:51:16
Author: Herman Drost

One of the most time consuming aspects of online marketingis finding the most effective strategies to attractvisitors to your web site. If you set up a viral marketingcampaign correctly, you have the opportunity of gaining1000s of visitors for years to come.

Definition of viral marketing

This is the online term for word-of-mouth advertising. Youprovide something that encourages others to spread the wordabout your product, quickly and inexpensively with littleeffort on your part. This potentially creates exponentialgrowth in the message's visibility and effect. The messagespreads in a viral form in a manner similar to thespreading of a common cold virus from person to person.

One example of successful viral marketing is Hotmail, whichbegan offering free e-mail accounts, with a link back toHot Mail at the end of every e-mail message sent by one ofits customers. That spread the word about the service likea virus, with every customer a virtual "carrier" of themessage.

Benefits of Viral Marketing

1. Free advertising

2. Short term gains - gain immediate visitors.

3. Long term gains - attracts visitors for years to come.

4. Causes exponential growth - reaches a large audience.

5. Automate your marketing methods - set it up once andforget about it.

6. Inexpensive to set-up - it primarily involves someinvestment of time.

7. Viral marketing tools are easy to develop i.e. you cancreate an e-book without knowing how to write.

8. Quickly build your reputation.

9. Easy to combine with other marketing methods - i.e.include as a bonus with other products.

10. Increase targeted traffic to your web site.

Viral Marketing Strategies

1. Write articles - allow people to reprint your articleson their web site, in their ezine, newsletter, magazine ore-books. Include your resource box and the option forarticle reprints at the bottom of each article. Make surethat the link in your resource box is live so that allpeople that use your article will link back to your site.

2. Create a free e-Book - give your e-book away to yourvisitors and other editors or webmasters within your targetmarket. Encourage them to pass it on. Insert ezinesubscription links or affiliate links to the productsthroughout your e-book. Subscriptions to your newsletterwill increase in proportion to the number of places youre-book is placed.

3. Set up an affiliate program - affiliate programs providea financial incentive for other sites to link to yours.Make sure your commission is enough to make this attractiveto web site owners. As the number of affiliates increases,so do your visitors and sales.

4. Getting sites to link to your site - you can receiveongoing traffic from other sites by asking them to link toyours. If it's a site that already has lots of traffic, youwill see an immediate increase in traffic to your own site.Only contact site owners who have products that complimentthe products on your site.

5. Send out news releases - create a free service orproduct that is available on your site. The most importantaspect is to have a truly newsworthy event, contest, freeservice, or digital download. If your news release iscarried by just 5% of the media you send it to, you couldhave your URL in front of tens of thousands of readersquite inexpensively.

6. Viral software - offering a free download of a script,e-book, calendar, etc is an effective method for gaining new subscribers to your ezine. You can also market yourproduct by including your logo or marketing message withyour download.

7. Create an e-course - give your visitor numerous chancesto respond to your offer by creating an email course orcourses. You accomplish this by writing a series of smallarticles outlining the benefits of your product, thendistribute them automatically over several days or weekswith an auto responder. This can be set up automaticallyfor the product or ezine you are promoting.

8. RSS Feeds - this is a relatively new viral marketingmethod. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It wasoriginally used by news organizations to syndicate theirnews stories. RSS Feeds are now used to automaticallydistribute content to blogs. They can also be used todistribute articles to web site owners and ezine publishersthroughout the web.

Conclusion

Using these viral marketing strategies will help boost yourweb presence, by rapidly increasing web traffic, gainingmore links and building your reputation as an expert inyour field.