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Archive for April, 2009

Viral Marketing – Cutting Through The Commercial Clutter

Today’s consumers are deluged by commercials and advertising and increasingly they’re finding ways to tune it all out. The Do Not Call List prevents unwanted telemarketing spam filters block junk email DVRs allow television viewers to skip commercials and satellite radio foregoes advertising altogether. Clearly reaching the modern consumer with your marketing message is more difficult than ever but the reward for doing so is also unprecedented. Viral marketing is a technique that not only penetrates consumers’ selferected commercial barriers but goes a step further 8211; enlisting consumers as part of your sales and marketing staff.

Viral Marketing 8211; What Is It?
Viral marketing spreads a commercial message from persontoperson. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on traditional advertising through print or broadcast media viral marketing campaigns are typically webbased. The basic idea is to send an email message to a core list of consumers and hope that they then forward the message to their friends who in turn forward it to their friends and so on. Viral marketing is thus a “social networking” form of commercial advertising.

For example a popular jobs web site developed a traditional TV ad to air during the Super Bowl. The ad featured monkeys running around an office. In order to build additional buzz the web site allowed visitors to login and construct silly video email messages using the monkeys. A toll free number could be used to record a personal message and other things such as the monkey’s clothes could be customized. Five months later the emails are still circulating 8211; 44 million have been sent by more than 6.5 million unique visitors through July 2006.

No Monkeys on Your Staff? No Problem
The “Monkemail” project as it was known cost its creators in excess of 100000. By contrast their 30 second Super Bowl ad cost about 1 million to produce and 4 million to air. While these numbers are well beyond the means of all but the most wildly successful homebased businesses the point is clear 8211; viral marketing is much less expensive and yet much more effective than traditional advertising.

You don’t need a sixfigure budget to construct a viral marketing campaign. All you need is a mailing list of your core demographic and an idea of what they might like to pass along. A good viral marketing message has a 30 percent passalong rate which means that a successful message sent to a base list of 5000 would reach approximately 7140 people. Of the first 5000; 1500 would pass it along; and of that 1500; 450 more would pass it along as so on. What’s more each time your message is passed along from one consumer to his or her friends it is like a personal endorsement of your product or service.

What Should You Use in a Viral Marketing Campaign?
For traditional broadbased markets humor seems to work best. Mere jokes are unlikely to make the grade so an investment in the creation of a video ad is essential. Luckily the cost and difficulty of producing such material has plummeted in recent years and there are plenty of freelancers on the web who can be contracted for a reasonable fee.

If your target is more of a niche market then worthwhile content is probably a better bet. For example if you provide a financial service then a short enticing ebook on stock selection may do more for you than a humorous video clip 8211; provided you have a good list of people who are interested in stocks.

Creating a successful viral marketing campaign isn’t easy. But for the creative homebased business owner the public’s aversion to traditional marketing can be a great asset. After all it levels the playing field. There’s no way you can compete with big businesses on TV or in magazines but you can compete in viral marketing. Of course having a pet monkey wouldn’t hurt!

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Viral Marketing And How It Can Benefit You!

What is viral marketing? Simply put it’s an extremely powerful advertising technique that spreads like a virus thoughout different markets consumers via the internet by use of other webmasters hosts and general PC users and asa result creates exponential growth to a company’s Web site.

A marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or userscreating a potentially exponential growth in the message’s visibility and effect.

A good virus campaign is capable of Giving away valuable products services or content Provides for effortless transfer to others Scales easily from small to very large Exploits common motivations and behaviors Utilizes existing communication networks and Takes advantage of othersresources.

In Spreading the virus the real workers are the webmasters hosts and other PC users all over the internet who actually get the job done and it’s the result of this hard work when the real effects of what true viral marketing is shines through. Although powerful as it may be there are core components that constitute every successful viral campaign.

Viral Marketing ebooks are among the most commonly used vehicles for carrying viral messages and campaigns mainly because of the ease of implementation efficiency and cost effectiveness free almost anywhere being among some of the most favorite of reasons. Ebooks are the pioneers of marketing informational products and no matter whatever else evolves will never lose their place as such.

The creators of any viral marketing campaign have an obligation to their recipients to be unique informative and/or entertaining and if possible create a definite value by solving a problem. Anything less is blatant advertising useless babble and may be immediately discredited as such. The leavebehind message should connect with the target/intended audience or provide a meaningful call to action if it doesn’t then it was a lot of wasted effort.

If your viral goal is to generate awareness affinity and /or sales remember Relevancy. A campaign that is inconsistent with core brand attributes or doesn’t map to existing marketing objectives will fail and like wise if the key messages or implementation don’t connect with the target audience it will fail.

Avoid these Potential pitfalls when creating a viral campaign: Incompatibility with brand Doesn’t map to marketing objective Irrelevance to target audience Lack of sustainability or measurability Unrealistic expectations.

There are no guarantees that your viral campaign will succeed. The seed must be a strong concept something captivating interesting problem solver of good quality in order to germinate and once it does it must be fed the feeders are your recipients in order to grow to its fullest potential.

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About the writer:  Donald Whitehead:Affiliate Marketer Article Writer Aspiring Entrepreneur. Viral Marketing Campaign Do It Better with Viral Ebooks! Spread your Affiliate Links All over with just a single Viral Marketing Campaign!

Viral Marketing 101: Use It To Create A Healthy Business!

The one virtue that helps sites overcome the competition online is creativity. With so many competing you must employ every method of marketing you can to stay ahead.

Do you have a killer product? A really cool website? If people don’t know you are there none of it matters and you won’t make a dime. Worst of all your business could die a slow anonymous death.

There are a lot of methods used by ecommerce sites to advertise and drive traffic. Some of them will really give you a boost in the rankings. One of these methods is Viral Marketing.

While we normally think of the term ‘viral’ with ‘virus’ a term that all computer owners dread Viral Marketing isn’t what it may appear. You’re not using a virus to market your business; in reality this is just a way to utilize the best aspects of word of mouth advertising. It is much more effective than pop up ads and spyware.

Viral Marketing Overview

Viral Marketing is also known as Viral Advertising. This is a technique of marketing that is very effective in building awareness for a company. By using media to reach out to the public Viral Marketing uses entertaining or informational media to promote the product without directly using it. These media are forwarded from person to person who then enjoy the entertainment and have exposure to your website link and product line.

Briefly the concept is that if people like the media content they will continue to keep passing it on to friends and family. The company you sponsor a specific media like a funny video a cool game or an amusing story. It is passed around along with your company logo or brand which may contain product descriptions or other material to promote your company or product.

This is a pretty low cost method of advertising that is extremely effective. It avoids being logged as spam mail because each email is sent individually by a friend of the person who receives it. The person who receives it won’t block the email address of someone they know.

Some companies offer discounts rebates and other incentives to help spread their viral marketing. Companies track the number of recipients that get the viral marketing from a single person to determine the incentive they earn.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage

The big advantage to viral marketing is you get a lot of publicity and public awareness for your business. Your traffic will increase with potential customers. All it takes is a little creativity and maybe a few incentives to reach out to a large number of people in a very personal manner and introduce them to your existence.

Many sites are catching on to the effectiveness of viral marketing and advertising. Use it to keep your business healthy and growing. Along with search engine optimization and other methods viral marketing can easily put you in the lead when it comes to rankings.

Some say viral marketing is a bit sneaky. Maybe. But it is nevertheless effective. People come across your media entertainment and pass them along to a friend who passes it to another friend and so on. This is a low cost method of advertising that can keep your bottom line healthy and happy. All it takes is a good idea a gripping video or a fun game. Make a buzz about it create gossip it is an effective way to market movies. Remember “The Blair Witch Project”? Use the same method for your company.

Several large companies have successfully used viral marketing. An example is Microsoft’s Hotmail. They were the first big company to use this marketing method and it worked wonderfully for them.

Let viral marketing work its magic for you. Act now and see where this unique method of marketing takes you and your sales.

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