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Viral Marketing Methods And Applications
Viral Marketing Methods And Applications
By Tim Bruxvoort, Sat Dec 10th
Viral marketing. It sounds like something you want to avoid likethe plague. But it’s really something you and your business needto catch now. If you’re not yet familiar with the term “viral marketing” letme give you a basic definition. is simply astrategy that encourages individuals to “willingly” pass on amarketing message to others. It takes advantage of rapidmultiplication to explode your marketing message to thousands ormillions of people. A virus acts similar to a biological virus. But,the big difference between a virus and a cold orflu virus is that people willingly pass the marketing messageon. Not too many people really want to share their cold withothers, but they’ll be more than happy to spread your “digitalvirus”. And when they spread it, they can spread it much fartherthan a biological virus. Your message can spread around theworld in a matter of hours.
To summarize the benefits of viral marketing: 1. It’s cheap. You can create your own messagein the form of an e-book or video and then it costs you littleor nothing to get the message out. 2. You can reach a huge audience. There is no other way yourmessage can spread so quickly to a large audience for so littlecost than with viral marketing. And the best part is that peopleare passing your message to their friends and associates so youget an implied endorsement from them. 3. You can build your reputation. If you create good, qualityinformation that’s being passed around, you can quickly berecognized as a expert. And when you have the reputation asbeing an expert in your field, you sell more products. You“build your brand” faster with viral marketing. 4. You can combine it with other marketing methods. This is amethod you absolutely should be using with your email marketingand affiliate programs. Email is still the most effective way ofspreading your virus. You can also use it with off-lineadvertising such as direct mail, classified advertising, ordisplay advertising to drive people online. 5. You can sell products other than your original targetproduct. You may create a viral message to sell one product butfind out that your potential customer is interested in anotherof your products instead. 6. tools are easy to develop. There are easyways to create e-books even if can’t write (or think you can’t).There are also easy tools to create videos. Itdoesn’t take a big budget or a lot of talent to create a viralmarketing virus. These are the major benefits of viral marketing. When you use ityou may find others that are unique to your business. The concept of really isn’t new. Off theInternet it is essentially any form of "word-of-mouth"advertising. It also works similar to "network marketing."However, just like all things Internet, it can’t have a normalname. Before the Internet who would have imagined naming acompany something like Yahoo! or Google? Or how about usingwords like “spam” other than for an unidentifiable meat product.Regardless of how it sounds, the term is theperfect descriptor of this Internet marketing method. Just exactly how on the Internet started couldbe somewhat of a debate. Where it became the most effectivemoneymaker is probably not so debatable. Likely the first effective use of was with thefree e-mail service Hotmail, which is now owned by Microsoft.Hotmail was started by two guys named Sabeer Bhatia and JackSmith, who were upset that they couldn’t use their employer’semail system to send email to their friends. After they started the e-mail service, word of the e-mailservice spread like wildfire and they had over 22 millionsubscribers within 24 months. Microsoft later bought Hotmail foraround $400 million dollars. Why did the news of Hotmail spread so fast? Simply because theygave away free e-mail addresses and services and at the bottomof every email sent was a tag that said: "Get your private, freeemail at http://www.hotmail.com". Everyone who opened an email saw it. And when they passed on theemail to their friends or associates they saw it too. So asingle email could multiply and spread just like a virus. Itturned into a “Viral Marketing Pyramid.” When your viral message gets passed to someone, they become a“Host” for your virus. Then they become a “sneezer.” When they“sneeze” (send out your message), they spread the virus. Forviral marketing sneezing is a good thing. The more people youhave spreading your virus the better. Of course we can’t all hope for the same success as experiencedby Hotmail. But you can still be wildly successful even if yourmarketing message spreads to only a tiny fraction of the numberof people Hotmail’s did. To be successful, however, your viralmarketing campaign should contain the following elements. Elements of a Successful Campaign 1. Offer something for free Hotmail was such a huge success because it gave away somethingfor free. No matter how much exposure people have to the word“free,” it still holds tremendous power. Although, you don’thave to use the word free in your campaign if it’s well implied. Take for example a couple of videos that were done by a companycalled Jib Jab Media (www.jibjab.com). They created a videocalled “This Land” which was a satirical look into the 2004presidential election race between President George Bush andDemocratic presidential contender John Kerry. This video spreadlike wildfire across the Internet and created instantrecognition for Jib Jab. It was so popular that Jay Leno of TheTonight Show commissioned Jib Jab to do a second one called“Good To Be In DC.” In a lot of cases, is all about delayedgratification. A successful campaign may not bring you immediateprofit, but it sets the stage for future profits either throughemail addresses collected, advertising revenues, or sales ofother products. 2. Make it easy for people to spread your message Do you remember a time when you had a cold or flu and one ofyour family members caught it? You didn’t have to work too hardto give it to them did you? It shouldn’t be much harder for people to spread your viralmarketing message either. only works if passingalong the virus is near effortless. In the case of Hotmail itwas the short and concise message at the bottom of an email thatsaid, "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com".People didn’t have to do anything they weren’t already going todo to spread this message. For Jib Jab, people just had to senda website address…a little more effort required, but nothing toostrenuous. You can do simple things like add a “Tell-A-Friend” button onyour web site, including a catchy display ad graphic at thebottom of an email, starting an affiliate program to have otherpeople sell your products, or do what Hotmail did with thesimple message. The benefit of pointing people to a web siteaddress is that you get more traffic to your web site, which hasa very positive impact on search engine performance. With allthe traffic you get to your website you get increased linkpopularity
so your web site is more likely to rank higher in thefree search engine searches. To spread your message faster and farther in the easiest waypossible, combines extremely effectively withaffiliate marketing. In case you’re not familiar with affiliatemarketing, it’s simply a way to get other people to sell yourproduct and you just give them a cut of the sale. You justprovide your tools to your affiliates and letthem spread the message from their web sites. The easier youmake it for your affiliates, the faster and farther your messagewill spread. 3. Make sure your servers can handle a “viral overload” Just in case your viral message is extremely successful, youwant to make sure your Internet hosting service can handle theload. Jib Jab received over 10 million hits in one month, whichbrought their hosting service to its knees. You don’t want yourvirus to spread so fast that it kills the host. You also need to check on whether or not there would be anycharge for a sudden increase in traffic to your web site. Ifyour hosting service is going to send you a big bill, you needto consider that in the costs of your campaign. Getting Your Sales Message to the Target Audience One downside of is that while you can drive alot of people to see your message, not everyone is going to beinterested in what you’re selling. This is why you need totailor your message specifically to your target market. Youreally don’t want to drive a bunch of extra traffic to on yourservers if it isn’t going to do any good (see number three aboveabout viral overload). Your message should be carefully crafted fromyour main sales message. The same people who would take aninterest in your message should also beinterested in your sales message. Be sure the transition from your message to yoursales message on your web site is a smooth one. You need to makesure that once a potential customer gets to your sales messagethat it does its job. Does your sales message convey the corebenefits of your product? Is your message substantial enough tohave an impact on the reader/listener/viewer? If your potentialcustomer doesn’t get excited about your product, then your viralmessage may have been wasted. Unless, perhaps, you have anotherproduct they do get excited about. If the customer does getexcited about your product but your ordering system doesn’twork, you’ve also wasted your effort. This is why you want tomake sure your product, sales message, and web site (includingordering systems) are working and effective before you startyour campaign. Only when all pieces of your overall product, marketing, sales,and support systems are working well can your viral marketingcampaign be a success. If all of these are working in harmony,then your bank account will also be happy. Track The Results of Your Campaign Just like with any other marketing campaign, you want to knowhow well your is working. You can take steps toisolate your campaign respondents from others.One way to do this would be to set up a different landing page(entry page into your site) for your respondentsand then use software tools to measure how many people arecoming in to that page. You could even set up a completelydifferent web site. You’ll also need a different order page soyou can track your conversion rate (how many people who come toyour landing page actually buy). Then you can compare youroriginal customer orders with your orders to seewhich ones are better performers. Do it Over and Over From now on, you should have an element of inevery email you sent out. Every one of your web sites shouldhave a Tell-A-Friend script. You should continually create freee-books, articles, and reports that you allow people to passaround. Make all your marketing campaigns viral in some aspect. Checkout the example below of a way you can quickly and easily createviral marketing videos. Viral Marketing Example Let’s look at an example of how you can put intopractice. Say you have a sales letter-type web site that isselling a single product (sales letter web sites are the bestway to sell a single product). The web site at www.viral-video.com is a perfect example ofusing this technique. 1. First you bring targeted traffic to your new web site throughpay-per-clicks or other search engine techniques. Or you cansend an email to your distribution list if you have one. You caneither advertise your site directly in your email or use agraphic display ad at the end of the email similar to the wayYahoo! does it with their free email. 2. Place a link to a webpage on your site that has a videopeople can view. The video needs to be something related to yourproduct. Perhaps it’s a demo or just something reallyentertaining that relates to your product. 3. You’ll place a link at the end of the video pointing to aTell-A-Friend page on your web site. You’ll create the video soat the end of the video a webpage with a Tell-A-Friend scriptpops up that easily enables people to send the link to the videothey just watched to five or more of their friends. After theysend the email to their friends then you’ll have theTell-A-Friend script pop up your home page again. 4. Now when the friends get the email they are taken directly toyour video (not your home page). Once they watch the video theycan send the web address of the video to their friends. Ofcourse the Tell-A-Friend script sends them to your home page. 5. In case someone doesn’t want to send an email to theirfriends, you’ll place a button on your Tell-A-Friend script thatsays “Click to Close This Page.” This button takes them directlyto your web site. You could also create a pop-up on exit pagethat takes them to your web site if they don’t click the “Clickto Close This Page” button or send an email to a friend. Soregardless they would be taken to your home page. 6. You’ll also set up an affiliate program so others can sellyour product for you. You need to set up an affiliate web pagethat lets your affiliates download your video to place on theirweb sites. Of course, at the end of the video it redirects theviewer to your web site. You’ll need a way that your affiliatecan change the “redirect” web address in the video so itcontains their affiliate identification number. Then when thevideo sends traffic to your home page they get credit for anysales that result. You’ll want to make sure they can’t changethe entire address since you want the traffic sent to your site.A product like ViralVideo at www.viral-video.com will enable youto set this up. Once you implement in your business, you’llwonder how you got along without it. It’s a marketing methodthat most marketers really don’t understand or use very wellyet. You now have a better understanding than most of yourcompetition so you have an edge. With that edge you can propelyour business to greater heights than you ever imaginedpossible. About the author:Tim Bruxvoort is a product development and marketing authoritywith over 20 years experience. You can visit some of his websites at www.viral-video.com, www.timestenmarketing.com, andwww.homebasedriches.com .
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