What Is Viral Marketing?
Viral marketing is unique and quite extraordinary. We share with friends and
family the bargains or freebies we were able to get. If we can copy the freebie
we will do it and give it to people that we know, if for no other reason than to
make ourselves look good. Everybody knows somebody, and just like rumors,
these freebies can spread fast.
The Oldest Viral Marketing Tactic of All
The concept of viral marketing is an old idea made new again by the Internet.
Word of mouth advertising has been recognized as a worthwhile marketing tool
for thousands of years. Some fish seller in Old London undoubtedly said to his
customers, “tell your neighbors I have excellent cod today.“
Remember the washing powder manufacturer who put dishtowels or drinking
glasses in the boxes of detergent or was that before your time? They advertised
it on radio a few times but mostly depended on people to pass the word
around… and they did. That was a horse and buggy version of what we call viral
marketing today.
Word of mouth advertising is simply direct communication between people about
some product, service, brand, or event. Most of the time one of the people in the
conversation has had some experience with what is being discussed.
Many times, but not always, the person who is doing the talking will have some
relationship with the product, service, brand or event being discussed.
Word of mouth… viral marketing… is a two way street. I remember once my
mother had a bad experience with a non-stick pan that she had just bought. The
first thing she did was spread the work among her friends (who then spread the
word among their friends) that the pan wasn’t good. That is also viral
The Viral Marketing Value of Buzz
Everybody knows certain urban and social legends. They have never been
marketed …. nobody spent the first dime to let the world know that there are
alligators living in the New York City sewer system …. or that Bigfoot is happy
and well in the backwoods of America.
So how is it that we all know stories like that?
Those little bits of information that people share over a cup of coffee.
The outrageous occurrence that someone just saw and can’t wait to describe .
The incredibly cool product that a friend of a friend just bought.
Those are the heart and soul of buzz marketing or viral marketing, depending on
what you want to call it.
A better question is …. what if it were your product or service that enjoyed such
common knowledge?
The Viral Marketing Value of Online Video and Audio
rates.
Where to use online video and audio is what advertisers must carefully consider.
Video to be used on the Internet should be information and communication
focused while video to be used on television should be focused on
entertainment.
Like everything else, there are good ways and bad ways to use video advertising.
Right now most marketers are incorporating their audio-visual content into
existing embedded ad formats like banners or over-content formats like pop-ups.
Though this could reach a potentially large audience, viewers are likely to be less
captivated and more annoyed by these disruptive and distracting placements.
Cached or streaming video and audio on a specific destination site offers the best
chance of interesting consumers in brand messages, but it is not likely to reach a
large audience unless it generates a viral outcome.
Whatever you come up with, don't forget to make it easy to open and distribute.
File size is important, as is the media format. If your viral video has been created
for a particular type of software that not many people use, how will you get
people to spread it like wildfire?
Also, if you've made a video the impact will be better if you send the clip as an
attachment rather than stream it. It's cheaper and, if you're not hosting it, it's
more viral, too.
The Viral Marketing Value of eBooks
Let’s say that you sell products used in baking. If on your website you offer a
free download of an eBook with recipes that call for ingredients you sell, it is
possible…even probable that you will sell more of the products that you
manufacture. That is the basic concept but there are many ways that eBooks can
help get free viral marketing for you.
If the free eBook you give away on your site is good, informative, funny, or
contains timely information, the public will pass that information along to their
friends and family and thereby, generate a lot more traffic on your site.
The Viral Marketing Value of eMail
Viral Marketing using e-mail is not an objective. It is part of a campaign strategy
that is used to achieve objectives. In order to achieve greater branding success
exposure, you craft your e-mail message or offer in a way that it encourages
pass-along.
Viral marketing is all about producing a message with a quality offer or incentive
for pass-along.
Just suggesting that email recipients forward your message to their friends is not
viral marketing. Just 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 must offer something worthy of being shared… a valuable discount, vital and
timely information, a bit of humor, or a quiz or personality test. Offer an
incentive for sharing like additional entries into a sweepstakes or an added
discount. Viral Marketing happens naturally. It is very often quite successful.
The Viral Marketing Value of Blogging
How to increase the flow of traffic on a website is the recurring dilemma of
webmasters. One of the methods that have spawned many success stories in
driving traffic into websites is viral marketing.
Viral marketing is simply making use of the tendency of a person to share
something they find informative, entertaining of amazing and blogging is one of
the ways that viral marketing is facilitated.
These days, everybody is blogging and you can incorporate blogging into your
sales marketing and have a lot more success.
It isn’t that hard to do. Just have your customers write diary entries about goals
they have reached using your product, the good emotions it’s given them, the
fears and worries your product has taken out of their lives, how bad their lives
were before they bought it, how it has helped other people in their lives, how
much better their lives are since they began using your product, and on and on.
Customers could update their blog daylily, weekly or monthly. It will depend on
how often they use your product. If you are teaching them a skill, they can blog
their progress.
You must provide your customers with web space for writing their online diary
(blog) or have them e-mail you the blog entries for you to publish.
Your customer’s online blogs can be made extra persuasive by including personal
profiles, pictures, online video of them using your product, net audio of them
talking about your product, and so forth.
An online blog would likely outsell the common testimonial because it is updated
on a regular basis and gives more personal information and since a diary (blog)
is considered private, it makes people more curious to read it and believe that
what is said is true.
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