Viral marketing is one of the most powerful and free ways to promote your products and websites. Why is it so effective?
That's because once your viral mechanism starts to spread, it may continue to reach more and more outlets indefinitely. Better yet, a one-time viral marketing effort may continue to proliferate without any intervention on your part.
The recipients benefit from the viral message, while you benefit from all the massive exposure. Viral marketing is a win-win situation for everyone.
The key to its success lies in the viral mechanism's quality and its impact to the recipient. If the user finds it interesting or beneficial to others, sharing it is the natural thing to do, as it helps build relationships and makes the sender look good by sharing relevant messages.
Here's some of the most effective mechanisms to use viral marketing to expand your reach and make truckloads of money in the process:
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 1: Excellent Customer Service
Bad news tends to spread like wildfire, as people intend to warn others of their unfortunate experiences to avoid it happening again. According to Joe Girard, each person knows around 250 persons in his lifetime considered important enough to invite to his wedding or funeral. That means even if just one customer had a negative experience with your product or company, it could reach hundreds of people quickly, especially if they use blogs or social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace to spread the word.
On the other hand, giving excellent customer service will reflect positively on your product or company. People will recommend you to their contacts if you treat them well. This will build up your reputation and establish your credibility effortlessly. Unlike any salesperson, we know and trust our friend; so getting a recommendation from a friend is much more believable and gets more sales.
Remember a time when you had an extremely good or bad experience? You can't wait to tell your friends or loved ones, right?
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 2: Viral E-books
It's easy enough for people to share viral e-books if they think others could have some use for them. To reinforce them to spread the e-book around, you can tell them they have giveaway rights to it. This would make it sound like a privilege, not an obligation.
If your e-book contains outbound links to other sites, find out if these sites have affiliate programs. You could monetize the e-book better by putting your affiliate links instead of the direct links to other webpages.
Once you're done with the viral ebook, here are some of the ways you can make the most out of it:
- Submit them to the e-book directories. Simply search for "e-book directories" in Google and you'll find a number of them to submit to.
- Use your viral e-books to build a list. Set up an opt-in form in your website and ask for your visitors' name and email in exchange for the viral e-book. Another way to build your list without requiring an opt-in is to put a free offer in the beginning of the ebook, or a ReadMe.txt with the ebook in a zip file, where they will be asked to subscribe to access more free gifts.
- Allow affiliates to rebrand the viral e-book with their affiliate links (better if the affiliate can also include their name and own site). This way, affiliates get an incentive for spreading the e-book (through affiliate commissions) while their referrals benefit from the information within it.
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 3: Viral Articles
Your articles can become rapid viral channels as long as they give quality and valuable information. Once you've submitted them to the top article directories, ezine publishers could pick them up and share them to their list. Offline publications may even include them on their magazines, sometimes reaching several thousands (or even millions) of readers.
Here are other methods you could "viralize" your articles:
- Give permission to affiliates and JV partners to use the articles when promoting your products.
- Write custom articles for blogs and ezine publishers. This may sound like more work, but your articles may reach a wider and targeted audience, so it's worth the extra effort.
- Share your articles to your subscribers and tell them to forward the message to those who might need it. You can choose to compile a mass of related articles into an e-book or presentation before sending to your list.
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 4: Viral Videos
People can spread your videos around if they are entertaining or helpful enough. Ask them to pass the link to your video page to those who might enjoy or benefit from watching the videos.
Submit your viral videos to video sharing sites for a wider reach. This way, viewers may also use an embed code to post your videos on their site.
Remember to include your website or contact details along with the video; but do it subtly so it won't have the perception of being too promotional.
Viral Marketing Mechanism # 5: Viral Emails
Just think about what types of emails you forward to others. Jokes or funny messages are often being passed around. So why not include an element of humor into your emails?
You may also include breakthrough news or information to make your email valuable enough to be passed on to others, as people want to keep up with the current times.
Discounts or coupons on products could also be forwarded because it allows people to save money.
Anything that is exciting, controversial, or radical could be passed along, so incorporate any of these elements into your email message.
It's simple enough to put the power of viral marketing into your customer service, e-books, articles, videos and emails. Do it consistently and you'll have more and more targeted visitors flooding your site.
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