Five Steps to Successful Viral Marketing
By Steve Shaw
Posted Monday, August 30, 2004
I'm sure we've all heard of 'viral marketing' - the first question is usually 'What is it?'
In brief, you can apply the term 'viral marketing' to any strategy that encourages others to pass on your marketing message.
This can result in exponential growth of traffic to your web site, and therefore, if appropriate, your level of sales as well.
A viral marketing strategy should be an essential element of your web site's promotional strategy - in this article I'll tell you five different ways you can achieve this.
1. 'Send to a friend' script
We've all seen them, those buttons on web sites inviting us to 'Send to a friend'.
Here's some resources you can use:
(http://www.referralblast.com) - claim you can add it to your site within 10 minutes, charge from $99 per year
(http://www.tell-a-friend-wizard.com/) - claims to track your most sent pages and your most active people; from about $6 a month
(http://bignosebird.com/carchive/birdcast.shtml) - popular free CGI script
(http://www.cgibiz.com/go.cgi?partner=popupmtr - CGI) Tell-a-friend script for $39.95, free trial version is available.
2. 'Freebies'
Giving something away for free is one of the most powerful marketing methods available.
Giving something away for free in the *right way* turns it into a VIRAL marketing method that is much more powerful.
For example:
- Giving away a free ebook will encourage people to sign up to your newsletter - great result.
- If you include in the ebook links to your own web site and information about the products and services you want to promote, you'll increase your traffic and your sales - even better result.
- If you encourage people to give away the free ebook themselves, you've suddenly turned it into a viral marketing program that will bring you exponentially increasing traffic and sales - excellent result.
If you think you can't improve on this you're wrong! If you use software like the Viral Marketing Program at (http://www.instantviralmarketing.com) as a mechanism to give away your free ebook, you'll increase your traffic and sales exponentially before you even give the ebook away, and then you've got the traffic and sales you'll get from the ebook itself.
3. Write articles
Web site and ezine owners are constantly on the look out for articles, tutorials and other content they can use. Writing articles is one of the most powerful ways to spread your marketing message at targetted web-surfers. Just allow people to republish it for free, as long as they include a promotional byline at the end of the article.
As well as posting the articles on your own site, and distributing them to your own mailing list, there are also various places online where 'publishers' and 'authors' meet, i.e. you provide the article, and other people publish it for you if they are interested:
Idea Marketers
(http://www.ideamarketers.com/)
Making Profit
(http://www.makingprofit.com/mp/)
Web Source
(http://web-source.net/)
Directory Of Ezines
(http://www.hypertracker.com/go/WEBpro1/DOE/)
Marketing-Seek
(http://www.marketing-seek.com/)
There are many such sites, though these are particularly recommended due to the powerful results they can deliver.
4. Affiliate schemes
Most of the successful web sites use an affiliate scheme that encourages other web masters to partake in publicizing someone else's products or services in return for a commission on the sale price. I'm sure we're all familiar with these.
I personally use ClickBank because they handle both the affiliate scheme and the payment facilities, and it's all incredibly easy to set up. For more information:
(http://zzz.clickbank.net/jmap/?m=popupmtr)
5. Word of mouth
Many businesses grow through 'word of mouth' recommendations. Sure, the 'Send to a friend'-type scripts and affiliate schemes can help with this process, but often web sites are mentioned in other interactions between people.
You can encourage this process by providing the highest quality customer service possible, and ensuring that any products you sell or recommend are of top quality.
There are of course many other techniques you can try, but these are my top five favorites, so try them out and see the traffic to your web site explode. It's hard work, but when you see the results you'll consider it more than worth it.
About the Author
Steve Shaw uses the above techniques to drive traffic to PopUpMaster.com. Sign up for your Free PopUp Masters Course at (http://popupmaster.com) and find out how to boost your opt-in rates by 535%. You can republish this article - just retain this resource box.
