Viral Marketing Secret Weapons

By Ron Hollingsworth
Posted Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

• Give something of value away (e-book)
• Offer something worthy of its distribution (discount or incentive)
• Make it easy to give away
• Your contacts list
• Write articles and convince others to post it as free content
• Tell-a-friend- inexpensive technique
• Post easy-to-email articles and encourage people to forward it to friends

Word-of-mouth or “viral marketing” as it has been coined in the last few years has been easily recognized as one the best advertising techniques because it is, well, free. Like viruses, this rapid reproductive advertising method can explode your message across the Internet faster than Anna Nicole Smith on a binge.

When you spread the word about a great product or service your recommendation will have a greater impact, especially if something of value is being given away free. “FREE” is the most powerful marketing technique in the book. Hotmail took advantage of this back in 1996 with the launch of it’s free online email service. Every email sent contained an advertisement for a free email account. At 1.5 years after launch Hotmail had 12 Million subscribers, so this generated a nice tidy sum of cash. Right now you may be offering a “special offer” or discount on your products or services but when you give something of value away for free people stop and pay attention.

Make It Easy To Give Away

The wildfire that is viral marketing will never spread if you don’t make it easy to share. Viral marketing works very well over the Internet because communication is instant and easy spread. Think of the controversial Napster. When it came out back in 1999 no one knew of Napster. I remember turning the TV on one day and hearing about Napster on MTV, so I went to my computer to see what all the fuss was about. This program that allowed computer users to share and swap files within a few minutes took the music industry by storm. If you can create a message, whether it’s a software program, a web site or an ezine, that is both compelling enough to spread but gives something of value, you better watch out because you just may get flooded with traffic.

Contacts

Everyone knows someone, right? The best and fastest way to get the word out is to tell your friends and colleagues. Networking the key to Internet success.

Write Articles

One of the best ways to promote your website and to “get it out there” is to write articles just as the one you are reading now. Doing so will develop credibility for yourself as an authority in the industry on which you are writing. To maximize the effectiveness, write ways your visitors can benefit from your information. Make it so compelling that they can’t wait to send it to all of their friends. If you are an affiliate your articles should not have sales copy in the body of the article. When it’s apparent that the article is associated with an affiliate program the reader may not take it as seriously because they know you are getting paid from it. Ensure that you have your resource or bio box attached to the bottom of the article and make it available for republishing.

Tell-A-Friend

You’ve seen them everywhere. The tell-a-friend form asking you to spread the word of this great product, service, or resource you’ve found. The Internet consumer who is passionate about a product or service is more likely to forward an email to others making this viral marketing technique a huge success. The great thing about the tell-a-friend technique is that there is practically no effort involved as it is very easy to set up. You just install some code to your site and sit back and do nothing. Do not make the error of adding these referrals to your opt-in subscribers list as you will be spamming them. You need to make the distinction between your opt-in list and the referrals you get from your tell-a-friend form. Never send email to the referrals you get unless they come to your site and subscribe through your subscription form.

You can find many "tell a friend" scripts at HotScripts, some are good some are not so read the reviews.

About the Author:
Ron Hollingsworth is an Internet Entrepreneur and Internet Marketing professional and has been involved with e-commerce in one way or another for over five year. You can find many reviews of software marketing tools and marketing tips at his website.