Tips/Elements of Viral Marketing
Free is always the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, free information, free software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the "full" version. This may not profit today but it can generate a groundswell of interest, advertising revenue, e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, sell something. (e.g. Hotmail, Gmail)
2. Never Try to Make Advertisements!!!
One of the biggest mistake companies always make is when they think viral marketing is just advertisement that people share BUT NOT!!! Traditional marketing is about promoting you product, showing how good it is BUT no body care! Viral marketing is all about making good story, making people remember and talk about it.
Sony (Bravia)
3. Never Restrict Access!!!
In order to make your viral marketing campaign success - spreading like virus, it needs to be free! Viral marketing is never about restriction or exclusivity, it is all about getting it out there for everyone to see directly. Never, Never and Never add the below restrictions to the mix:
- Require people to register
- To become members
- To download special/specify software
- To enter "unlock / verification" codes
- Do something in order to get the right link
4. Do Something Unexpected
If you want people notice and talk about your campaign, you have to do something different, something unexpected and no one did it before. STOP trying to promote your products because everybody does that! STOP trying to make it look cool because everyone been there and done that too!
Volkswagen (New Product Launch - Fast Lane)
More Tips for Viral Marketing
Viral marketing” is basically word-of-mouth/referral marketing via the Internet. From emails to video clips and games, marketers have developed this strategy with sometimes exponential results. As Thomas Baekdal, an internet coordinator, says, viral marketing usually has “500-1000 times greater impact than what you get from regular advertisements.”We’ve gathered some information on the pros and cons of viral marketing, along with tips on making it more effective for you as photographers.
Concentrate on the content…the story
Yes, you want to create a strong emotion (strong enough that the readers want to share it with others). However, creating a mini advertisement is not going to do that by itself. Consider the consumer-created ad clips on major company websites (such as Doritos’ contest for the Super Bowl commercial). Those clips were shared on YouTube and other places, not for the product,but for the humor and the people behind the clip.
Be careful when you ask readers to forward something
Although you can (and probably should) remind readers that they are free to forward your message on to others, remind them to send it only to those they believe would be interested.
Otherwise, it could be interpreted as SPAM by some unsuspecting recipient who is not interested in photographic services at all.
Keep your brand image clear
While the “story” should be the main focus of the email/clip, you should still include your company name, logo, and contact information. It both lends credibility to the message and makes you more recognizable, especially to those who don’t know you personally…as may well be the case if the message is forwarded on.
Make it sharable
You want the message to be forwarded and shared beyond your own email list. That means you have to make it easy to share! Make sure the content is easily downloadable or copied; allow links to your website; allow publishing on YouTube and other networks; and so on.
You may even want to connect the message/clip with a blog (whether new or created). This can serve several purposes: One, customers can talk about it on your own site. Two, new people (recipients of viral marketing) can learn more directly from your current customers. And three, people can talk directly to you!
RESOURCES
Baekdal, Thomas. “7 tricks to viral web marketing.” Baekdal.com. (November 23, 2006)
http://www.baekdal.com/articles/Branding/viral-marketing-tricks/.
Partner, Lynda. “Viral Marketing, Email Style (part one of two).” MarketingProfs.com. (October 8, 2002)
http://www.marketingprofs.com/print.asp?source=/2/partner1.asp.
Partner, Lynda. “Viral Marketing, Email Style (part 2).” MarketingProfs.com. (October 15, 2002).
http://www.marketingprofs.com/2/partner2.asp. Principle and technique for viral marketing
Principle and technique for viral marketing
Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:
1.Gives away products or services
2.Provides for effortless transfer to others
3.Scales easily from small to very large
4.Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5.Utilizes existing communication networks
6.Takes advantage of others' resources
source: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles.htm
Viral Marketing Techniques
Community
Everyone is looking for ways to draw unique visitors to there website, fact is many people spent a vast amount of there profits advertising. Many webmasters don’t understand that one return visitor is worth more than five visits from a targeted advertising campaign that stay for a few seconds. Building a community is a great way to draw visitors back to your website.
The best way to produce this effect is offer your website visitors a way to communicate with each other through a forum or message board. Make sure your forum or message board’s general topic is highly related to your websites purpose or product, this way you know that the return visitors will be interested in your product!
Another great way to build a sense of community is to make available to your visitors a form where they can submit there comments or suggestions, this will let your future customer feel that his opinion is being counted and they can make a difference.
Affiliate Program
Affiliate programs are a superior way to make a phenomenal amount of extra money and draw tons of new visitors! You may ask yourself why affiliate programs are always so successful? Yet there is a very simple answer, and that is that with affiliate programs everyone wins!
Set up an affiliate program on your website and you could double or triple your sales and watch as your traffic goes through the roof! The reason for this is because with affiliate programs there is incentive on both sides. First the affiliates are interested in making money by selling your product, and if you pay your affiliates enough you will have no need to advertise for you site any longer because the sales will be pouring in! Also suggest that you pay your affiliates percents of how much your product cost, that way they have more incentive to try to sell your most expensive product! Ways affiliate programs benefit the owner is simple: it draws sales and visitors.
Offer Free "Stuff"
Easily the simplest viral marketing technique. By offering your visitors something free in exchange for perhaps a verified email address, you can then email those visitors and notify them about updates on your website or product sales. Word of mouth always has been and always will be the best marketing technique and marketing gurus have known this forever!
There are numerous resources where you can download free stuff then turn around and give it away to your visitors. Some great ideas to get you started off is to offer your visitors free ebooks and free software. This software might cost a substantial amount of money to develop but it’s a one time fee for a decent stream of visitors for life! The options are endless, find something your visitors want and watch them roll on in!
source: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/2-18-2005-65950.asp
