How To Use Viral "Refer-A-Friend" Promotions To Increase Traffic And Sales

Written by Matt Hockin


"Viral Publicity" and "Viral Marketing" are really just new buzz words forrepparttar oldest form of publicity inrepparttar 134742 world...

"Referral" or "Word of Mouth."

The Internet takes this ancient form of "buzz" and promotion and amplifies it with a global network of people connected digitally. "Word of mouth" now has an Internet version called "word of mouse" (word of computer mouse). With greatly increased speeds, people refer things to their friends and families spreadingrepparttar 134743 word throughrepparttar 134744 Internet and torepparttar 134745 far-reaching corners ofrepparttar 134746 world.

Many smart marketers and publicity people have learned to harnessrepparttar 134747 power of viral publicity with Internet "Refer-A-Friend" promotional techniques and tools.

Examples of Viral "Refer-A-Friend" Promotions:

Viral "Refer-A-Friend" techniques can be used to promote just about anything underrepparttar 134748 sun.

For example, Audri Lanford conducted a giveaway contest at her new www.wz.com website where she gave away 4 Sony PS2's before Christmas as a website promotion. According to Audri, she gave people who had enteredrepparttar 134749 Giveawayrepparttar 134750 opportunity to get additional entries and additional chances to win by telling a few of their friends onrepparttar 134751 Thank You page...

WZ.com Giveaway Promotion Thank You Page http://wz.com/ps2/indexw.html

Onrepparttar 134752 Thank You page, every giveaway entrant receivedrepparttar 134753 following message: "Tell your friends about WZ.com, and get an additional entry for each friend you email." They are then givenrepparttar 134754 opportunity to tell their friends aboutrepparttar 134755 giveaway atrepparttar 134756 "Tell-A-Friend" page...

WZ.com "Refer-A-Friend" Page http://wz.com ellafriend/index.html

In return forrepparttar 134757 favor, they receive an additional chance to win for every friend they refer. This simple addition increased Tell-a-Friend results by 96 times (9600%)!, said Audri.

This is an amazing (and inexpensive) way to increase traffic and sales!

Another example ofrepparttar 134758 "Refer-A-Friend" technique at work can be seen at Internet marketing guru Seth Godin's new IdeaVirus.com website.

"Unleashing The Ideavirus" by Seth Godin http://www.ideavirus.com/

"Unleashing The Ideavirus" is Seth Godin's excellent new book about viral marketing. Seth is promoting his hard copy book by offeringrepparttar 134759 book in its entirety - FOR FREE! You can downloadrepparttar 134760 "eBook" version at his www.ideavirus.com website.

Why would Seth give it away for free?

Because offering something of high perceived value for free is an excellent way to promote something onrepparttar 134761 Internet. People are excited that they can getrepparttar 134762 complete book for free, so they naturally tell their friends. In fact, Seth Godin uses a viral "Refer-A-Friend" tool on this website as well...

IdeaVirus Send It http://www.ideavirus.com/sendit.html

To see real-time data on how people are spreadingrepparttar 134763 word with this viral "Refer-A-Friend' system, you can watch it spread at Seth's "Watch It Spread" page: http://ideavirus.gazooba.com/servlets/IVStatusReport2

"Let Your Little Website Shine" Part 3

Written by Lynne Schlumpf


Thanks for joining me again for this series! One more note about your website before we move on. To enable faster loading, make sure you designaterepparttar size of your graphics in your code and create alternate text (the alt tag) for those who don’t feel like waiting for your page to load. Now we move on to just plain good customer service: 4. Quick response when people request information, report trouble: This one pretty much speaks for itself, but it is worth mentioning a couple of things about this. Try, if you can, to check your email at least 3 times a day. Many people are shut-ins or retired or homeworkers, and they expect a quick response to their questions or complaints. If your Internet Provider can give you access to Auto-Responders, these are fairly successful in giving your website visitors a quick response that says you've received their email and will respond as soon as possible, but sometimes these auto-responders annoy people more than they put them at ease. Human beings always prefer to talk to human beings. This is especially evident inrepparttar 134741 fact that people still consider voice mail and answering machines a necessary evil. Some may see your auto-responder as just that. Auto-responders are more effectively used when someone wants some detailed information and wants it immediately. If at all possible, ask for their phone number so you can call them and give them answers live. I cannot count how many times I have answered our corporate line, only to hear a big sigh of relief onrepparttar 134742 other end, followed byrepparttar 134743 person saying, "Wow, I got a live voice!" Many people prefer not to be called onrepparttar 134744 phone, so give them a choice when they write to you. Some are paranoid that you're going to try to sell them something. If they email and expect email in return, make it polite, prompt, and helpful. If you are not sure what they're asking, don't try to create an answer from incomplete facts from them. Ask them to clarify by return email so that you may answer their question more effectively. Customer service, customer service, and more customer service will make you stand heads above your competition. Try a little experiment with some of your competitors. See how long or in what way they respond to a question about their site. As far as reporting trouble on your web page operations, this was mentioned in Element 3 above. If they are reporting trouble about a product or service you sold them, offer them choices of restitution. Most people will not want to return something if it can be resolved overrepparttar 134745 phone. Give them a liberal guarantee, like 90 days or something. They'll appreciate this more than you'll know. 5. Is useful: There is nothing worse than going to a website that you expected to find "content" in, only to discover it is just a bunch of

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