The Power Of Viral Marketing

Written by David Bell


You certainly know by now thatrepparttar term "viral marketing" is not just another dot-com cliché. Quiterepparttar 134894 contrary, it describesrepparttar 134895 incredible, unmatched power ofrepparttar 134896 Web to promote your business by marrying email torepparttar 134897 traditional concept of "word-of-mouth."

Viral marketing,repparttar 134898 concept of making each customer a marketer by encouraging word-of-mouth referrals, is indisputably one ofrepparttar 134899 most effective mediums of ongoing self-promotion a site can employ. It gives Internet companies a cost-efficient, proven tool to increase traffic and lower advertising costs.

Hotmail originally broke throughrepparttar 134900 mold by proving that companies no longer needed to spend millions on flashy advertising to becomerepparttar 134901 best and biggest inrepparttar 134902 business. With a simple viral marketing campaign they effectively corneredrepparttar 134903 market with a budget that spent money on original customer acquisition and not over-the-top Super Bowl ads.

However, instead of just standing by idly and hoping it happens, you can actually "drive" viral marketing by crafting an extremely effective viral marketing program targeted to your audience. This article will provide you withrepparttar 134904 key steps to create a viral marketing program that will power your business to new heights of success, and do it for a fraction ofrepparttar 134905 cost of other promotional efforts.

-DO EVERYTHING RIGHT FIRST

Your potential customers now haverepparttar 134906 power to tell colleagues, friends and family about great web site experiences in greater numbers and far faster than we could have imagined just a few years ago. Think ofrepparttar 134907 power of a dense email address book and a few mouse clicks. In fact, that isrepparttar 134908 "fuel" behind viral marketing. The downside is they can dorepparttar 134909 same thing regarding bad experiences withrepparttar 134910 same efficiency and speed. Research has shown that people share bad experiences up to 5 times more often than they tell about good ones. Before you post a site to your server and invite people to visit it, everything should be quality tested and in perfect order. While software makers can sometimes get away with shipping buggy software, you can't issue a "patch" to a site that has already turned off your target audience because in this market, your audience will go somewhere else, fast. And instead of gaining customers "geometrically", you'll be losing them exponentially.

-TWO TOOLS: Buttons and Links

There are two basic tools in your viral marketing arsenal: buttons and links. The idea is that with a single click a visitor can share your site with others, and those people in turn can dorepparttar 134911 same. The goal in designing and placing these buttons and links is to make them obvious, easy-to-use, and perhaps even rewarding to use. By making your buttons more obvious, you giverepparttar 134912 visitor a visual cue to pass your site on to a friend and take an active role inrepparttar 134913 creation of your own viral marketing campaign. You can take an even more active role and move beyond mere suggestion by actually offering your visitors an incentive to pass something on.

-ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS

The analysis is pretty straightforward. For your buttons and/or link to work, you've first got to get it in front of your target audience of potential customers. Second, your potential customers have to be able to readily tell what it is that has been artfully put in front of them. It's that old three-click rule - if you can't find what you want on a site in three clicks, you're going to surf elsewhere, and if you can't understand what you're reading immediately, you're going to tune out. Part of what needs to be clear to potential users is what they need to do and exactly how they can do it. If you fail in any of these elements or if you confuse your message with unnecessary complications, you're potential customer is gone, and you've blown your possibly one shot at a few seconds of their attention.

Your referral tool needs to, atrepparttar 134914 minimum, accomplish seven critical things:

1. Stand out fromrepparttar 134915 clutter ofrepparttar 134916 page. 2. Be instantly understood 3. Embody a clear call to action. 4. Give clear instructions on how to act. 5. Be placed effectively. 6. Offer an incentive. 7. Makerepparttar 134917 offer simple, clear and obvious.

-BUTTON VS. LINK

Button: Eye-catching, can be graphical. Link: Line of blue text. Both viable, both serve their respective purpose. The tool you choose will depend on two factors: 1) what you want your visitor to share with others, and 2)repparttar 134918 context in which your visitor will be sharing. If you want people to share content items such as articles or white papers, you can use either a button or a link, although a button is more appropriate as it's more attention getting. Also, ifrepparttar 134919 context is your site as a whole or a specific product or a service on your site, then a button is preferable because eye-catching buttons can be designed and placed by using simple code that will load almost regardless of browser or bandwidth. However, whenrepparttar 134920 context is email, whether mailing to your own opt-in list, doing a targeted promotion, or simply sending "Thank you" emails when customers submit an order, you are better off sticking with a link. Many of your potential customers don't have email that supports HTML, and even if they do, a button can easily get chewed to bits in cyberspace when moving across platforms and programs. A good rule of thumb is site = button and email = link.

-OPTIMIZE YOUR BUTTON

To optimizerepparttar 134921 design of your button, look back torepparttar 134922 seven elements of success. To fulfillrepparttar 134923 first rule, and to stand out fromrepparttar 134924 clutter ofrepparttar 134925 page,repparttar 134926 button needs to be small enough not to take up too much above-the-fold real estate, but not so small that it won't be seen. Simplicity isrepparttar 134927 key here - your button should have a pleasing and eye-catching design, not one that will giverepparttar 134928 viewer a headache from Flash overkill or frightening color combinations. If your user doesn't know what your aesthetically pleasing button is for, they're probably not going to use it. This is where you need to do what your elementary teacher always admonished you to do: use your words carefully. Clearly spell out in straightforward terms whatrepparttar 134929 button is for, why you want your user to use it, and finally, how they go about using it.

"How To Use Viral Marketing To Blast and Expand Your Sales!"

Written by A.T.Rendon


Viral Marketing isrepparttar current buzzword phrase with regard to doing business online.

In a study released earlier this month by Forrester Research, http://www.forrester.com/,repparttar 134303 conclusion was reached that those of us wanting to engage in online marketing should focus particularly and more aggressively on viral marketing. What exactly is "Viral Marketing"?

Viral marketing isrepparttar 134304 Internet equivalent of "word-of-mouth advertising.

Have you ever visited a web site or received an email that impressed you so much that you immediately sent an email to your personal list of friends and family to share that info with them?

If you answered yes torepparttar 134305 above question then you have already been bitten byrepparttar 134306 viral marketing bug.

It does not matter whether it was online business related or not, viral marketing isrepparttar 134307 act of spreadingrepparttar 134308 online word or information about a given subject.

Many a non-business web site have received a million plus visitors due strictly to viral marketing. Those of us wanting to do business online can only dream of tapping into half that number of visitors.

How can you create a Viral Marketing effect for your online business?

There are several methods that have proven successful to create a viral marketing effect:

1. Give It Away For FREE.

The concept of FREE has fueledrepparttar 134309 imagination andrepparttar 134310 success ofrepparttar 134311 Internet itself. And, althoughrepparttar 134312 FREE business model has been greatly scaled back inrepparttar 134313 post-bust Internet days, it is difficult to argue withrepparttar 134314 viral marketing success achieved byrepparttar 134315 early pioneers of FREE email, FREE web sites, FREE auto-responders, etc.

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