How You Can Use Viral Marketing

blujam — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:56:00 +0000

Hi Friend,

Jeff Davis here, and before we
get into the meat and potatoes of
how you can use viral marketing to help get a
buzz going about your small business, let’s
start with a definition of exactly what
“viral marketing” means.

According to the Wikipedia, “Viral marketing
and viral advertising refer to marketing
techniques that use preexisting social
networks to produce increases in brand
awareness, through self-replicating viral
processes, analogous to the spread of
pathological and computer viruses. It can be
word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the
network effects of the Internet. Viral
marketing is a marketing phenomenon that
facilitates and encourages people to pass
along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral
promotions may take the form of video clips,
interactive Flash games, advergames, images,
or even text messages.”

If you’ve ever had a hotmail, yahoo or G-mail
account, you’ve participated in a viral
marketing campaign every time you sent an
email to someone – because the company
inserted a small (and usually discreet
advertisement) at the bottom of all of your
outgoing emails – inviting the people you
were communicating with to receive their own
free email account.

So how can you put a viral marketing campaign
together for your own business – and more
importantly, do you even want to?

Let me answer that second question first,
okay? YES! You definitely want to take the
time to brainstorm your own viral marketing
campaign – even if you don’t someday want to
be as big as hotmail, yahoo or Gmail.

Why? Because according to a recent survey
done by Forrester Research, people are almost
65% more likely to trust a review posted by a
peer – or even a complete stranger – than
they are to trust the marketing or sales
information put out by the company.

Don’t believe me? Check out Amazon.com and
I-tunes. Why is this the case? Because as
consumers we tend to think that the average
“Joe Blow” has less of a personal agenda when
posting his review about the latest “Dixie
Chicks” album and so we give it more weight.

And, by the way, this is a normal reaction –
it’s one that’s kind of hard-wired into all
of us. People have always shared the things
they like – or hate – with their friends and
family members. Back in the 50′s and 60′s,
our grandparents used to talk to their
neighbors over the “back fence,” call each
other on the phone or tell their friends
during lunch. The difference is, these days
we use the Internet and cell phones.

What’s interesting though, is that with the
popularity of the Internet, our trust – and
believe in “social proof” – has become even
stronger.

By creating your own viral marketing
campaign, you’ll be doing more than getting
the word out about your new affiliate
product. You’ll be gathering social proof –
and that will help your sales to go through
the roof.

So how do you set up your own viral marketing
campaign? The first thing to do is to get
back to the basics.

Here’s the real “secret” to making a lot of
money with affiliate products. Have the
right product, with the right message to the
right people in the right time.

So start with your affiliate product. Make
sure that there’s a hungry audience for
whatever you’re selling.

Then make sure that you’re sending out the
right message – an in the right way. If
you’re marketing a product to teens, you’ll
want to make sure that it’s something they
want – and you’ll have to reach them where
they’re hanging out. That might be on
MySpace, twitter or even Friendster.

What’s the right message? Maybe it’s a
special report. But it could just as easily
be a video. Or an audio mp3 file. Match
your message to your audience. And finally,
make sure that you’re getting your message
out at the right time – when your audience is
ready to buy it.

Make your viral marketing campaign stand out
from the crowd – because that’s how it’s
going to get passed around and become viral.
By understanding the basics – who your
audience is, what they want, how they want to
get it and when they want it – all you have
to do next is to create something that your
audience loves – or hates – or finds
interesting enough – to pass around to their
friends. And because your product comes with
an implied endorsement – social proof – those
people will pass it around to other people –
and the buzz goes on…and on…and on…and you’ll
start hearing the “ka-ching!” of your cash
register going off a lot more often…

http://forexplatinumclub.com/viral/ebooks

Talk soon,

Jeff Davis

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