Viral Marketing

When you run a business, be it online or offline , you need two levels of functioning.

One is the level at which you pay a lot of attention to details (micro-level) and the other is the level at which you try to look at the business as a whole (macro-level).

The micro-level is important, but it is disparate and time-consuming.

As an entrepreneur, you need to give higher priority to the macro-level because you do not want to miss the wood for the trees .

Why don't you focus on the woods and try to make it big? Allow us to pay attention to the minute details .

Viral Marketing

 

Several marketers argue that viral marketing is a fad because it is perceived more as an art than science. It is perhaps the most misunderstood frontier in web marketing. It uses the proven word-of-mouth or email technique to reach and affect the target market. Viral marketing is all about winning attention and it is the least expensive marketing techniques ever.

The success of viral marketing lies in its functioning that duplicates a real world virus which is stealthy, patient and cunning. When set off, it encourages individuals to pass on marketing messages to others. This method of promotion involves the dissemination of person-to-person messages without the originators' involvement. It occurs when creative messages you are conveying resonates with the target market you are speaking to. One critical strategy to success with viral marketing is making the viral object irresistibly good that receivers absolutely want to pass it on.

Viral marketing has caught the attention of marketers, small and big, as it is highly credible with customers, relatively cheap and delivered amazing results quickly. However, the misconceptions that viral marketing succeeds due to the tools you use are wrong, but the information has got to be good. It is just a marketing strategy that entices people to pass on your sales messages to their kin. If there is some thing bad about viral marketing, it is that it cannot be regulated.

However, viral marketing is evolving further and is growing fast and virally. That is the reason advertisers put their money on viral marketing's effective way to get customers.

But viral marketing is not all that easy as it appears. Employing the viral principles but not using the power of web to spread the word, no marketing technique can succeed. Creation of messages that propagate perpetually and get distributed exponentially afterwards takes continuous monitoring from you.

Important steps to the success of Viral Internet Marketing

But these weaknesses don’t have to hold your online viral marketing campaign back. In fact, if you’re aware of these weaknesses, you can counteract them at the beginning of your campaign by taking the following steps into your Viral Internet marketing success plan .

Start your Viral Internet marketing campaign with an end in mind

This is basic, fundamental, “Marketing 101″ - and it should be to start every marketing campaign with the end in mind. But for some reason, marketers get carried away with the message, and forget about the purpose of the message.

If the purpose of your viral marketing campaign is to make sales, then design your campaign to drive people into your sales process.

Spend the time developing a campaign which will speak to your audience

This is a given - if your viral marketing campaign stinks, it has absolutely zero chance of success. So it’s worth spending a lot of time making sure you’ve got it “right” before you release your content into the market.

A good viral marketing message appeals to a specific audience in a way which makes them want to share the message with others.

A lot of content-based viral marketing campaigns are designed to be clever, or funny. They’re not just successful because people enjoy the campaign - they’re successful because people send the funny or clever content to their friends so that their friends see them as being funny or clever too by association.

This is the psychological “hot button” which good viral marketing content presses.

But - watch out!

If your message comes across as condescending, or fake, or unreliable, you’re guaranteed it will flop instantly.

Just as people associate themselves with a funny message which they forward, they’ll also associate themselves with a condescending message - so why would they send a condescending or fake message to their buddies?

(This is particularly important when you’re developing a campaign for a youth audience.)

So keep this in mind when you’re targeting your campaign to a specific audience - or you could find that you use the wrong language and alienate your target market.

Offer a compelling reason to “spread the infection”

Many viral marketing campaigns only offer the reward of being associated with good content as a reason for someone to forward a message.

But you don’t need to leave it at that. Remember, it takes effort to forward something to a friend - so help increase the “infection rate” of your online viral marketing campaign by giving people a reason to spread the word!

Give things a little push in the right direction

Remember the theory of compounding from above? Albert Einstein called it the most powerful force in the universe.

Well, there are only two factors which make it even more powerful.

1. One

is the rate at which it compounds (i.e. the number of people referred by each visitor). This is what the previous four points have focused on.

The second is the sum of people you start with.

The more people you inoculate (or show the message to) at the start of the campaign, the faster the spread of the viral marketing campaign will be.

That’s why it’s a good idea to send your viral marketing campaign to your existing database - even if they may have already bought the products or services which your viral marketing campaign sells. This will give your campaign a kick start.

Or pay for some popular bloggers to review your campaign.

Or write some media releases.

Or run a pay-per-click campaign to get people to visit your viral marketing website.

Allow personalization of “Refer a Friend” fields

Nothing converts better than a personal recommendation about a product, from one close friend to another.

So don’t limit the “infection rate” of your viral marketing campaign by limiting the conversion rate of your emails.

Let your users completely customize the “Refer a Friend” e-mails which they will be sending to their friends about your website.

Let them change the subject lines, the message text - everything!

A good copywriter knows how to target a message specifically to a person, or a small group of people. And you’ll find that your visitors will do the same - targeting your marketing message directly to their friends.

Of course, have several different “standard” message texts which get sent out (in case the user is too lazy to type anything) - and split test these messages until you find one which works particularly well.

But don’t put words into other people’s mouths. Let people to send a message to their buddies about your website as if they were sending a message to their buddies about your website.

Test and Measure

Track user statistics to work out where your visitors are coming from. Track hits on your “Refer a Friend” page, track how many e-mail addresses people refer your campaign to, and how many of these end up visiting your site.

Split test several different standard versions of your “Refer a Friend” text (the versions, which people will receive if they don’t personalize the message themselves).To find out exactly which versions of the text generate the highest click through rates. This is marketing pay dirt!

This information helps you run successful viral campaigns over and over again.

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