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By EMTactics
Published: May 28, 2009
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Viral Marketing Ideas
Coming up with new
and innovative ways to market your business and its products or
services has become both easier - and more difficult - thanks to modern
technology. On the one hand, the Internet has made it possible to
spread the word about a product or service with far less money or
resources than in the past. On the other hand, since such methods are
accessible to so many people, the playing field is crowded and
competition is fierce. Viral marketing is a term that is thrown around
a lot among people looking to advertise their website, but how can one
actually be successful at it?
People often refer to viral marketing as if it is the most intuitive,
foolproof way to promote a business and its products or services. From
the sound of it, it would seem that all one needs to do is set up a
Facebook or Twitter account and watch business boom. The reality,
though, is that viral marketing requires creativity - and a healthy
dose of "thinking outside the box". Simply copying what other people
have done before just won't cut it when it comes to using this strategy
successfully.
Because viral marketing means essentially the same thing as word of
mouth advertising, many people have the misconception that it just
requires a large enough network of friends or followers on a popular
social networking site in order to work. Having such a setup certainly
won't hurt in a viral marketing campaign, but the fact is that one must
have something really compelling that others will enthusiastically want
to pass along. A simple link to a website, blog or article just isn't
incentive enough for people to bother their friends with it.
While viral marketing is by no means easy or cut-and-dry, it doesn't
need to be complicated. A classic example of a wildly successful viral
marketing campaign was Hotmail. Hotmail wanted to sign up more users
for its free email service. In addition to using traditional
advertisements, Hotmail included a link at the bottom of each of its
email user's messages where recipients could sign up for their own
Hotmail accounts. This ingenious move allowed Hotmail to continuously
expand its advertising reach; each message sent out cast an ever
widening net that extended to more and more people.
Viral Marketing Ideas
As demonstrated by the example of Hotmail, viral marketing does not
have to revolve around a flashy or complicated idea - although it
sometimes does. Incredibly elaborate viral marketing campaigns have
been created in the past with great success. However, such campaigns
usually had very large budgets to back them up. Small business owners
and others with more conservative budgets must come up with truly
compelling - yet simple - ideas for these types of campaigns.
If you already have a fairly successful online presence, you can use
viral marketing to help increase its reach even more with relative
ease. For instance, you could run a traditional giveaway or contest in
which people sign up to win prizes. However, you can give it s viral
marketing spin by encouraging people to get their friends to enter the
contest, as well. For each friend a person gets to sign up, extra
entries are made on their behalf. If done correctly, such a technique
can garner you an ever increasing number of people entering your
contest - and learning more about your product and/or service
simultaneously.
Another great viral marketing idea is using a well written and
informative ebook to solicit interest in your product or service. If
you can create a quality product, you're far likelier to get people
talking about it - and passing it along to friends and family members.
When using an ebook - or an application, software or other product - in
viral marketing, it is critical to make it something that either
provides really useful information, or that has something truly
noteworthy that others will want to pass along.
Creating a product to use in a viral marketing campaign is really just
a means to get people talking about your company. At the beginning of
such a campaign, the product (video, ebook, software, etc) should avoid
directly mentioning the name of your company; rather, it should subtly
pique the interest of peple who use, view or read it. Once a person has
been drawn in, the campaign can progress and gradually reveal more
about the identity of your business.
No matter what type of product you choose to use in your viral
marketing campaign, it is important that it is something that people
will truly want to share with others. If people feel hesitant about the
motives behind the video or ebook you create - for instance, if they
feel that it is purely an advertisement for your company - then they
probably won't send it along to others. No one likes to be the person
who inadvertently sends ads to their friends; keep this in mind when
designing your campaign, and you will be well ahead of the game and are
far likelier to achieve success.
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