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How to Use Viral Marketing for Online Profit
by Daegan Smith
When Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith founded Hotmail.com they promoted it
with a simple idea they called “Word of computer” advertising. Every
message sent by a subscriber had a one-line promotional message
attached….”Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Hotmail at www.hotmail.com”.
Within the first 18 months of business they claimed 12 million sign-ups to
their service… more than what CNN and AOL could garner in the same time
period. With a cost per acquisition of just 4 cents this was a resounding
success and a brilliant use of Viral Marketing Technique.
Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass
on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential
growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such
strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message
to thousands, to millions."
It is an extremely effective form of word-of – mouth online promotion
strategy used for amazing success by web frontrunners like Hotmail and
Bluemountain.com. For a home based or small business, viral marketing is a
smart and cost effective way to promote business and generate new sales
leads. It is easy and fun.
The biggest benefit of viral marketing is that it helps you maintain a
cost effective level of brand awareness at all times. It can reach beyond
your target audience and mine for new leads; it creates a buzz around your
products and services and provides accountability when tracked.
Also see: http://hackvan.com/pub/stig/etext/viral-marketing.html
Here are some tips for you to get your viral marketing campaign on the
right track:
1. Have a great idea: Unless you have a really remarkable idea, it is
going to be hard to get people interested in it; much less share it with
others. A boring idea doesn’t get passed on. If you have a regular
consumer product to sell and still want to use viral marketing, put on
your creative hat and craft a promotional message that will make people
want to pass it on to others.
2. Identify your core group: your core group or “hive” is a group of
people who share a common interest and talk to each other about it. The
core group can also be called ‘agents’. These are the guys who will be
responsible for sending your ‘virus’ ahead. If your product/idea/ service
doesn’t move this group, it isn’t going to get any further.
3. Ease of use: have you ever received an email with a mile long URL in
it, asking to be sent to “15 people for a free gift”? if your answer is
‘yes’ then you know what I am talking about. Make it easy for your agents
to tell their friends about your company. if they have to download pages
of text or heavy graphics, they are more likely to hit the “delete” button
and get out of there, fast!
4. Make it persistent: When you have built a sizeable community of
converts, keep them happy. It is harder to go out and get new agents than
making the existing ones work for you.
5. Referrals: A good way of utilizing viral marketing for your site is
through referrals. If you are offering content or service, you can put up
a “Tell a Friend” button that lets customers recommend products or Web
pages via email to friends. Recommend-It and BigNoseBird.com are some of
the sites that offer these services for free. These services allow you to
keep track of those who recommend your site and the people they recommend
it to.
Once you have started off the process all you have to do is sit back and
enjoy the fruits of your labor. For more information on viral marketing
take a look at: http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2003/04/02/viral-marketing
About The Author:
http://www.perfect-home-based-business-opportunities.com/index.html - The
Net’s Top Growing Source for Home Business Information
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