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The Voice of Viral Marketing
by John Doetsch
Generating buzz through word of mouth will help drive greater sales and
from your most important customers.
Viral marketing strategies can effectively generate traffic to your
website by creating buzz-building campaigns that excite and energize your
customer base. However, in order to most effectively execute a successful
viral marketing project, it is important to build a significant
understanding of your target audience to tap into their social and
psychological network.
By creating articles or newsletters, for example, that resonate with your
audience, you will encourage loyal customers to share the useful
information or unique advice with their family and friends. Indeed, viral
marketing is one of the most powerful forms of product support as it
consists of unbiased recommendations from trusted sources.
Initiating a viral marketing campaign begins with the development of
unique and attractive content for your most loyal customers. While
articles that pertain to the product or service you are selling will help
draw visitors to your site, creating resources that speak to your audience
in a strategic fashion.
Once your marketing theme or ideas have been thoroughly cultivated, you
can begin to build a viral marketing campaign around your most critical
ideas. For example, post your articles on message boards or deliver
special content directly to consumers. At the end of each article, add a
link to your website and encourage your readers to send along the
information to their friends. Your article, if delivered appropriately,
will begin to make its way throughout the web passing from friend to
friend and deliver a core business message that brings dramatic business
returns.
Newsletters and ezines are also extremely effective means of capitalizing
on viral marketing campaigns. As consumers become inundated with spam and
other e-mailed “junk,” sites that can break through the clutter by
creating innovative means of communicating with customers via newsletters
are likely to generate significant word of mouth traffic.
Not surprisingly, then, the newsletters and ezines that own the greatest
popularity serve as the most effective platforms on which viral marketing
develops. Utilizing word of mouth recommendations, webmasters and small
business owners can generate more subscribers when they include tips,
tutorials, and relevant news clips that are quick and easy to read.
Indeed, making a successful viral marketing campaign successful relies on
more than just quality articles. The articles must spur the reader to act
and send information unprompted to someone else. Therefore, online
articles should serve as more than simple sales letters. They need to
provide readers with something that is unique. Modern internet readers do
not appreciate being used as business pawns and will quickly exit a site
that wastes their time. By utilizing newsletters, then, to promote
something more than just your business, online businesspeople can develop
a better viral campaign.
Several high profile viral marketing programs can be used as a benchmark
for the ultimate marketing success. BMW, for example, generated a
tremendous amount of attention via a series of short film clips they
published online at BMW Films. More recently, Burger King developed a
commercial featuring a fighting chicken that rode the e-mail circuit
through word of mouth.
Marketing experts believe that viral marketing is actually the most
powerful form of product attention available to consumers. Unlike
television ads or other paid advertising, viral marketing can not be
purchased. Instead it relies solely on the recommendations of individuals.
Yet, while a successful viral marketing campaign may be difficult to
construct, the benefits generated by unbiased attention will make your
business strong and successful.
About The Author: John Doetsch is founder of Websition.com, a
website content provider featuring articles written by the Internet's most
gifted authors. http://www.websition.com/
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