Viral Marketing Is A “Killer” Way to Drive Traffic

by lonelysandwich

Rather, the term refers to a marketing plan that spreads like a virus – in other words, from one person to the next.

Otherwise known as ‘buzz marketing’, viral marketing really just refers to any tactic to create a buzz, and get other people to market you product or service for you, with no extra effort on your part.
For example, imagine you send out a message or bulletin to 100 people, and 10 of those 100 send it to 100 more, and 10 of those people send it to 100 more and so on and so forth, until you have reached hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands.

This, in a nutshell, is what viral marketing does – it disperses your marketing message to masses of people that you may not have been able to reach with other traditional media. In fact, viral marketing can essentially turn your prospects into apostles for your own product or service!

When you can harness the social popularity of things like games, videos, surveys, comment graphics, etc. you have the power to reach an infinite number of users that would otherwise be beyond marketing contact.

I recommend utilizing a viral approach anytime you use a message, bulletin, comment, etc. to market. In future editions, I’ll demonstrate exactly how to do this, step-by-step.

One of the biggest mistakes inexperienced marketers make, is using the same tactics you would on a sales page. I don’t recommend a marketing piece full of product promotions, sales gimmicks, “last chance before prices increase” tactics, etc. In fact I warn against marketing like this, as this is can be perceived as “spammy” and will turn your prospects off.

Additionally, many ISP’s may delete your account, flag your email and take your IP address so you cannot participate on the network again.

Instead we want a campaign that will build a vast friends list, and do so in a short amount of time, and then we can market softly to your list.

Create marketing pieces that contain low perceived spam content in the subject line and throughout the message body. Speaking of the message body, keep your content short and narrow. In other words, do YOU want to sit through a lengthy email message? Probably not. Also, make your sentence lines narrow rather than wide on the page because they will are easier to read and will probably get read.
Your subject line should intrigue the reader to jump into your “copy”.

Your copy should entice the reader to then click the link on your message to take them to your capture page. Your capture page should move them to take action. Best action to have them take? A simple opt-in for a free AND valuable gift. (Once you start researching internet marketing tools and reports on the net, you’ll find plenty of them available to you for free.) That’s the exchange. You get their contact information, they get a valuable gift for doing so.

Now, you need to create several more messages to load into your autoresponder and more freebies for them to receive in the weeks to follow.

At some point you will need to SELL something to them or they’ll get accustomed to always receiving FREE stuff and won’t be conditioned to ever BUY.

You are now developing an incredibly valuable asset. One that will pay in the years to come IF you treat it as a valuable commodity…remember, opting OUT is as easy as OPTING in. Don’t give your assets a reason to ever consider that.