Viral Marketing – What is it and Why use it?

WHAT IS VIRAL MARKETING?

Viral marketing is one of the very best kept secrets in online marketing and can generate huge quantities of traffic to your website very quickly.

The best way to think about it is just like a virus spreading. All the small actions that people take online combine to create a much larger, unstoppable force as your information gets passed around the Internet.

The effect can happen via emails, forum comments, blog comments, word of mouth, social networking sites, articles, and so on. There are literally hundreds of ways to spread your viral marketing message.

You can use this “word of mouth” style advertising in your own promotions with great effects. A viral campaign will outlast any paid program, as it can never be stopped, unless people take down their websites.

This means that a constant stream of traffic will flow to the website you create the viral marketing promotion around.

HOW TO USE VIRAL MARKETING IMMEDIATELY

• Give away free viral special reports on a topic within your market.
• Give away free viral ebooks.
• Give away free viral articles and e-zine publications.
• Give away free viral software (which links to your website).
• Give away free viral audio recordings (which links to your website).
• Give away free viral video (which links to your website).

THE KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL VIRAL MARKETING

Here are some quick tips to getting started and, most importantly, being effective:

• Allow other marketers in your market to give the free viral product to their customers free of charge. Put a value on the price of the book, and code the links so they all point back to your main website. This is a good way to promote your products.
• Create a report around a subject that is a hot topic or that solves a big problem for people.
• Give away the great content to people for free, simply for just visiting your blog or social networking profile page. If you demonstrate what you have to offer for free, then people will wonder how great your actual products are.
• Encourage people to pass the product to their friends and other people. People will want to publish it online and post about it on forums, blogs, and so on.

HOW TO CREATE VERY SIMPLE VIRAL REPORTS TO GIVE AWAY

The key is to give the impression that the free report has huge value and is worthy of a $47–$97 price tag. Provide great content and give away some of your best secrets. This will really create a buzz about you and your website.

The report should provide enough value that people cannot believe you have given it away free. This will create posts on forums and blogs and really get it to spread quickly.

If you write articles for your prospects, then a good tip is to combine ten or more and compile them into a viral report. This is a very quick and easy way to get started with viral marketing.

As long as the content is good quality and you distribute it widely enough, it will just continue to spread and spread. The keys are your content and picking the right style for your market.

Let’s look into that in more detail…

WHAT TYPE OF MARKETING WORKS BEST?

Content is king when it comes to viral reports, as people won’t pass it on if it’s useless information. The content you create should be something that solves a problem for people or engages them on a current topic of conversation.

Decide what people want to know most in your market, and then give it to them. You can ask your prospects and customers questions and get them to fill out questionnaires in return for the free report when complete (via your blog or social networking profile).

Look at current trends that are being discussed on forums, blogs, and social networking sites. Look for the most popular ones and then create a report about them—linking your own product into the equation.

Tips and Article Reports:

Some of the best viral reports to create are based around tips and articles in the market you are promoting to. You can simply combine a number of articles that already exist on the subject and edit them and add some further clarification. People love to be given new tips and advice on how to do something better, faster, or cheaper.

In certain cases, the more plain and bare the reports look, the more people are prone to reading them and passing them on. On the other hand, if they are seen as unusual and new, then the viral reports can create a lot of interest.

White Papers:

You can also create white papers (authoritative reports) and spread them virally. This can be a good idea, as many people see them as official documents and are more likely to read them than a report with a fancy graphic on the cover.

Special Reports to Solve a Major Problem:

Another idea is to create special report on a subject that is causing a lot of people problems. The viral report should just focus tightly on one particular problem and explain how to solve it. Make the report a step-by-step guide on how to remove the problem or get around it.

Trial Versions:

Offer a trial version of a product, or a limited version. If the product is software, then this works very well. Typically you can offer a 30-day trial run without any problems. This is known to increase traffic as the application is passed around the Internet virally.

If you are promoting an information product, you can cut certain chapters out of the ebook and publish them for free inside a viral ebook. This is like a sneak preview, but provides really valuable content. If the content is high quality, it will be passed virally from person to person.

Case Studies & Interviews:

You should also think about writing case studies of customers who have bought your product and then building them into full-length interviews in which the customer reveals all.

People like to read exclusives (just think about the popularity of celebrity gossip) and find out what the real secrets are.

WHERE TO GIVE THE VIRAL PRODUCT AWAY

You must market and “sell” the free report as much as you would a paid product. This is one of the missing keys in viral marketing. A lot of people think that you only need to create something free and people will go wild over it, but this is not true. In fact many people don’t use free products, as they perceive them to have no value.

You should mention your free report in the following places:

• Blogs—add this as a permanent feature on your site and talk about it in each blog post.
• Blog comments—make reference to it on other people’s blogs.
• Forums—add the link to the report inside your blog signature file as discussed earlier. You can also create a new conversation for people to provide feedback on.
• Email important people in your marketplace and offer to send them the report for free.
• Ask other authors in your market to send it to their email list. They will probably do this if the content is good enough.
• Add the attachment to social networking sites and send out announcements to your friends list. Ensure that every page has a link back to your website and a clear call to action. Include partial stories in the ebook, which are explained in more detail on the website. This is a great way to ensure people visit your website.

SUMMARY

Always try to incorporate viral marketing into any website or any marketing campaign you create and run. You can really increase your exposure and web traffic from something that is relatively simple to do.

By: Steve Peirce