Viral Marketing Method
July 30, 2009 by ulink2
Filed under Viral Marketing
So you want to get free traffic to your website? Have you ever tried viral marketing?
Viral Marketing, if done right can explode your website traffic in just a few weeks time. The best part is it is totally free and very effective.
If your in advertising and can get free search engine traffic you will get more visitors and make more sales to your website. It’s as simple as that.
How do you start viral marketing? Well you can create a free report with your product inside as a backend and tell people that download the report, that they can make money with the report by changing the links in the report to their affiliate link.
This way other people have an incentive to give the report away to their visitors and list members and thus the viral effect starts happening as more people read the report and start doing the same thing. You pay all your affiliates a good commission and you make the smaller percentage because they sold the product for you.
The benefit to them is they get money for the sale and you get to recruit a many affiliates as possible. Just image for one minute, that you created a report and 100 affiliates gave it away to their list of 1000 each. Your report will be seen by 100,000 people. Do you see the power in viral marketing?
Another thing you can do is make a piece of software or buy resell rights to the software and give it away. You advertise inside the software and people that download it and use it will see your ad every time they use the tool. This a great way for permanent exposure.
So you can create a viral video or ebook/report or software but how do you market it on the web?
1 Use article directories and write articles on your topic.
2 Upload you video to video share sites.
3 Use Cnet and others to give away free software.
4 Use Social Networks to post your reports and videos to.
5 Start an affiliate content site and have your viral brandable PDF in your promo section.
Viral marketing is one of the best ways to get free targeted traffic to your website. The best part is, the viral effect compounds itself, so after you do some essential marketing you won’t be able to stop the traffic even if you wanted to.
Top 10 Online Business Marketing Mistakes
Before starting up any kind of business, one must set up a plan to earn more than we spend and avoid mistakes along the way. Here are a few internet marketing mistakes that you should watch out for and avoid:
1. Making viewers wait.
Don’t regret paying more for a hostile package that could bring you to people fast. If your website is constantly down, your server is slow, your graphics take two minutes load, you can say goodbye to your potential customers.
2. Technical arrogance.
Never assume that everyone has the latest version of a program to view your site. Always have plain HTML and text versions ready for these users who do not have Macromedia’s flash installed. Also, take notes from successful sites. Outsource to a pro for SEO writing, web design, and programming to invest in a good template for your site if you’re not that confident on your technical prowess.
3. Not marketing offline.
Complement online traffic to your site by marketing offline as well, because no one is online all the time.
4. Not remaining timely.
If you want to attract customers, you need to be updated on recent and upcoming events that are relevant to your site. If you’ve got marketing materials on your site about Memorial Day special and it’s June 15th, you’re losing customers.
5. Poor linkages.
Focus on building long-term passive traffic rather than bulk traffic packages or trying traffic gimmicks. However, be very careful with whom you align yourself. Some companies operate co-registration and affiliate programs that violate the CAN-SPAM act and other rules and regulations. Check out any company that offers you anything , especially those who offer you anything that’s quick and easy.
6. Giving users the third degree.
Signing up for newsletters or making purchases should be easy for your customers. Avoid making them go through a number of links or asking too many questions before complete tasks. You loose 10-15 percent of your potential customers for each question you ask them.
7. Not using viral marketing.
Let your customers create ‘buzzwords’ for you through simple ‘forward to a friend’ links or ‘two for one offers’ or offline marketing on t-shirts and other accessories that your customers can wear. Viral marketing or ‘word of mouth’ (in offline marketing lingo) could create an exponential growth of your site’s visibility by spreading from customer to customer and then business to business.
8. Resorting to cheap gimmicks.
Some marketers resort to goofy and even phony campaigns just to gain brand exposure. These could be entertaining and even viral but sometimes those could backfire because they are irrelevant to the customers and sometimes even to your product or service. Provide something that convert to sales and not just to generate shock or surprise. Connect with your buyers in a positive way by providing products and services that are worth talking about. Associate your site with quality rather than gimmicks and you’ll have customers coming back.
9. Not collecting email addresses.
This is not the same as spamming email addresses because unlike spamming, you ask for your customer’s permission to send them your newsletters and other updates to your site. Remember that spamming could cost you because fines could be very heavy when you are found to be in violation of CAN-SPAM laws. By collection email addresses, you maintain your target audience and your potential market.
10. Mistaking Traffic for Results.
Only because a lot of people seem to be clicking on your ad doesn’t mean that they are buying. Remember that some sites actually buy traffic just to maintain top-line business. But if these people aren’t buying, how do you expect to even earn off it? Continuously paying for this traffic can be expensive. On the other hand, just because you have enough traffic, it does not also mean that your income is guaranteed for the next months to come. What you should really focus on is, how much of this traffic actually converts to sales? Everyday is a challenge to offer something that your client really needs, to persuade them that they need what you’re offering and that you are offering the best of what they need. Online customers actually know what they want, so it is up to your to tell them that what they want is what you are offering.
Viral Marketing Lesson Seven
July 29, 2009 by ulink2
Filed under Viral Marketing
Well we have come to the final lesson in the Viral Marketing Crash
Course. I sure hope you have enjoyed your lessons.
Today we are going to talk about folksonomies (tagging) as a viral
marketing tool.
Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging, social
classification, social indexing, and social tagging) is the practice
and method of collaboratively managing tags to categorize
content.
The fairly new consumer phenomenon is called “tagging”. Tagging
is powerful because consumers are creating an organizational
structure for online content. Folksonomies not only enable people
to file away content under tags, but, even better, share it with
others by filing it under a global taxonomy that they created.
Here’s how tagging works. Using sites such as del.icio.us – a
bookmark sharing site – and Flickr – a photo sharing site -
consumers are collaborating on categorizing online content under
certain keywords, or tags.
For instance, an person can post photographs of their iPod on
Flickr and file it under the tag “iPod.” These images are now not
only visible under the individual user’s iPod tag but also under the
community iPod tag that displays all images consumers are
generating and filing under the keyword. Right now Flickr has
more than 3,500 photos that are labeled “iPod.”
You can also use Digg.com. All of digg’s content is created,
submitted, and judged by its audience. If your page, blog or online
article is good enough to be “dug” by digg users, you could
receive literally hundreds of unique visitors immediately. The best
thing about digg is that it is so popular that many submissions can
instantly dominate some keywords on search engines like Google.
Another site is Technorati.com. If you have a blog, Technorati
should become one of your favorite search engines. Because
many Technorati Tags are beginning to dominate the search
engines. You can easily add your blog to technorati’s tagging
system. Just like digg, even if you only happen to get a small
amount of traffic from technorati it will increase your site rank in
the search engines.
There are many sites that can help you with “tag syndication.”
Web applications like TagCloud integrates RSS and tagging
while wikipedia.org is method of allowing social webpage and
content development. All these methods and many more have two
great things in common
Tagging is catching on because it is a natural complement to
search. Type the word “blogs” into Google and it can tell if you
are searching for information about how to launch a blog, how to
read blogs, or just what. Large and small sites alike are already
jumping on the tagging train. They are rolling out tag-like structures
to help users more easily locate content that’s relevant to them.
Here are some other sites that you can visit to start using tagging
as part of your viral marketing campaign.
A1-webmarks
http://www.a1-webmarks.com
All My Favorites
http://www.allmyfavorites.net
Ambedo
http://www.ambedo.com
Blinklist
http://www.blinklist.com
Socialmarker
http://www.socialmarker.com
And that is a very short list. There are literally hundreds of sites
that
you can use to increase your visibility through tagging. I especially
like to use socialmarker.com, because it allows you to instantly
add your information to multiple sites without visiting and manually
submitting to each one individually.
Well, we’ve come to the end of this short course. I hope you have
learned the basics of viral marketing and that you will be able to
use the information to start your own successful viral marketing
campaign.
Good luck with all of your viral marketing ventures,
Jim – siteforsell.com
Viral Marketing Lesson Six
July 29, 2009 by ulink2
Filed under Viral Marketing
How are you? We’re winding down to the end of
this short course. But we still need to go over
a few things.
Today we are going to jump right into how you can take your viral
marketing campaign mobile.
Mobile devices, mobile phones and PDA’s are one of the last
great frontiers of viral advertisement opportunities. However, we
have become experts at filtering everything, our air and water, our
e-mail and pop-ups, and our mobile devices as well. We are good
at filtering.
The very idea of unwanted advertising streaming through our
Blackberries is annoying. Mobile devices are the ultimate opt-in
medium and, therefore, a great way for marketers to connect with
users, if that’s what the users want. “WANT” is the key word here.
How should marketers approach the medium?
There are three main ways to achieve this. They are:
1. Offer exclusive content. Anyone can offer ring tones. It’s the
unique content, such as exclusive mobile images of new brand
concepts, that drives interest and calls them out in other media
like e-mail campaigns, newsletters, websites, etc. So a wireless
campaign is most effective when it offers exclusive content for
wireless devices.
2. Make it useful and timely. Think about what would be handy
and helpful to have on a mobile device. Last year, for example,
Food Network enabled Sprint customers to download shopping
lists for their Thanksgiving dinners. There was a lot of “Sprint-envy”
going around among non-sprint customers.
3. Clearly define objectives. Usually, one of two business
objectives drives successful mobile experiences: incremental
revenue of brand intimacy. On the intimacy factor, a text message
usually takes priority over almost any other form of communication.
Why? Because we haven’t yet been saturated with mobile spam,
and this is what causes us to prioritize wireless messaging over
voice.
Mobile marketing has been out there for a while but we marketers
have new territory to explore. Video offers fantastic opportunities
for engagement. Consumers already bypass their filters for highly
useful or entertaining content and will do so for rich exclusive,
compelling content.
I hope today’s lesson was helpful to you.
Don’t forget to check your mail tomorrow we will be talking about
“Folksonomies” (tagging) as a viral marketing tool.
Viral Marketing Lesson Five
July 29, 2009 by ulink2
Filed under Viral Marketing
Today, I want to share with you how you can use online forums as
a part of your viral marketing campaign.
Forum marketing has been touted as a kind of free, organic, viral
marketing. But because so many marketers go into forums purely
with the intention of marketing products or services, their actions
and attitude unwittingly causes the exact opposite of the desired
effect.
Forums aren’t marketplaces, but when used as such, the
marketers’ actions become offensive and will only inspire the
wrath of fellow members and marketers, not to mention
moderators who can ban them from the site with the click of their
mouse.
In order to be effective, this kind of marketing carries a certain
degree of commitment, responsibility and respect.
The first requirement is to take a personal interest in the main
topic of the forum. Not only does that mean visiting it regularly, but
it also means developing a good relationship with both other
members and the moderators, as well as taking an active interest
in helping others. Of course, it also means abiding by and all rules
that exist.
By doing this, you can develop a reputation and, since it is human
nature to work with a trusted colleague, business will naturally
develop from this.
This type of marketing has already suffered some abuse and
because of this, many forums have recently developed stringent
rules designed to protect their members from abusive or overly-
aggressive marketing tactics. One forum grants .sig files only after
a member has created one hundred valid posts and another has
disallowed ads in sig files altogether.
Marketers must respect that the purpose of a forum is to be a
platform to exchange ideas on a given topic. It is not there to
advertise products and services. By focusing on the topic and
posting questions and answers, your reputation will grow and this
creates the potential for sales naturally.
That’s it for today’s lesson. In tomorrows lesson we will talk about
taking your viral marketing campaign mobile.
Viral Marketing Lesson Four
July 29, 2009 by ulink2
Filed under Viral Marketing
I hope you are learning a lot from the Viral Marketing Crash
Course.
Today let’s talk about using ebooks to really go viral!
An ebook that includes your marketing message and a link to
your website is a proven technique in viral marketing. This method
uses the multiplication effect to “explode” the distribution of your
message by willing participants.
This is the same basic principle that was used by Hotmail to get
established and grow into a house hold name. When the two
founders set up their free email system, all the messages that
were sent by subscribers had a text message at the bottom which
identified Hotmail as the origin. People who sent emails to their
friends advertised the free email site.
One of the best reasons for using viral ebooks as a marketing
method is because is cheap. It doesn’t take long to set up and it’s
even quicker if you use rebrandable ebooks that have been written
by others.
Finding ready to go viral ebooks is pretty easy. Just use your
favorite search engine and do a search. You will find more than
enough rebrandable ebooks that are available on whatever
subject you are interested in and that apply to your e-business.
One method of distributing the ebook is to offer it to visitors in
exchange for subscribing to your newsletter. If they pass it on to
their friends and family it will promote your business for you.
Ebooks are capable of reaching a large audience and are limited
only by the enthusiasm of the participants.
Ebooks are fairly easy to create. It’s possible to produce your
own ebooks by combining articles that you have written or have
gotten from public domain sources, such as directories.
A common approach is to use material that has private label
rights, including articles and reports that have been written
specifically for that purpose, for that niche. Using a portion of a
larger work that you have prepared such as the first three chapters
of a large ebook could also be used as a viral ebook.
Using ebooks as a part of your viral marketing campaign is one
of many techniques that will have a cumulative effect on your
business, by attracting more customers, subscribers and targeted
visitors to your website. Start using them and you will soon find out
that this is an excellent way to increase sales and awareness too!
Look for another lesson soon! We will be talking about how you
can use online forums as a part of your viral marketing
campaign.
We’d love to hear from you! Please let us know what you think.
Viral Marketing Lesson Three
July 29, 2009 by ulink2
Filed under Viral Marketing
Today let’s talk about…….Getting a “Buzz” On
No not the one you get after a couple of cocktails! I’m talking about
a viral buzz.
I’m not sure if you have noticed or not but viral marketing has
matured quite a bit over the past few years. There seems to have
been a shift to the web not just being seen by agencies and
brands as another tick box for any ad campaign, which is
significant enough, but now being the medium where a campaign
is launched to create a buzz before a new product even hits the
market.
Have you ever noticed that before a movie is released you will see
clips and trailers which are used to generate excitement and
activity before the movie hits the theaters? That’s buzz.
Plain and simple buzz works! Just like it works for movies and big
businesses, it can work for small and start-up businesses, as well.
The planning stage of a viral campaign will set out objectives and
develop the viral theme for a buzz. There are three core
components to any viral campaign and businesses of any size can
use them.
They are:
1. The creative material: the viral agent that embodies the
message you want to spread in a digital format (image, video,
text, etc). The trick is to put together material that people will be
eager to share with their family and friends. Keep in mind when
you are creating your content that people are much more eager to
share something that is either fun, entertaining or informative
rather
than an advertisement.
2. Seeding: distributing and placing the agent online in places
that provide the greatest potential spread. Direct viral material
downloads or links on specialist viral third-party web sites in order
to create awareness and spread before users get to the
campaign destination site.
3. Tracking: Measuring the spread of the campaign to provide
accountability and prove success. It is absolutely vital that you
know what is or is not working. The only way to get that information
is to track the results of your seeding.
Lessons have been learned, trends have been developed and
there is definitely some science involved in creating a buzz
successfully. The buzz technique is here to stay and, if used
strategically, it can make a difference to the success of your
business.
Just take some time and create a solid viral marketing plan using
the steps above and it won’t be long before you get your buzz on!
Look for another lesson soon! We will be talking about using
ebooks to really go viral.
Viral Marketing Lesson Two
July 29, 2009 by ulink2
Filed under Viral Marketing
It’s time for your second lesson. I hope you found lesson one
informative.
In this lesson we will be talking about using email to achieve your
viral marketing objectives.
During this lesson I want you to keep in mind that the main
objective of an e-mail campaign is branding, in order to achieve
greater branding success and maximum exposure for your offer
you should do your best to craft your email message in a way that
it encourages your readers to pass it along to others.
Producing a message with a quality offer or an incentive for
passing it along is what viral marketing is all about.
Just suggesting that e-mail recipients forward your message to
their friends and relatives is not viral marketing. A message at the
bottom of your e-mail that reads “Feel free to forward this
message to a friend” is nowhere close to viral marketing at its
best.
On the other hand, if something worthy of sharing, such as a
valuable discount, vital information, additional entries into a
sweepstakes, an added discount or premium service, a
joke/cartoon, or a hilarious video, is included in the e-mail, viral
marketing happens naturally and quite successfully.
The bottom line is that your message must be perceived as having
value. Relevant or timely information, research, or studies are all
good examples of content that might be viewed as potential pass-
along material. Interactive content like a quiz or text can inspire
forwarding, especially if it is fun. Personality tests, fitness quizzes,
or compatibility questionnaires are all things that have been
passed on by many people many times.
Why? Because they are entertaining and entertainment has value.
A good video is always going to achieve some pass-along value.
After all online video is hot! It is a bit more of a time and money
investment but the messages have a great appeal and rich media
has the advantage of being new. The tech factor alone is often
enough for the message to be perceived as valuable.
Email is the ultimate “word of mouth” marketing tool. If your email
message is “viral” in nature, your customer can quickly and easily
forward it to friends and family, spreading your message to an
ever growing list of potential customers.
Look for another lesson soon! We will be talking about getting
your buzz going!
Again, I appreciate your time for visiting and reading this post.
Guerilla Marketing on the Internet: The Definitive Guide from the Father of Guerilla Marketing (Paperback)
July 29, 2009 by ulink2
Filed under Internet Marketing
Add the Internet to Your Marketing Arsenal-Guerrilla Style! The Father of Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson, changed marketing forever when he unleashed his original arsenal of marketing tactics for surviving the advertising jungle on a shoestring budget. And now, Levinson and online marketing masters Mitch Meyerson and Mary Eule Scarborough once again show you how to beat the odds by combining the unconventional, take-no-prisoners Guerrilla Marketing approach with today (more…)
Internet Marketing Determines Web Success
July 29, 2009 by ulink2
Filed under Internet Marketing
Internet marketing is essential to the success of web sites. You can have a professional looking website but what good can it do if internet users are not able to find it when they need your products and services? That is where an internet marketing campaign comes into play.
“Your website has to magically appear before buyers when they need products and services.”
Internet marketing is similar to designing websites- it does not require much experience to do a good job, just good knowledge and a keen eye for details. It is fundamentally important for a good internet marketer to constantly update himself weekly, if not monthly, of online markets. There are many ways to market your website .
– Find A Competent and Reliable Internet Marketer –
Justify the costs of hiring an Internet Marketer – First of all, getting an internet marketer is not essential for every website. If your website is a business website or a website which you want to generate revenue from, it is good to seek a competent internet marketer to work on your website. For more details visit to www.ultimate-internet-marketing-tricks.com.The costs spent on your website for internet marketing has to be justified and often, they are justified by having more revenue and traffic to your web site.
Potential customers have to know that there are no guarrantees in SEO. Since everything is fundamentally based on search engines, SEO work is at the mercy of major search engines like Google. Many SEO companies tried to secure customers with guarrantees that they cannot fulfil, resulting in lawsuits or customers getting burned for hiring their SEO services.
– What an Internet Marketer can offer –
In short, an Internet Marketer oversees that your website is built properly for visibility and promoted with the best dollar spent on your internet marketing campaign. It is no good having a website and not appearing in internet searches. Your website has to magically appear before buyers when they need products and services. Internet Marketers deploy search engine optimisation techniques to make your website visible and targeted to internet users.
Internet marketing requires research and analysis effort for individual website, followed by optimisation of website. For more details go to www.perpetual-traffic-generator.com.
Hundreds of hours may be spent on each website, depending on the size of your targetted market. You are essentially paying for the amount of effort involved, effectiveness of your internet marketer and daily sales tracking of your website.
How to choose an Internet Marketer- Internet marketing requires constant updating of skills and knowledge. One crude way to test if your internet marketer is a genuine or fake- Ask your internet marketer about recent events that happened in his field. If he cannot answer that, he must have a genuinely good reason to back himself as a good internet marketer! At times, it is easy to fall prey into the hands of bad internet marketing companies as happened in US and other parts of the world.
It is also important for you to feel comfortable with the amount of money you are spending on getting your site popular before committing yourself to an internet marketing campaign. Internet marketing campaigns typically last a few months and requires monthly tune-ups to your website. Include the costs of an internet marketing campaign when doing your company’s advertising budget.