Five Steps to Successful Viral Marketing
by Steve Shaw
I'm sure we've all heard of 'viral marketing' - the first
question is usually 'What is it?'
In brief, you can apply the term 'viral marketing' to any
strategy that encourages others to pass on your marketing
message.
This can result in exponential growth of traffic to your web
site, and therefore, if appropriate, your level of sales as
well.
A viral marketing strategy should be an essential element of
your web site's promotional strategy - in this article I'll
tell you five different ways you can achieve this.
1. 'Send to a friend' script
We've all seen them, those buttons on web sites inviting us to
'Send to a friend'.
Here's some resources you can use:
http://www.referralblast.com - claim you can add it to your
site within 10 minutes, charge from $99 per year
http://www.tell-a-friend-wizard.com/ - claims to track your
most sent pages and your most active people; from about $6
a month
http://bignosebird.com/carchive/birdcast.shtml - popular
free CGI script
http://www.cgibiz.com/go.cgi?partner=popupmtr - CGI
Tell-a-friend script for $39.95, free trial version is
available.
2. 'Freebies'
Giving something away for free is one of the most powerful
marketing methods available.
Giving something away for free in the *right way* turns it into
a VIRAL marketing method that is much more powerful.
For example:
- Giving away a free ebook will encourage people to sign up
to your newsletter - great result.
- If you include in the ebook links to your own web site and
information about the products and services you want to promote,
you'll increase your traffic and your sales - even better
result.
- If you encourage people to give away the free ebook
themselves, you've suddenly turned it into a viral
marketing program that will bring you exponentially
increasing traffic and sales - excellent result.
If you think you can't improve on this you're wrong! If you use
software like the Viral Marketing Program at
http://www.instantviralmarketing.com as a mechanism to give away
your free ebook, you'll increase your traffic and sales
exponentially before you even give the ebook away, and then
you've got the traffic and sales you'll get from the ebook
itself.
3. Write articles
Web site and ezine owners are constantly on the look out for
articles, tutorials and other content they can use. Writing
articles is one of the most powerful ways to spread your
marketing message at targetted web-surfers. Just allow people to
republish it for free, as long as they include a promotional
byline at the end of the article.
As well as posting the articles on your own site, and
distributing them to your own mailing list, there are also
various places online where 'publishers' and 'authors' meet,
i.e. you provide the article, and other people publish it for
you if they are interested:
Idea Marketers
http://www.ideamarketers.com/
Making Profit
http://www.makingprofit.com/mp/
Web Source
http://web-source.net/
Directory Of Ezines
http://www.hypertracker.com/go/WEBpro1/DOE/
Marketing-Seek
http://www.marketing-seek.com/
There are many such sites, though these are particularly
recommended due to the powerful results they can deliver.
4. Affiliate schemes
Most of the successful web sites use an affiliate scheme that
encourages other web masters to partake in publicizing someone
else's products or services in return for a commission on the
sale price. I'm sure we're all familiar with these.
I personally use ClickBank because they handle both the
affiliate scheme and the payment facilities, and it's all
incredibly easy to set up. For more information:
http://zzz.clickbank.net/jmap/?m=popupmtr
5. Word of mouth
Many businesses grow through 'word of mouth' recommendations.
Sure, the 'Send to a friend'-type scripts and affiliate
schemes can help with this process, but often web sites are
mentioned in other interactions between people.
You can encourage this process by providing the highest
quality customer service possible, and ensuring that any
products you sell or recommend are of top quality.
There are of course many other techniques you can try, but
these are my top five favorites, so try them out and see
the traffic to your web site explode. It's hard work, but
when you see the results you'll consider it more than worth it.
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Steve Shaw uses the above techniques to drive traffic to
PopUpMaster.com. Sign up for your Free PopUp Masters Course at
http://popupmaster.com and find out how to boost your opt-in
rates by 535%. You can republish this article - just retain
this resource box.
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