The 6 Components For Successful Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing is one of the best method for anyone to sell a product or service and its also one of the best way to bring in truckload of cash from the sales of your product or service. For Viral Marketing to works, you don’t need a mammoth mailing list where you tell people about your product or service, or pump in plenty of capital in a advertising campaign to have a great impact.
So exactly what is Viral Marketing? To put simply in English, Viral Marketing describes any techniques that encourages people to pass on a marketing message to others voluntarily, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence.
Just like how viruses spread quickly to people, Viral Marketing will will have have rapid growth in a very short time, the marketing message can quickly reach thousands if not millions in a very short period. The message can be delivered by word-of-mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral promotions can take any of these form : video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, images, or even text messages.
One classic illustration of very successful viral marketing is Hotmail. Hotmail is one of the first free web-based e-mail services that promotes its service and its own advertisers’ messages in every user’s e-mail notes. Hotmail was so successful that Microsoft decided to buy over the company and now it is owned by Microsoft.
Another perfect example is the “Free Hugs” video on YouTube. “Free Hugs” video has been watch by millions of people. A group who called themselves the “Sick Puppies” compose the song, have managed to launch their singing career with these simple viral video, even though that was not the original intention of the video. That video and the story behind it went viral and caught the attention and the hearts of people around the world. It even spawned a movement that is still going on.
Below are 6 Components of a Viral Marketing method. You need not have ALL the components present in your Viral Marketing method, but it is highly recommended to include as much as possible in your Viral Marketing method so as to achieve a greater impact. A powerful Viral Marketing Method include the following.
Component #1 : Giveaway Free, but Valuable Products or Services
The word “cheap” may create some interest, but the word “free” will definitely generate very much more interest and much faster. In fact, “free” is the most important and powerful word as far a internet marketer is concern. The idea is to giveaway something of value, either products or services first, then profit from your visitors later. It is like fishing, you set the bait and allow the fish to take your bait and you bring in the fish later. You may not earn a cent now, or tomorrow, but you will profit later and for the rest of their lives or your lives ! Depending on what you got in your inventory, you can giveaway free information, free ebook, free software, free hosting account, free email services, free ‘whatever’. These free version can be a trial version that only have the basic functions. If your recipient wants a much more powerful, professsional version, they would need to bring out their credit card and buy it and thus you will make the sales. You need patience to ‘play this game’ and practising delayed gratification is necessary.
Component #2 : Provides Ease of Transmission
Your marketing message must be transmitted easily and without degradation. With internet as a medium, email, graphic, video, website and software can be passed around and duplicated very quickly and easily. As internet services become cheaper, viral marketing can be work very well without much capital involved. The key is to ‘KISS’, that is ‘Keep It Simple and Short’. The marketing message should be transmitted with simplicity and ease, else marketing will not work.
Component #3 : Scalable Viral Machine
Let us look this classic example again : Hotmail. Hotmail is a free web-based e-mail services which requires mail servers to be scalable, which means if new mail servers must be easily added if the need arises so that the viral effect can continue. Even if a mail server breakdown for whatever reason, a backup mail server must replace it immediately. All these can be accomplished by planning ahead and execution of plan when the situation arises. We have to have a scalable viral machine.
Just imagine for a moment…what if the host server hosting the “Free Hug” video breakdown suddenly? The ‘wildfire spreading effect’ would not be achieved. This can be prevented if the servers can be replaced and expanded very quickly so as to ensure that little or no downtime. Killing of the host is a definite ‘No No’. Always ensure that the viral machine can be scaled from small to very large quickly. Planning well in advance for this is a necessity, and the act to keep the viral machine in top working condition is a must.
Component #4 : Exploits Common Motivations and Behaviors of People
To succeed in Viral Marketing, always design your marketing method that exploits of common human motivations and behaviors.
Some of the these human motivators and behaviors are :
a) People have greed and people are driven by them
b) People want to be loved, popular and understood
c) People want to be cool
d) People are follow the crowd
e) People want to follow trend
f) People want it now, not later
Take advantage of these and the transmission of you Viral Marketing message will be wildly successful.
Component #5 : Utilizes Established Communication Network
In general, each person normally have a closely knitted network of between 8 to 12 people which includes family, friend and associates. A person’s wider network will include dozens, hundreds, thousands of people, depending upon his/her job in society. A salesman in a electronic store may be in touch with hundreds of customers in a given week.
Those involved in network marketing will understand the power of leverage. These net-worker know that ‘many hands make light work’. If a job need 100 hundred hour to do, just recruit 100 people to do the job, and it only take 1 hour a person. The net-worker will have have people they work very closely with and they have strong bonding with them and these people can be be trusted to do the job. The net-worker also have people who are much further down the line in his/her downline which have a weaker bond with him/her.
Likewise, in the internet marketing world, we also have network of people which we can count upon to joint venture (JV) with. To a internet marketer, the mailing list is a gold mine which allows the internet marketer to reach his/her people. Internet marketer joins associate programs and utilizes the established communication network he/she have with his/her mailing list to sell to them. The people in your mailing list probably have their own mailing list too. When you transmit your message to your mailing list, it can go much further than you can imagine.
Component #6 : Use Others’ Resources Whenever Possible
Use leverage whenever possible. Find way to take advantage of others’ resources. You can get your name and URL into other people webpage when they want to use the article which you wrote. When you sell your product or services through associate program, your affiliates can place either a text or banner link on their webpage, and you just pay them a commission whenever they sell and you need not do the actual selling. When you do a press release, the public will come to know as it have attract favorable media attention. Viral Marketing should include ways to use these to its advantage, that is, use other’s resources rather than exhausting your own resources.
Try to incorporate as many components as possible into your Viral Marketing effort. Although your Viral Marketing campaign may not do as well as the Hotmail or the ‘Free Hug’ video, but, if you do your market research with your intended audience in mind, and you are able to think out of the box, you probably be able to create a very successful Viral Marketing campaign of your own.
Let me introduce to you to this site which you can get your hands on now and save you plenty of resources like time and effort and money. To get started with this very easy and you need not use so much of your own creative juice to come out with killer viral program. At the time of writing this, it is still available, but, if see that “Sold Out”, then, you are too late!
What are your thoughts on this matter? Do share it in the comment. Thank you for your time
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Written by Admin on February 22nd, 2012 with
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