Viral Marketing Strategies

Copyright Herman Drost

One of the most time consuming aspects of online marketing is finding the most effective strategies to attract visitors to your web site. If you set up a viral marketing campaign correctly, you have the opportunity of gaining 1000s of visitors for years to come.

Definition of viral marketing

This is the online term for word-of-mouth advertising. You provide something that encourages others to spread the word about your product, quickly and inexpensively with little effort on your part. This potentially creates exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. The message spreads in a viral form in a manner similar to the spreading of a common cold virus from person to person.

One example of successful viral marketing is Hotmail, which began offering free e-mail accounts, with a link back to Hot Mail at the end of every e-mail message sent by one of its customers. That spread the word about the service like a virus, with every customer a virtual "carrier" of the message.

Benefits of Viral Marketing

1. Free advertising
2. Short term gains - gain immediate visitors.
3. Long terms gains - attracts visitors for years to come.
4. Causes exponential growth – reaches a large audience.
5. Automate your marketing methods - set it up once and forget about it.
6. Inexpensive to set-up – it primarily involves some investment of time.
7. Viral marketing tools are easy to develop i.e. you can create an e-book without knowing how to write.
8. Quickly build your reputation.
9. Easy to combine with other marketing methods – i.e. include as a bonus with other products.
10. Increase targeted traffic to your web site.

Viral Marketing Strategies

1. Write articles - allow people to reprint your articles on their web site, in their ezine, newsletter, magazine or e-books. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article. Make sure that the link in your resource box is live so that all people that use your article will link back to your site.

2. Create a free e-Book - give your e-book away to your visitors and other editors or webmasters within your target market. Encourage them to pass it on. Insert ezine subscription links or affiliate links to the products throughout your e-book. Subscriptions to your newsletter will increase in proportion to the number of places your e-book is placed.

3. Set up an affiliate program - affiliate programs provide a financial incentive for other sites to link to yours. Make sure your commission is enough to make this attractive to web site owners. As the number of affiliates increases, so do your visitors and sales.