"WEBMARKETING
TIPS"
HOW TO MAKE
VIRAL MARKETING WORK FOR YOU
There is a lot of online buzz about viral
marketing, often
making it sound far too difficult for the
average small
web business promoter to attempt.
Not only is it far easier than some would have
you believe,
but chances are - without even knowing it - you
are doing it
already! This article will help you do it better
and get
great results.
By 'viral marketing' I mean a method of online
promotion
that relies on your message being passed from
person to
person without your direct involvement. It gets
its name
from the way viruses are spread by
person-to-person emails,
multiplying at every stage.
For example, supposing you are so impressed by
the
standard of writing and the quality of
information in this
ezine that you tell all your friends about it
and many of
them decided to subscribe. They tell all their
friends,
who tell theirs and so on. If each person
contacts ten
others, after only four stages, 10,000 people
will know
how good this ezine is. Two stages later, one
million.
You will, no doubt, have seen this kind or
arithmetic in
various MLM programs, which attempt to operate
in a
similar way. Few succeed, often because their
core product
is weak or overpriced.
You can see the potential, no doubt, and you are
probably
wondering right now how you can take advantage
of this
kind of math without resorting to spamming.
It comes down to this: you cannot MAKE people
recommend
your product to others - you have to give them a
good
reason to WANT to do so. The reason could be
that you
really do offer exceptional quality and value,
or it could
be that they get a benefit themselves from doing
so.
Ideally, both apply.
Face it - if your product is not up to scratch,
why should
anyone recommend it to their friends? Even if
you pay
them, most of them are not going to be too keen
on pushing
low-grade goods onto their friends.
So the first rule of viral marketing - as for
any other
form - is to make sure you have the best
quality, best
value products to sell.
Now you need that extra incentive - the magic
ingredient -
to light the fire under the boiler and get up a
head of
steam behind your efforts: the reward system. It
is true
that some of the most successful word-of-mouth
promotions
have had no monetary reward attached. Napster,
for
example, grew explosively in popularity because
people
wanted music without having to pay for it. A few
years ago
a book called "The Celestine Prophesy" became a
major best-
seller mainly due to a high level of talk about
it on news-
groups.
If you can generate that kind of enthusiasm for
your
product, you may not need to offer any kind of
reward. In
most cases, however, your army of good-news
messengers will
work harder for you if there is something in it
for them.
To make your viral marketing project
self-financing, you
will have to pay rewards out of revenues
generated by new
customers. Which means you have to sell
something. This can
be your own product or - if you promote an
affiliate
program - someone else's. The principal
advantage of the
former is that you get to keep all the profits,
and if you
can create a knockout product, that's the way to
go.
Selling someone else's product may carry smaller
margins,
but it has one big upside - you don't have to
worry about
product creation, order processing or delivery.
Choosing a suitable affiliate to promote is no
easy matter.
Not that there aren't plenty to choose from -
but do read
the small print carefully before jumping in.
Remember to
look at the program from your potential
customer's point of
view, as well as your own. Apply some tests:
check how easy
their web site is to understand and to navigate.
Can you
grasp what is on offer at first reading? Does
the site look
professional? Do they provide high quality
graphic and text
links? Do they answer emails promptly and
personally, not
just bounce back autoresponder messages? Do they
have a
dependable tracking system?
Having made your selection, you need to consider
how best
to package it for your target market. At best,
this goes
way beyond spinning fancy words around the
central
message. You should aim to create an 'added
value' linked
to your core message.
My favorite way to do this is to create an
information
product that leads seamlessly into the program I
wish to
promote. Then I give it away. This ensures
maximum take-up
and high perceived value, leading to healthy
sign-up stats
for the program.
If you want to experiment with this most
rewarding form of
marketing, I encourage you to do so first with a
core
product that stands up on its own - that sells
itself. That
way you keep to a minimum the amount of selling
you have to
do and you can concentrate on creating an
appealing package
to give away.
Above all, give good value and you will develop
a loyal,
enthusiastic following who, while earning
commissions for
themselves, will make a great deal more for you.
SK Kor
Internet Marketing Consultant
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