Viral Marketing Unleashed

The manual highlights proven viral marketing concepts on how you can get people to do all the marketing for you while you take all the profits.

* Why and How Viral Marketing Works

* Your Ebook is Your Viral Marketing

* Viral Marketing Using Forums

* Using Videos in Viral Marketing

* Using Chat Rooms

Why And How Viral Marketing Works
You may wonder what a virus has to do with marketing?
Well, viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a
marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the
message's exposure and influence.
Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the
message to thousands and then to millions.
Viral Marketing sounds like something bad but it is actually something very good.
It is a powerful way to generate lots of traffic to your website or sales page.
Think about how a virus spreads from on person to another. One person gets sick and
just by sneezing they can give the virus to many more people…
... those people get sick and share their germs with everyone they know and the next
thing anybody knows is that there is an epidemic.
That is the very concept of viral marketing. The idea is to get everyone to spread your
marketing message around because they want to.
Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough,
wash your hands often, and don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread
when they're easy to transmit.
Viral e-mail marketing works great on the Internet because instant communication has
become so easy and inexpensive.
Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify
your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation.
Short is better.
Remember the K.I.S.S. standard….Keep it Simple Stupid.
The shorter and easier to remember is always better than long and complicated.
Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. The desire
to be cool and greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and
understood.
Viral Marketing Unleashed
Page7 Of 30
The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail
messages. Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad
students are the exception.
Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close
network of friends, family, and associates. People on the Internet develop networks of
relationships, too.
They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such
networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing
communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.
If you can design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and
behaviors for its transmission, you have a winner.
What Works & What Doesn't
Stop with the enforced e-mail forwards already!
Trying to force or bribe people to forward your info to a friends or family in order to be
rewarded or win looks skanky in today's ultra-permission-based world. Especially when
you tell visitors nothing about their friend's or family’s privacy in the space directly next
to the e-mail form.
A true viral campaign gets forwarded because consumers are compelled to do so by the
glory of the content, not because you bribed them with points or something else.
What absolutely will not work:
Suggesting that e-mail recipients forward your message to their friends and family will
not work. Adding a line at the bottom of your e-mail that reads “Please feel free to
forward this message to a friend” is more likely to get it deleted than forwarded.
What absolutely will work:
Offering something worthy of sharing like a valuable discount, vital information or
offering an incentive for sharing like additional entries into a sweepstakes or an added
discount or premium service will work.
Relevant or timely information, research, or studies that are included in your e-mail
might encourage the recipients to share with their family and friends.
Interactive content like a quiz or test, especially if it’s fun, will inspire forwarding.
Viral Marketing Unleashed
Page8 Of 30
Jokes and cartoons are almost always forwarded to everybody the recipient knows.
Why?
Because they are entertaining and entertainment is meant to be shared. A really cool multimedia experience is always going to achieve a lot of pass-along.
Rich media is new and the novelty and tech factors alone are often enough to make the e-mail recipient eager to share it.