Every marketing manager would love to see their marketing campaigns go viral, and for good reason. Viral marketing (VM) campaigns, also known as guerilla marketing campaigns, can cost a fraction of what regular campaigns cost because the marketing manager is essentially reduced to the role of mediator. VMs spread like an airborne virus, which make them incredibly powerful marketing tools.

So how do you create your own marketing virus?

The two most common forms of viral marketing are the incentive-based or service-based models. With the incentive-based approach, customers and prospects are rewarded for forwarding your product or service to their network of friends and family, whereas with the service-based approach you provide a valuable service for free, such as email or instant messaging, thereby opening up marketing and communication lines, capturing user information to develop lead gen lists, and so on.

Other viral marketing models include community chat rooms, bulletin boards, online coupons and gift certificates, easily forwarded videos and entertainment with embedded marketing messages, and affiliate programs.

Regardless of which model you choose, successfully implementing them often comes down to including the one or more of the following elements:

Value. People like to forward things that are interesting, entertaining and unique, be it incentive-based or otherwise.
Trust. People open emails that come from other people the know, trust and like. Identify the sharer’s name in the subject line, e.g. “Diane, Jane Doe thinks you’ll be interested in [YOUR INCENTIVE OR SERVICE-BASED OFFER]…”
Measurable. As with all things marketing, success often depends on being able to measure your efforts and make the necessary changes. Click-through and conversion rates are the two most important metrics.
Other things to keep in mind

Because many incentive-based programs rely on email to drive them, spam can become a concern. One way to prevent it from becoming a problem for you and your organization is to limit the number of customers a single consumer can forward your offer to. Five is a good number.

Whether your goal is to drive revenue, create demand, or move product, you also need to concern yourself with maintaining brand value. The more your VM campaign spreads, the more control you’ll lose over who is receiving your message. Therefore, make sure that your message is strong and based on value and a compelling reason for people to click through.

About the Author

Learn more about this and other internet marketing topics at: http://www.joe-franklin.com/blog

 

Do you want your message to spread far and wide – without a whole lot of marketing effort on your part?

It sounds like a dream come true – the dream of going viral. Getting hundreds and thousands of clicks and opt-ins for your “thing” and having other people pass it along for you!

When your free gift goes viral, you get the credibility boost of having other people talk about it instead of you having to make all the marketing noise for yourself… which gets to be a little huffy and puffy at times.

The question is, how to make a free gift that’s hot, without sounding like you’re full of hot air?

I surprised myself last month when my new free gift went viral. Since I’m filled with curiosity, I wanted to know why… so I deconstructed the experience, looking for the lessons.

I asked some of the people who helped me go viral what was so attractive to them… and this is what I learned:

There’s a set of 7 strategies that I combined to go viral. Read on to see what they are and how they worked:

• Remarkable, cool technology
If you want to go viral, make a gift worth talking about. You can go about this in several ways – and the way I did was to make my gift with some very cool, brand-new technology. It’s innovative and has the “have you SEEN this?” factor that gets people talking! I created my gift as an iBook – an interactive eBook – which is very cool and new.

• Getting there first during that cutting edge moment
New technologies are only new for a short time… because before long, everyone decides to jump on the bandwagon and try them. To harness their power and go viral with them, you’ll want do them first before everyone’s using that technology and it becomes “normal”. There’s a very short moment in time where the new thing can be cutting-edge and that’s when you want to do it. You’ve got to do it before everyone else muddies the waters.

• A message I was proud of and that served my clients
To get your message out there, it needs to be something that you’re proud of. You want to feel like the message you’re spreading is your great work – that you’ve given it your all. That way, your energy will be aligned behind getting that message out and people will get the best sneaky-peek at your work possible.

Also, you want your gift to be truly useful to your clients and your tribe so that they’ll have a really excellent experience with it to talk about.

• Packaging your message in a beautiful, engaging, entertaining, & fun way
The “wrapping” of your gift can add that boost of specialness that helps get it talked about.

Beautiful: people love to share beautiful things. And, have you noticed that the “bar of beauty” has been raised lately? That things online keep getting prettier and prettier? You’ll want your stuff to be gorgeous to stay up-to-date.

Engaging: You want people to get absorbed in your gift. To get involved with it, to learn from it and to do the exercises. Putting the gift together in a certain way (like in an iBook) can make that happen.

Entertaining & Fun: People don’t want to learn from dry, boring eBooks anymore – they like videos that are entertaining, too. I embedded videos directly into my iBook to make the whole experience more fun.

• When you see your opportunity, move fast.
Waiting is not going to do you any favors when it comes to going viral. You want to move quickly to take advantage of the new technology. Plus, moving fast again builds up energy behind your gift so that it can spread more quickly.

• If you’re going to go viral, it helps to start in a bigger pond.
Sure, sending a new free gift out to your existing list and getting your affiliates to promote you helps get the buzz started – but what if you started in a bigger place? Like in a bookstore, or featured on a hot website? My iBook is published in the iTunes Bookstore, which has brought me all kinds of great traffic – because they have a wider reach than I do from the start. Where can you get outside of your circle?

• Become a published author. People dig it!
When I published my iBook in the iTunes Bookstore, I posted a little casual note to my Facebook wall. I was shocked at the response – dozens upon dozens of people liked it and commented on it. My conclusion is that publishing a book is a big deal, and people like to make a big deal about it. The iBook is an easy way to get published without printing hundreds of hard copies of your book!

These are the 7 strategies I used to create my free gift that went viral. How can you use these ideas to get more reach and create more buzz about your gift?

About the Author

You can hear more about all the details in my training call, “How I Went Viral With My Free Gift and You Can, Too!”, here: http://www.brandstyledesign.com/ebook-class

 

Nobody has the magic answer to make a viral video, but it is the key ingredient in the video that makes it go viral. Below are some of the steps, that if taken methodically, can help your video to be seen by millions of people in a short space of time.

Firstly, you need a clear catchy goal this should be simple and self explanatory. So that an average person on the street can understand it. Secondly, there has to be a reason for the goal, be it emotional or otherwise, and thirdly, a call for action, this is the part that energises your video to go viral and last, sharability through friends and family. Let me give you a couple of examples from the last few months that many of you will be familiar with, why ? because a lot of people can relate to them.

First Tommy Jordan, a North Carolina dad who now famously shot his daughter’s laptop in protest over her Facebook rant aimed at him and her mother. This video was viewed by over 31 million people in 4weeks. For the video to go viral, it met the 4 benchmarks. First the goal was to teach his daughter a lesson, second the reason was over the Facebook post, third his call to action was shooting the laptop. Now what makes it go viral is the emotional attachment or the funny sentiment from people that triggers the fourth benchmark which is sharability.

My next example is Joseph Kony the Ugandan military leader accused of murdering and abducting thousands of children and turning young girls into sex slaves and boys into “Child Soldiers”. Again this campaign also meet the hallmark of the 4 key steps of viral video. First the catchy goal “KONY 2012″ and the second step was the reason “Stop KONY because of crime against humanity” and third the call for action, a step-by-step method on how to achieve this.

Again, this 3 stages triggered the 4th which is sharability. The emotional connotation attached to the campaign got the attention of celebrities like Oprah, George Clooney, Will Smith and other Hollywood heavy weights who tweeted to their followers. The end result being within 2weeks over 80 million views on Youtube and billions around the world. The bottom line is if the four key ingredients are present, the more chances and possibility of your video going viral.

In summary, if there are other reasons you think influences viral video, please share your thoughts.

 

Viral marketing is the way to go in this day and age of social networking and online communities. You must induce other people to tell their friends and social contacts about your business, products and services. Here are the steps for using viral marketing to generate traffic to your site.

People dread computer viruses. They are prolific, attach to anything and spread everywhere. Bad virus aside, this same characteristic (prolific) makes viral marketing effective.

The medium you would be using for this type of marketing would be prolific as well in generating leads and sales. There are many kinds of viral marketing that you could use to generate more traffic to your website. Generally, if used well, viral marketing is an extremely effective way to get more interest and produce more leads and sales. Here are some viral marketing methods using reports or ebooks that people can use to generate more traffic to their websites.

Step 1: Write a free report

This does not end there. You must also convert your report into a PDF file. Your report should be concise, inviting, interesting and informative. It must give information about your website or your products. It should be written in such a way that it would encourage people to buy your products or visit your website.

A free report once downloaded would be left behind for people to read later. Chances are, if these reports are written well, they would guarantee you that people downloading and reading them would once more check your website. People love a well written report with good content.

Avoid writing an ad and avoid marketing. Make sure that your report is informative. If you are selling supplements, write an article on how effective these supplements are. Your articles would be passed on from one person to another for years to come. Perhaps, you don’t have to immediately write another report on the same subject matter.

Step 2: Write a teaser

This is most effective if you are marketing an ebook that people can buy from your website. Give people a free chapter that they can read. Generate interest by arousing their curiosity. Remember to give only a teaser of the whole book. Do not give out the whole thing. Make sure that people can only obtain your ebook by visiting your website and paying for it or by subscribing.

Usually, this type of marketing is effective because people would quickly exchange information with others or forward the same to others whom they know would be interested in the content of the ebook. Thus, this is called viral marketing. Your traffic will noticeably increase with little or no effort from you at all. You would also have a huge and increased level of generated leads and sales.

Step 3. Write an ebook which you can give away

Whenever people visit your website or join your newsletter, give them a free ebook. This is usually a very short informative report relating to your products or services. Make sure that the content is interesting and useful so that people would want to share it with others. This is a very good strategy if employed correctly.

It is also wise to not give the whole information. Make sure that people would want to visit your website to get the more complete report on the subject matter. This would be a great viral marketing campaign to generate more traffic to your website.

About the Author

Need more traffic? Click here: http://www.raimundasm.com/10-traffic-bombs-report/ and download a free report which expose my 10 free traffic bombs (sources) that will crash your website servers!

 

Viral marketing is word of mouth advertising that depends completely on the commitment of others to make it successful. Viral Marketing is giving people permission to give away and use your free product or service, so your marketing brand is multiplied swiftly over the internet. With viral marketing other people spread your message. And by spreading your marketing message, they are endorsing your product or service. Social validation like this helps give your marketing message a more powerful punch!

This is why viral marketing is considered one of the most efficient and clever marketing strategies to use to optimize your business.

Below are ten powerful viral marketing strategies you can use:

1. Submit articles to article directories and give readers permission to reprint your articles in their newsletter, magazine, web site or ebooks. Make sure to include a short, compelling bio and your website link in the resource box.

2. Offer freebies for your readers as opt-in incentive for newsletter or email subscription. And let them use your freebies as free bonuses for products or services they sell. Include your ad on all your freebies.

3. Give away free software and let people give away your free software. But, make sure to add your business advertisement in the software program.

4. Let people place an advertisement in your free ebook if, in exchange, they give away the ebook to visitors in their website and ezine subscribers.

5. Let people add their link to your free web site directory. With a an agreement that they return a link back to your web site, advertising your directory.

6. Let people give away your website tools like free templates, web design graphics and fonts. But include your ad on them or stipulate that they have to link directly to your web site.

7. Give away a free ebook and let people give away your free ebook to their visitors. Then their visitors will also give it away. This will ensure you spread your ad quickly over the internet.

8. Let people use your online discussion board for their own web site. Many people don’t have one. Again, add your banner ad at the top of the board.

9. Give away free space on your server. For instance,let people sign up for a free web site on your server. Since you are giving away the space, stipulate that they must ad your banner at the top of the site.

10. Let people provide your free online service to their web site, visitors, or ezine subscribers. Great examples are search engine submissions, free email and email consulting.

 

Viral marketing is based on the concept that a message that spreads can be a useful medium for spreading awareness of one’s business or cause. There are two types of viral marketing. The first one markets the product itself and grows by itself through repeated cycles. The other one is a marketing campaign that is distinct from the product itself.

YouTube is one example of the first type of marketing. As more people encounter it, more people start using it, and usage continues to grow. The other type of marketing, on the other hand, is a campaign where users choose to spread a particular message because they chose to do so. For example, in a political campaign, an Internet user may opt to spread a message or a poster because he or she personally believes in the message.

Not everything that becomes viral in the Internet is viral marketing. If an uploaded video generated millions of traffic from curious Internet users, it will still not be considered viral marketing if it didn’t result in anything financially tangible for your business.

Here’s an example of viral marketing. If you wrote an ebook that discussed something innovative and you decided to make it freely downloadable on the Internet, you might get a lot of interested people to download your ebook. You can email the book to your friends and acquaintances and you can encourage them to pass the ebook to other people whom they believe will profit from it. You find out later that some of your friends did send out your book to other people. Some even sent it to dozens of people.

At this point, your ebook has become viral because it has spread. However, it cannot be classified as viral marketing. The marketing part entered when you decided to publish a hardcover version of your ebook. Some people who had already read the electronic version of your book, and liked what they read, still decided to buy the hardcover version simply because they prefer to have a hardcover version.

However, what we can surmise from this occurrence is that you really did not start out with the intention of virally marketing your book. It spread because the viral element had been built right into the book. It was a good book. People liked it and thought that it was worth sharing with others. They liked it so much they bought themselves a hard copy version, despite already having read the contents digitally.

If you want to be successful at viral marketing, don’t focus on your advertisement. Focus on your product. A really good product has the viral element naturally incorporated into it. It’s like YouTube. People liked it. It’s a great idea to have an online site for uploading the videos that they take with their handy cell phone cameras. The more they liked the idea, the more people used it. News of the product spread because it was a good product.

Make your product interesting enough that people would feel it would benefit others if they spread information about it. Viral marketing is the counterpart of word-of-mouth promotion in the digital age.

 

Video marketing provides a number of benefits, including:

· The ability to deliver one-on-one communication
· Non-interruptive, as is the case with television advertisements
· Show a service provider or product actually in use or action
· Generate emotional impact through the use of color, action, and music
· Offer three-dimensional product views

However, to enjoy all the benefits of video marketing, you must first attract your viewers. You have to snag their attention and give them high quality, compelling advertising from which they cannot turn away. That’s where our guides come in. We will walk you step by step through the process of creating, editing, and hosting your videos, showing you everything you need to create, integrate, and market high impact advertising that maximizes the power of dynamic formatting and interactivity. However, before we get into the technical side of things, let’s focus a bit more on ways in which you can use video marketing with these different techniques used by video marketers today..

6 WAYS IN WHICH VIDEO MARKETING CAN BE USED

Video marketing can be applied to a wide variety of purposes. When used correctly, it can work hand-in-hand with traditional marketing techniques to boost sales and increase brand and product awareness in a large subset of consumers. There are several common instances where the use of video marketing is a good idea.

1. PUBLICIZING AND HIGHLIGHTING A NEW PRODUCT

Video marketing can be the most powerful weapon in your arsenal when it comes to product launches. It can add dramatic impact to any promotions intended to showcase a new product or service. Video also engages consumers in ways that other promotional methods cannot. Simple video spots placed strategically on company websites and partner sites can yield dramatic benefits.

2. SHARING UPDATES, NEWS, ETC.

Updates, upgrades, revisions, and improved operation are all aspects of ongoing product support and development. Video marketing can allow new and existing customers to learn about new developments with existing products or services, increasing brand recognition and sales.

3. PROVIDING CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS

Few things work as well as actual customer testimonials. Video marketing provides the best means to showcase these testimonials in a high-traffic area. This allows new customers, as well as existing customers, to view feedback from actual consumers. Customer video testimonials can be an incredibly powerful tool, spurring growth and greater conversion rates.

4. PROVIDING A PERSONAL INTRODUCTION OR WELCOME

Connecting with your target customer base is extremely important. Video marketing gives you the best way to connect with your customers on a personal level. Studies have shown that consumers are much more likely to buy goods and service from a company with a personable “feel”; in short, one that connects with them on a real life basis. In a sense, video marketing allows your company to have a “face” and stand out from the faceless crowd.

5. ENRICHING YOUR SITE WITH VIDEO CONTENT

Content is the undisputed king of the web. No matter how attractive the packaging of your website is (the graphics, animations and color scheme), if you lack real content, your customers will notice and go elsewhere to spend their cash. You can add dramatic enrichment and real content to your website with the use of high quality videos.

6. TUTORIALS, REVIEWS, HUMOR AND VIDEO RESPONSES

Creating video tutorials is a great way to help your customers learn how to use your products or services. You can create a tutorial for anything, from vacuum cleaners to webdesign; simply demonstrate the appropriate actions during your video. Reviews are much more dynamic with video. Video product reviews have become enormously popular, especially on blogs. However, you do not have to limit yourself to products. You can review movies, books, music, software; anything you can think of can be reviewed and posted.

Humor is one of the best ways to connect with people. Create humorous videos making a point, share funny thoughts or moments or combine humor in your marketing for a unique touch. Video responses (like those on YouTube) are a great way to respond to popular content. If a video is garnering a large number of views, posting a video response can direct traffic to your channel, blog or website.

 

YouTube was launched in the year 2005 with the sole intention to provide people a platform to view, upload and share videos. With the passage of time, the popularity of the site grew by leaps and bounds. Today, approximately 800 million unique visitors visit YouTube each month, and nearly 48 hours of video content is uploaded every minute. Entrepreneurs usually hesitate to include this platform in their viral internet marketing campaign.

A majority of them feel that they do not have requisite skills and capital to create riveting videos. In reality, to make hypnotic videos, you do not need money or special skills. With a simple camcorder and a dash of creativity, you can easily make mind-boggling video clips that can mesmerize your prospects and persuade them not only to endorse your products, but also to spread the word about them. Conventionally, viral marketing is primarily word of mouth marketing in which if a consumer finds a product useful, he will recommend it to all his friends and relatives.

The recommendations will continue to pile up as more and more satisfied customers enter the block. Similarly, if your prospective client finds a your video useful, he will spread the news through internet-based channels like email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. In simple words, he will create a buzz to build up brand awareness. This is what viral internet marketing is all about, and YouTube can surely help you to reach out to targeted visitors and make your business venture profitable. Here are few useful tips that will help you to use YouTube more effectively in your viral internet marketing campaign.

· Do your homework – The first thing that you need to do is to find out what kind of videos are highly popular on YouTube. Generally, people prefer to watch funny, weird and informative video clips. With the help of views, ratings, comments and subscribers, you can easily find out the popular videos of your niche. View them carefully to decipher their formula of success.

· Keep it simple – Make sure that your video is simple, relevant and enticing. Your message should be loud and clear, and the total duration of the clip should be no more than 3-minutes. All these ingredients will work together to keep your prospect engrossed and later coerce him to buy your products as well as spread the word about it.

· Use keywords carefully – There are millions of videos on YouTube, and to help your clippings to stand out from the crowd, you should use the keywords appropriately. The keywords should be essentially present in the description, link and tags. It is often difficult to keep the link safely, and if the prospect loses the link, your viral internet marketing campaign will literally fail to generate desirable results. However, with the help of keywords, your potential customers can get back the link without much difficulty.

· Brush up your profile channel – Every video on YouTube has a profile channel where you can insert a link to your company’s website. You can also include some information about your business. By customizing the profile channel, you can effortlessly enhance the trustworthiness of your clipping. Together with the credibility, the popularity is bound to increase.

· Pay attention to the call to action – Multiple calls to action give a boost to your viral internet marketing campaign on YouTube because your prospects get different channels to share the video with ease. Apart from writing a comment and rating the clip, you can invite your potential customers to follow you on Twitter and Facebook, subscribe to your videos, send the clipping to their friends, or embed it in their websites. While doing all these things, your prospective clients are simply spreading the news.

· Promote your videos vigorously – In addition to your clients, you are also an important part of your viral internet marketing campaign. Therefore, you should spare no effort to promote your YouTube videos vigorously. Include the video link in your email signature, embed the clipping in your weblog and post it on social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Orkut. Article directories and forums are also good places to popularize your promotional video.

 

In the era of the internet, promotional opportunities have expanded at an almost exponential pace. The internet, social media, and smartphone technology allows connection with an increasingly specific audience at an even more personal level. In order to take advantage of these connection opportunities, it’s vital to know that they exist, and what they are.

Buzz Marketing

Buzz is a sense of excitement or anticipation about a product. Think of it like a hive of bees – they’re buzzing with knowledge about something, transferring it from one to the other very quickly. In this case, the hive is a hive of people. The idea behind buzz promotion is that the target audience becomes excited, and talks amongst itself, further building anticipation before a launch, or simply spreading the word about a new product.

Viral Marketing

Similar to buzz, a viral campaign is one where information is passed on primarily by the users. A company “seeds” something interesting, usually media such as a video or photo. This interesting media is then picked up by customers, and passed along to their friends so that they can enjoy it as well. This media need not be outright promotional – it can simply be something amusing or clever created with an underlying branding message.

Guerrilla Campaigns

Like a guerilla war, these campaigns are created using novel tactics and employing recent technology. In particular, they use minimal resources, leveraging free options like social media. Although the name brings to mind images of warfare, guerilla marketing need not be hostile or combative; guerilla strategies do not necessarily focus on bringing down a competitor, although they may in some cases.

Grass Roots Promotion

Originally something discussed in political promotion, grass roots campaigns involve a sense of community support for a product. Grass roots means reaching people at their most fundamental level and tapping into their sense of community.

Symbiotic Methods, Improved Results

Many of these new methods can lead to the others. For example, a good buzz may also be a viral marketingsuccess. People talk about a product in person, and then head to the internet to spread it further. The reverse might also be true. In the same way, guerrilla campaigns may involve buzz or viral elements. Grass roots promotion is a very common element of guerilla tactics. It can also generate buzz, or go viral depending on what the campaign contains.

A good campaign is always designed with this synthesis in mind. It takes into account how the different elements may play off each other, and might enhance each other in the longer run. Knowing exactly how they will interact isn’t possible, but having a general understanding and being able to make an educated guess can be crucial to having maximum promotional impact.

 

When people are interested in what you show on your website, you will get targeted traffic. It’s great when Internet marketers can get an increased number of targeted traffic and this will make most of them very happy. If you go after the largest quantity of website traffic hoping that a few will be interested then you are wasting valuable time and resources.

Have you ever heard of YouTube marketing or video marketing? YouTube is a free video sharing website and it is growing at a scorching pace. There is an incredible volume of viral YouTube traffic, and vast numbers of people view videos made by professionals as well as amateurs. Maybe you have already made a video and are using it right now on your web pages. Videos can increases sales but if they are stuck on your page, then the only people who will see them are those who find your pages by other means. This article will share some tips that can help you get viral YouTube traffic.

Getting viral traffic through YouTube is great idea! Online video advertising can be a very effective tool for sales generation. When you combine the high popularity of YouTube with the effectiveness of video advertising, you are gaining the advantages of exposure to the vast amount of viral YouTube traffic.

Use the enormous amount of exposure that a YouTube video clip gets to your advantage. You can increase rival traffic to your site when you are viewed on YouTube. Advantages include better search engine recall and more awareness of your site in addition to greater profits generated by the increased traffic to your site.

Make sure that the clip you submit to YouTube is effective and showcases your offerings well. It should be appealing and full of interest to the viewers you are trying to capture. If your video is inviting, you will be able to attract a large part of the people who watch videos on YouTube, and then you will get viral YouTube traffic. When you submit your clip to YouTube, it is placed on the website as well as on a niche site if you are part of a YouTube group.

Your video should not be too long. Don’t make it longer than 10 minutes – your audience’s attention will falter and you won’t get much viral YouTube traffic. If you have a lot of information to convey, break it up into several clips.

There are two ways which you can get targeted traffic. Firstly, you can use straight approach. This one is used most commonly, but is not necessarily the most successful. This is when you already have a website built and populated with numerous pages with particular topics or products, and you want to promote it. Don’t waste your time on the untargeted traffic. Having made a website and invested time in it is great, but not when it comes to YouTube.

Secondly, you can use reverse approach. This is when you create great videos and upload them to YouTube. When one of them goes viral, you make a website that will cater to it. You can research the hottest topics, and create a video for each. You can find more on how to get viral YouTube traffic, but with this advice, at least, you can go in the right direction for making it work with this popular site.