February 12, 2008
Viral Marketing Secrets
Viral Marketing 101 © Jeff Miles
If you have an online business, viral marketing can be a big boon to your net profits. It's the electronic version of free word-of-mouth for your business.
The social networking sites are largely responsible for viral marketing. Also, if a prominent blogger mentions a product or business, that can be all it takes to unleash a round of viral marketing directed at your site.
You don't have to be a large business to benefit. Last summer a woman listed some Pokemon cards for sale on eBay. The cards weren't worth much but she wrote a long, engaging story about how she and her son purchased the cards and what the trip to the store was like. It was such an usual eBay listing that people started bookmarking it on Stumbleupon and other sites.
Eventually it reached the attention of well-known marketer Ed Dale and his blog post about it undoubtedly drive even more traffic to the site. Almost 100,000 hits by the time it was over, if I recall correctly. Before she knew it, local radio stations were calling her and there was even discussion of a book deal.
On a larger scale, Microsoft used viral marketing to create enormous interest in Halo 2 a few years ago, prior to its release. According to a USA Today article, "To build such buzz, Chris DiCesare, director of marketing for Microsoft Game Studios, created a complex marketing scheme that began online with an apparent War of the Worlds-style invasion. A beekeeper's Web site, ilovebees.com, appeared to have been overtaken by the evil force — the Covenant.
"The campaign then involved calling random pay phones, messaging and calling consumers' cell phones and blogs and live chats online. The game tallied first-day sales of $125 million last November.
"Since I couldn't go with the other regular marketing forms, I figured I would take a calculated risk with viral," DiCesare says. "It was a small portion of my overall marketing budget but had the potential to show great return on investment, if it worked."
That is how viral marketing works. This is why it is important to use all the social networking sites. It can be a little bit labor-intensive but the sites are free and are capable of sending an enormous amount of traffic your way.
Research shows that satisfied customers tell, on average, three people about a product or service that they like. A dissatisfied customer tells 11 people about a product that they disliked.
If you have a quality product, look for high-profile bloggers or people with Social Networking Potential (SNP). Create messages that appeal to these people. Think of your customers and what approaches what appeal to them and create interest in your product in a unique way.
