Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing also known as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. Companies ride on the idea that if people like a free stuff, funny story etc, they will pass it on to their friends and family. The company brands their logo or a product description to go with that particular media. Result? The company gets free advertising that keeps growing without them having to do anything else. To avoid being label as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pass on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.

Here are several ideas to help you start your viral marketing campaign:

1. It is a well known and widely accepted fact, that Free E-books are one of the best weapons in a viral marketing campaign arsenal. Give permission for people to give away your free product and just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the Internet. E-books are cheap to produce and don’t take long to set up. If you have articles that you have already written about the subject you are promoting, you can simply combine these articles into an E-book. If, writing isn’t your forte, you can use rebrandable E-books that have been produced by others.

2. If you have the ability to set up a forum or other bulletin board, you really have a great tool. Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own website. Some people don't have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.Join relevant forums that are in some way related to the promotion’s primary sales market. For example, someone involved with a electronic related product, many types of forums could apply.

3. Write articles that relevant to your product or service. Allow people to reprint your articles on their website, in their E-zine, newsletter, magazine or E-books. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.

4. E-Mail Viral.A study by marketing agency, revealed that adult Internet users share content with others via e-mail. The most popular content is humorous material. The second most popular category is news, followed by healthcare and medical information, religious and spiritual material, games, business and personal finance information and sports/hobbies . Cartoons, jokes and funny video clips are among the things that can be added to an e-mail to insure that it will go viral. People will want to pass along something that makes them laugh.

5.Using Videos in Viral Marketing.More and more advertisers are adopting video ad-serving technologies become more sophisticated. Online video advertising is really taking off. Users’ attention can be captured and ads stand out from the crowd in an increasingly ad-cluttered online environment. It is true that video formats cost five to ten times more to serve than standard banners and they involve a lot more production and implementation work but they may well be worth all of that if they achieve greater response rates.

6.Flash Games. Although they are a little costly to start, they are an extremely effective tool to get your viral marketing campaign going. Once they are launched, they require nothing more from you.

7.Blogging. Providing the tools on your website to enable bloggers to interact with one another is a terrific way to get the message about your product of service out there and being talked about. Bloggers have their ears to the ground for new products and services.

8.Hold a contest on your web site. You could place the other web site's ads on the contest page in exchange for them promoting the contest.