NLP Sell Marketing

Joe Rispoli asked:


Do you know what happens if a person has a good online experience?

They just might pass it on to a friend while encouraging that friend to forward it to their friends.

That my friends is what makes viral marketing so powerful.

There are many free advertising resources available to online marketers. What most people do not realize is that they can get their marketing message sent out to a targeted group of people by using viral marketing tactics and best of all, it is free!

So what is viral marketing all about? By following these suggestions you may find that viral marketing can be an effective part of your marketing campaign.

1. The most common type of viral marketing is when people share quality experiences with friends. Some examples are software products, online services, online marketing tools, free advertising resources, etc. The product or service must be beneficial enough to encourage people to want to share it with others.

2. If you want to have your viral email message forwarded frequently then you should place a relevant marketing offer in every outgoing email message. It is important to make sure that the incentives are good enough and that the people getting them feel that they are of sufficient quality to avoid any displeasure or backlash. Your offer should be something specific, such as free software, an e-book, or maybe a promotional item that you have available for your company.

3. One way to avoid complaints is not to consider a name and address that is received through viral marketing as an opt in. This means that after the referral email is sent you should not add them to any subscription list. Ask them in the referral email if they would like to receive future mailings, allowing them to opt in.

4. Response rates increase dramatically when people see that a message is coming from someone they know. So, personalize your referral emails. The subject is important because it can identify an email as friendly. The subject line should show three things about the email. It should identify the email as an advertisement, that it includes a special offer and that the email was sent from a friend.

5. If you can understand what makes a marketing message worthy of being passed along to others and incorporate it into your offer or program then you will be able to drive traffic to your website.

6. Your website can also be used to take advantage of viral marketing. Create informative articles and post then to free article sites. Make sure the title is unique and that at least one link to your website appears in the article. Do not forget to have an Email This Page To A Friend link on your website, you can find the code out on the Internet.

Another suggestion is to write free articles for a website that is related to your topic of interest. Especially one with a good newsletter or that distributes articles.

7. Email newsletters are a great way to enjoy the benefits of viral marketing. By providing quality information in your newsletter, readers will be more likely to pass it on to their friends. Remember to always include a Send to a Friend link in your newsletter along with a Subscribe to Newsletter link. This will make it easier for you to gather new subscribers to your newsletter.

8. Viral marketing can be extremely useful for a one time campaign, but it can also be a great tool for expanding your business over time. Whether your goal is branding or to drive more visitors to your website you can use viral marketing in a manner to encourage others to pass along your messages.

9. Viral marketing is something that happens naturally, your message should be something of interest while offering something valuable in order for your message to be successful.

10. What it comes down to is that your viral message must be perceived as having value. To most of us entertainment has value. We all like fun, interactive content that inspires us to pass it on to a friend. How many jokes have you received in your inbox?

So, should you try to incorporate viral marketing into your email campaigns? Yes! There is no doubt about it, viral marketing will allow you to reach more than just your target audience and without much cost. Just remember that viral marketing is another strategy to be used in your online marketing campaign and is one small step toward achieving your objectives.

One last thought. Your viral marketing message can offer one of the most amazing incentives around and contain some of the best content found on the Internet, but if people visit your website and do not get what was promised, you may just see viral marketing at its worst.

Feel free to forward this to a friend.

Copyright 2006 Joe Rispoli



Create a video blog

Patrick Omari asked:


Since its original creation and subsequent commercial introduction in the late 1980s, the internet has grown exponentially at an almost limitless speed. The internet, as its predecessors television and radio, is becoming the most dominant media for new marketing techniques. As video killed the radio star, will the internet kill the TV star as each new media consumes its predecessors.

Commercials have evolved. The clear, concise product messages of the past are often replaced with unusual, obscure short films, although some ads will still use the obvious approach when promoting a product. As the internet’s share of commercial sales grows, more companies are using its influence to introduce products to their intended market.

Due to the size and scale of the internet, web advertising needs to be more effective than ever before. At a time where adverts struggle to even reach their target market, viral marketing is quickly becoming cost-effective as the ‘virus’ concept spreads and more potential customers become ‘infected’. Viral Marketing is generally considered to be video clips, games, images, e-mails and recently text messages.

In the mid 1990s, Hotmail was offering free e-mail services, a revolutionary concept at the time. One of the first examples of viral marketing, Hotmail would offer free e-mail addresses with a simple promotional tagline. The message would spread through groups and communities rapidly and the campaign was a success. Hotmail had made its mark, the product had become well-known and popular and the brand had been established with just a small number of viral messages.

An early viral marketing campaign ensured the success of the film The Blair Witch Project (1999). The production team spent a tiny production budget of just 22,000 dollars and took 250 million dollars at the box office thanks to the viral. The marketing campaign relied heavily on word-of-mouth promotion, with internet chat rooms building anticipation and intrigue about the film’s content and time of release.

The Blair Witch Project was a movie with actors, however, prior to its release the film was rumoured to be a documentary by college kids that had gone terribly wrong. The rumours spread quickly and the infected would go on to infect more and more people. By the time the film was released, the buzz around it was at fever-pitch. The Blair Witch creators were pioneers of the viral ad, with viral marketing in its early stages - the standard had been set.

A great viral ad will gain attention and intrigue around a product, so consequently the product must be good, if not great. As the money spent on viral ads increases with the format’s popularity, the expectation on each viral will also increase. A viral ad’s success will be judged on the amount of views the clip achieves, not necessarily on the related sales.

Increasing sales is inevitably the main target for any company looking to use viral marketing, but the main objective of the ad will not be to promote a specific product. To prevent the viral being too similar to a conventional advert, the product or company name will not be a prevalent part or will be completely absent from the clip.

Recently, there have been many video clips that the viewer would not immediately associate with the product. A UK television advert for Dairy Milk chocolate emerged in September, 2007, featuring a gorilla playing drums to the Phil Collins song ‘In The Air Tonight’.

The advert, three times the length of a regular TV commercial, begins with a close-up of the gorilla’s face. As the camera begins to pan away, the song begins and the gorilla is seen to be seated behind a drum kit. He creaks his neck before launching into the emphatic drum solo. The final shot is the Dairy Milk logo with its slogan ‘A glass and a half full of joy’. The video currently has about two million views on youtube, a major success as a viral ad.

Companies of all sizes will be looking to benefit from the buzz surrounding viral marketing videos. One of the world’s biggest companies, Nike, launched the legendary video showing Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho hitting the crossbar four times in a row without the ball touching the floor. Viewed over 50 million times, the video is classed as possibly the best viral ever made. The confusion about how genuine the advert was, as seen in the case of The Blair Witch Project, only increased its popularity as communities shared the video and questioned how it was made.

A new viral ad launched by Holiday Extras, a UK-based company selling airport parking and hotels, features comedy actor Paul Kaye as a car-park proprietor. The clip, at 92 seconds, shows a hideous alternative to the service that the company aims to offer the customer. This inversion of a traditional television advertisement shows how far advertising has moved since it inception. Having only recently been launched, it will be interesting to see how many views the video receives.

A successful viral advert relies on viewing figures, not the popularity of the advert itself. The aim of the viral is to launch or reinforce a brand identity and to encourage word-of-mouth promotion. With little or no money involved, the viral can be seen by a massive audience who will then talk about it to non-internet users as well as fellow web-users. However, as the new media gains popularity and attention, the competition will become fierce, forcing viral ads to be more diverse and attention-grabbing than ever.

So, what will the future hold for viral marketing? As the internet becomes the dominant marketing tool for companies of all kinds, it will be used in different ways to promote products and services. As quickly as the viral marketing epidemic spread, a vaccine may appear in the form of new advertising techniques. It is the companies and advertisers that must stay ahead and attempt to infect the public with progressive, innovative campaigns.



Caffeinated Content

Anthony Samuel asked:


Viral marketing refers to stealth marketing techniques that produce increase in brand awareness exponentially through a self replicating process, very similar to the spread of a computer virus. Through the Internet, it reaches a large number of people fast. Viral marketing has the ability to execute a low cost marketing campaign, and obtain response from a large number of interested people. A real marketers dream high and rapid response, at a low cost!

As a strategy, Viral marketing encourages people to pass on marketing messages to others, and create a potential for growth, exponentially. For many people, the term viral marketing is quite offensive, reminiscent of the virus that replicates over and over again, with no end. Viral marketing is the word-of-mouth equivalent of the off-Internet marketing strategy. Viral marketing, however offensive it may seem to some, has come to stay.

The start of Viral marketing is attributed to Hotmail one of the first free email services. At the bottom of each of the free email sent out was a small message ‘Get your private, free email at hotmail.com.’ All the recipients of the senders emails, their friends and associates, would see the message, sign up for the free email service, and help send the message further to their own list of friends and acquaintances. This carefully designed viral marketing strategy sent a small message rapidly across, all over the Internet.

The Elements Of Viral Marketing

If you are thinking of incorporating Viral marketing in your overall strategy, this is what you can do. Some may work and some may not, and not all will work as easy as the Hotmail strategy did. A look at some of the elements:

- Giving Away Products And Services: This is the primary element of Viral marketing, giving away free products and services. Free e-mail services, free information, free software programs that perform powerful functions (later, you can hit them with the pro version). Free generates more interest than cheap and inexpensive, and soon this will generate enough interest for the businesses to generate income. This is the basic strategy, you give away something first, and then sell later.

- Providing Effortless Transfer: To make the virus of viral marketing spread, you need a viable medium. A medium that will help transfer and spread your message with ease and comfort, something like an e-mail, website, graphic, software download, etc. Internet offers the best, instant, and a very inexpensive way to transfer and replicate your message. Make your Viral marketing message short, compact, and compelling so as to be able to transmit without degradation.

- Building Scalability: For your viral marketing strategy to work, it must have the ability to spread rapidly from small to large. As in the case of Hotmail, it was limited by the spread of the message only over its own servers. You need to plan ahead in your strategy, and build scalability in your model.

- Utilizing Existing Communication Networks: Humans are social animals, and every person has a network of 8 to 10 close friends, family, and associates, with whom he communicates. Some people, depending, have scores and hundreds with whom they may be communicating on a regular basis. Today, people have developed a network of relationships through the Internet. They have a network of emails and favorite website URLs. Your viral marketing strategy must include ways to place your message into these existing networks to multiply and spread rapidly.

- Using Others Resources: Your viral marketing strategy must include the use of others resources, such as placing your text or graphic links on others websites. This way, other peoples websites are relaying your messages, which can be seen by hundreds of visitors visiting those websites.



Kansieo.com

Anthony Samuel asked:


Viral marketing refers to stealth marketing techniques that produce increase in brand awareness exponentially through a self replicating process, very similar to the spread of a computer virus. Through the Internet, it reaches a large number of people fast. Viral marketing has the ability to execute a low cost marketing campaign, and obtain response from a large number of interested people. A real marketers dream high and rapid response, at a low cost!

As a strategy, Viral marketing encourages people to pass on marketing messages to others, and create a potential for growth, exponentially. For many people, the term viral marketing is quite offensive, reminiscent of the virus that replicates over and over again, with no end. Viral marketing is the word-of-mouth equivalent of the off-Internet marketing strategy. Viral marketing, however offensive it may seem to some, has come to stay.

The start of Viral marketing is attributed to Hotmail one of the first free email services. At the bottom of each of the free email sent out was a small message ‘Get your private, free email at hotmail.com.’ All the recipients of the senders emails, their friends and associates, would see the message, sign up for the free email service, and help send the message further to their own list of friends and acquaintances. This carefully designed viral marketing strategy sent a small message rapidly across, all over the Internet.

The Elements Of Viral Marketing

If you are thinking of incorporating Viral marketing in your overall strategy, this is what you can do. Some may work and some may not, and not all will work as easy as the Hotmail strategy did. A look at some of the elements:

- Giving Away Products And Services: This is the primary element of Viral marketing, giving away free products and services. Free e-mail services, free information, free software programs that perform powerful functions (later, you can hit them with the pro version). Free generates more interest than cheap and inexpensive, and soon this will generate enough interest for the businesses to generate income. This is the basic strategy, you give away something first, and then sell later.

- Providing Effortless Transfer: To make the virus of viral marketing spread, you need a viable medium. A medium that will help transfer and spread your message with ease and comfort, something like an e-mail, website, graphic, software download, etc. Internet offers the best, instant, and a very inexpensive way to transfer and replicate your message. Make your Viral marketing message short, compact, and compelling so as to be able to transmit without degradation.

- Building Scalability: For your viral marketing strategy to work, it must have the ability to spread rapidly from small to large. As in the case of Hotmail, it was limited by the spread of the message only over its own servers. You need to plan ahead in your strategy, and build scalability in your model.

- Utilizing Existing Communication Networks: Humans are social animals, and every person has a network of 8 to 10 close friends, family, and associates, with whom he communicates. Some people, depending, have scores and hundreds with whom they may be communicating on a regular basis. Today, people have developed a network of relationships through the Internet. They have a network of emails and favorite website URLs. Your viral marketing strategy must include ways to place your message into these existing networks to multiply and spread rapidly.

- Using Others Resources: Your viral marketing strategy must include the use of others resources, such as placing your text or graphic links on others websites. This way, other peoples websites are relaying your messages, which can be seen by hundreds of visitors visiting those websites.



Caffeinated Content

Patrick Omari asked:


Since its original creation and subsequent commercial introduction in the late 1980s, the internet has grown exponentially at an almost limitless speed. The internet, as its predecessors television and radio, is becoming the most dominant media for new marketing techniques. As video killed the radio star, will the internet kill the TV star as each new media consumes its predecessors.

Commercials have evolved. The clear, concise product messages of the past are often replaced with unusual, obscure short films, although some ads will still use the obvious approach when promoting a product. As the internet’s share of commercial sales grows, more companies are using its influence to introduce products to their intended market.

Due to the size and scale of the internet, web advertising needs to be more effective than ever before. At a time where adverts struggle to even reach their target market, viral marketing is quickly becoming cost-effective as the ‘virus’ concept spreads and more potential customers become ‘infected’. Viral Marketing is generally considered to be video clips, games, images, e-mails and recently text messages.

In the mid 1990s, Hotmail was offering free e-mail services, a revolutionary concept at the time. One of the first examples of viral marketing, Hotmail would offer free e-mail addresses with a simple promotional tagline. The message would spread through groups and communities rapidly and the campaign was a success. Hotmail had made its mark, the product had become well-known and popular and the brand had been established with just a small number of viral messages.

An early viral marketing campaign ensured the success of the film The Blair Witch Project (1999). The production team spent a tiny production budget of just 22,000 dollars and took 250 million dollars at the box office thanks to the viral. The marketing campaign relied heavily on word-of-mouth promotion, with internet chat rooms building anticipation and intrigue about the film’s content and time of release.

The Blair Witch Project was a movie with actors, however, prior to its release the film was rumoured to be a documentary by college kids that had gone terribly wrong. The rumours spread quickly and the infected would go on to infect more and more people. By the time the film was released, the buzz around it was at fever-pitch. The Blair Witch creators were pioneers of the viral ad, with viral marketing in its early stages - the standard had been set.

A great viral ad will gain attention and intrigue around a product, so consequently the product must be good, if not great. As the money spent on viral ads increases with the format’s popularity, the expectation on each viral will also increase. A viral ad’s success will be judged on the amount of views the clip achieves, not necessarily on the related sales.

Increasing sales is inevitably the main target for any company looking to use viral marketing, but the main objective of the ad will not be to promote a specific product. To prevent the viral being too similar to a conventional advert, the product or company name will not be a prevalent part or will be completely absent from the clip.

Recently, there have been many video clips that the viewer would not immediately associate with the product. A UK television advert for Dairy Milk chocolate emerged in September, 2007, featuring a gorilla playing drums to the Phil Collins song ‘In The Air Tonight’.

The advert, three times the length of a regular TV commercial, begins with a close-up of the gorilla’s face. As the camera begins to pan away, the song begins and the gorilla is seen to be seated behind a drum kit. He creaks his neck before launching into the emphatic drum solo. The final shot is the Dairy Milk logo with its slogan ‘A glass and a half full of joy’. The video currently has about two million views on youtube, a major success as a viral ad.

Companies of all sizes will be looking to benefit from the buzz surrounding viral marketing videos. One of the world’s biggest companies, Nike, launched the legendary video showing Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho hitting the crossbar four times in a row without the ball touching the floor. Viewed over 50 million times, the video is classed as possibly the best viral ever made. The confusion about how genuine the advert was, as seen in the case of The Blair Witch Project, only increased its popularity as communities shared the video and questioned how it was made.

A new viral ad launched by Holiday Extras, a UK-based company selling airport parking and hotels, features comedy actor Paul Kaye as a car-park proprietor. The clip, at 92 seconds, shows a hideous alternative to the service that the company aims to offer the customer. This inversion of a traditional television advertisement shows how far advertising has moved since it inception. Having only recently been launched, it will be interesting to see how many views the video receives.

A successful viral advert relies on viewing figures, not the popularity of the advert itself. The aim of the viral is to launch or reinforce a brand identity and to encourage word-of-mouth promotion. With little or no money involved, the viral can be seen by a massive audience who will then talk about it to non-internet users as well as fellow web-users. However, as the new media gains popularity and attention, the competition will become fierce, forcing viral ads to be more diverse and attention-grabbing than ever.

So, what will the future hold for viral marketing? As the internet becomes the dominant marketing tool for companies of all kinds, it will be used in different ways to promote products and services. As quickly as the viral marketing epidemic spread, a vaccine may appear in the form of new advertising techniques. It is the companies and advertisers that must stay ahead and attempt to infect the public with progressive, innovative campaigns.



Caffeinated Content

Joe Rispoli asked:


Do you know what happens if a person has a good online experience?

They just might pass it on to a friend while encouraging that friend to forward it to their friends.

That my friends is what makes viral marketing so powerful.

There are many free advertising resources available to online marketers. What most people do not realize is that they can get their marketing message sent out to a targeted group of people by using viral marketing tactics and best of all, it is free!

So what is viral marketing all about? By following these suggestions you may find that viral marketing can be an effective part of your marketing campaign.

1. The most common type of viral marketing is when people share quality experiences with friends. Some examples are software products, online services, online marketing tools, free advertising resources, etc. The product or service must be beneficial enough to encourage people to want to share it with others.

2. If you want to have your viral email message forwarded frequently then you should place a relevant marketing offer in every outgoing email message. It is important to make sure that the incentives are good enough and that the people getting them feel that they are of sufficient quality to avoid any displeasure or backlash. Your offer should be something specific, such as free software, an e-book, or maybe a promotional item that you have available for your company.

3. One way to avoid complaints is not to consider a name and address that is received through viral marketing as an opt in. This means that after the referral email is sent you should not add them to any subscription list. Ask them in the referral email if they would like to receive future mailings, allowing them to opt in.

4. Response rates increase dramatically when people see that a message is coming from someone they know. So, personalize your referral emails. The subject is important because it can identify an email as friendly. The subject line should show three things about the email. It should identify the email as an advertisement, that it includes a special offer and that the email was sent from a friend.

5. If you can understand what makes a marketing message worthy of being passed along to others and incorporate it into your offer or program then you will be able to drive traffic to your website.

6. Your website can also be used to take advantage of viral marketing. Create informative articles and post then to free article sites. Make sure the title is unique and that at least one link to your website appears in the article. Do not forget to have an Email This Page To A Friend link on your website, you can find the code out on the Internet.

Another suggestion is to write free articles for a website that is related to your topic of interest. Especially one with a good newsletter or that distributes articles.

7. Email newsletters are a great way to enjoy the benefits of viral marketing. By providing quality information in your newsletter, readers will be more likely to pass it on to their friends. Remember to always include a Send to a Friend link in your newsletter along with a Subscribe to Newsletter link. This will make it easier for you to gather new subscribers to your newsletter.

8. Viral marketing can be extremely useful for a one time campaign, but it can also be a great tool for expanding your business over time. Whether your goal is branding or to drive more visitors to your website you can use viral marketing in a manner to encourage others to pass along your messages.

9. Viral marketing is something that happens naturally, your message should be something of interest while offering something valuable in order for your message to be successful.

10. What it comes down to is that your viral message must be perceived as having value. To most of us entertainment has value. We all like fun, interactive content that inspires us to pass it on to a friend. How many jokes have you received in your inbox?

So, should you try to incorporate viral marketing into your email campaigns? Yes! There is no doubt about it, viral marketing will allow you to reach more than just your target audience and without much cost. Just remember that viral marketing is another strategy to be used in your online marketing campaign and is one small step toward achieving your objectives.

One last thought. Your viral marketing message can offer one of the most amazing incentives around and contain some of the best content found on the Internet, but if people visit your website and do not get what was promised, you may just see viral marketing at its worst.

Feel free to forward this to a friend.

Copyright 2006 Joe Rispoli



Create a video blog

Patrick Omari asked:


Since its original creation and subsequent commercial introduction in the late 1980s, the internet has grown exponentially at an almost limitless speed. The internet, as its predecessors television and radio, is becoming the most dominant media for new marketing techniques. As video killed the radio star, will the internet kill the TV star as each new media consumes its predecessors.

Commercials have evolved. The clear, concise product messages of the past are often replaced with unusual, obscure short films, although some ads will still use the obvious approach when promoting a product. As the internet’s share of commercial sales grows, more companies are using its influence to introduce products to their intended market.

Due to the size and scale of the internet, web advertising needs to be more effective than ever before. At a time where adverts struggle to even reach their target market, viral marketing is quickly becoming cost-effective as the ‘virus’ concept spreads and more potential customers become ‘infected’. Viral Marketing is generally considered to be video clips, games, images, e-mails and recently text messages.

In the mid 1990s, Hotmail was offering free e-mail services, a revolutionary concept at the time. One of the first examples of viral marketing, Hotmail would offer free e-mail addresses with a simple promotional tagline. The message would spread through groups and communities rapidly and the campaign was a success. Hotmail had made its mark, the product had become well-known and popular and the brand had been established with just a small number of viral messages.

An early viral marketing campaign ensured the success of the film The Blair Witch Project (1999). The production team spent a tiny production budget of just 22,000 dollars and took 250 million dollars at the box office thanks to the viral. The marketing campaign relied heavily on word-of-mouth promotion, with internet chat rooms building anticipation and intrigue about the film’s content and time of release.

The Blair Witch Project was a movie with actors, however, prior to its release the film was rumoured to be a documentary by college kids that had gone terribly wrong. The rumours spread quickly and the infected would go on to infect more and more people. By the time the film was released, the buzz around it was at fever-pitch. The Blair Witch creators were pioneers of the viral ad, with viral marketing in its early stages - the standard had been set.

A great viral ad will gain attention and intrigue around a product, so consequently the product must be good, if not great. As the money spent on viral ads increases with the format’s popularity, the expectation on each viral will also increase. A viral ad’s success will be judged on the amount of views the clip achieves, not necessarily on the related sales.

Increasing sales is inevitably the main target for any company looking to use viral marketing, but the main objective of the ad will not be to promote a specific product. To prevent the viral being too similar to a conventional advert, the product or company name will not be a prevalent part or will be completely absent from the clip.

Recently, there have been many video clips that the viewer would not immediately associate with the product. A UK television advert for Dairy Milk chocolate emerged in September, 2007, featuring a gorilla playing drums to the Phil Collins song ‘In The Air Tonight’.

The advert, three times the length of a regular TV commercial, begins with a close-up of the gorilla’s face. As the camera begins to pan away, the song begins and the gorilla is seen to be seated behind a drum kit. He creaks his neck before launching into the emphatic drum solo. The final shot is the Dairy Milk logo with its slogan ‘A glass and a half full of joy’. The video currently has about two million views on youtube, a major success as a viral ad.

Companies of all sizes will be looking to benefit from the buzz surrounding viral marketing videos. One of the world’s biggest companies, Nike, launched the legendary video showing Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho hitting the crossbar four times in a row without the ball touching the floor. Viewed over 50 million times, the video is classed as possibly the best viral ever made. The confusion about how genuine the advert was, as seen in the case of The Blair Witch Project, only increased its popularity as communities shared the video and questioned how it was made.

A new viral ad launched by Holiday Extras, a UK-based company selling airport parking and hotels, features comedy actor Paul Kaye as a car-park proprietor. The clip, at 92 seconds, shows a hideous alternative to the service that the company aims to offer the customer. This inversion of a traditional television advertisement shows how far advertising has moved since it inception. Having only recently been launched, it will be interesting to see how many views the video receives.

A successful viral advert relies on viewing figures, not the popularity of the advert itself. The aim of the viral is to launch or reinforce a brand identity and to encourage word-of-mouth promotion. With little or no money involved, the viral can be seen by a massive audience who will then talk about it to non-internet users as well as fellow web-users. However, as the new media gains popularity and attention, the competition will become fierce, forcing viral ads to be more diverse and attention-grabbing than ever.

So, what will the future hold for viral marketing? As the internet becomes the dominant marketing tool for companies of all kinds, it will be used in different ways to promote products and services. As quickly as the viral marketing epidemic spread, a vaccine may appear in the form of new advertising techniques. It is the companies and advertisers that must stay ahead and attempt to infect the public with progressive, innovative campaigns.



Caffeinated Content

Patrick Omari asked:


Since its original creation and subsequent commercial introduction in the late 1980s, the internet has grown exponentially at an almost limitless speed. The internet, as its predecessors television and radio, is becoming the most dominant media for new marketing techniques. As video killed the radio star, will the internet kill the TV star as each new media consumes its predecessors.

Commercials have evolved. The clear, concise product messages of the past are often replaced with unusual, obscure short films, although some ads will still use the obvious approach when promoting a product. As the internet’s share of commercial sales grows, more companies are using its influence to introduce products to their intended market.

Due to the size and scale of the internet, web advertising needs to be more effective than ever before. At a time where adverts struggle to even reach their target market, viral marketing is quickly becoming cost-effective as the ‘virus’ concept spreads and more potential customers become ‘infected’. Viral Marketing is generally considered to be video clips, games, images, e-mails and recently text messages.

In the mid 1990s, Hotmail was offering free e-mail services, a revolutionary concept at the time. One of the first examples of viral marketing, Hotmail would offer free e-mail addresses with a simple promotional tagline. The message would spread through groups and communities rapidly and the campaign was a success. Hotmail had made its mark, the product had become well-known and popular and the brand had been established with just a small number of viral messages.

An early viral marketing campaign ensured the success of the film The Blair Witch Project (1999). The production team spent a tiny production budget of just 22,000 dollars and took 250 million dollars at the box office thanks to the viral. The marketing campaign relied heavily on word-of-mouth promotion, with internet chat rooms building anticipation and intrigue about the film’s content and time of release.

The Blair Witch Project was a movie with actors, however, prior to its release the film was rumoured to be a documentary by college kids that had gone terribly wrong. The rumours spread quickly and the infected would go on to infect more and more people. By the time the film was released, the buzz around it was at fever-pitch. The Blair Witch creators were pioneers of the viral ad, with viral marketing in its early stages - the standard had been set.

A great viral ad will gain attention and intrigue around a product, so consequently the product must be good, if not great. As the money spent on viral ads increases with the format’s popularity, the expectation on each viral will also increase. A viral ad’s success will be judged on the amount of views the clip achieves, not necessarily on the related sales.

Increasing sales is inevitably the main target for any company looking to use viral marketing, but the main objective of the ad will not be to promote a specific product. To prevent the viral being too similar to a conventional advert, the product or company name will not be a prevalent part or will be completely absent from the clip.

Recently, there have been many video clips that the viewer would not immediately associate with the product. A UK television advert for Dairy Milk chocolate emerged in September, 2007, featuring a gorilla playing drums to the Phil Collins song ‘In The Air Tonight’.

The advert, three times the length of a regular TV commercial, begins with a close-up of the gorilla’s face. As the camera begins to pan away, the song begins and the gorilla is seen to be seated behind a drum kit. He creaks his neck before launching into the emphatic drum solo. The final shot is the Dairy Milk logo with its slogan ‘A glass and a half full of joy’. The video currently has about two million views on youtube, a major success as a viral ad.

Companies of all sizes will be looking to benefit from the buzz surrounding viral marketing videos. One of the world’s biggest companies, Nike, launched the legendary video showing Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho hitting the crossbar four times in a row without the ball touching the floor. Viewed over 50 million times, the video is classed as possibly the best viral ever made. The confusion about how genuine the advert was, as seen in the case of The Blair Witch Project, only increased its popularity as communities shared the video and questioned how it was made.

A new viral ad launched by Holiday Extras, a UK-based company selling airport parking and hotels, features comedy actor Paul Kaye as a car-park proprietor. The clip, at 92 seconds, shows a hideous alternative to the service that the company aims to offer the customer. This inversion of a traditional television advertisement shows how far advertising has moved since it inception. Having only recently been launched, it will be interesting to see how many views the video receives.

A successful viral advert relies on viewing figures, not the popularity of the advert itself. The aim of the viral is to launch or reinforce a brand identity and to encourage word-of-mouth promotion. With little or no money involved, the viral can be seen by a massive audience who will then talk about it to non-internet users as well as fellow web-users. However, as the new media gains popularity and attention, the competition will become fierce, forcing viral ads to be more diverse and attention-grabbing than ever.

So, what will the future hold for viral marketing? As the internet becomes the dominant marketing tool for companies of all kinds, it will be used in different ways to promote products and services. As quickly as the viral marketing epidemic spread, a vaccine may appear in the form of new advertising techniques. It is the companies and advertisers that must stay ahead and attempt to infect the public with progressive, innovative campaigns.



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Douglas Stuart asked:


What is viral marketing? It is an idea that is passed through the community much like a common cold. What is viral marketing? It encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others.Viral marketing is a fancy term for word of mouth advertising it is any advertising that propagates itself the way viruses do.

Word of mouth is still one of the most effective marketing techniques, online or offline.As a result viral marketing is a phenomenon that occurs when the creative message you’re trying to convey resonates deeply with the audience you’re speaking to. If you’re doing your homework and adequately planning the right messaging, with some incentive that clearly benefits the consumer, then viral marketing occurs.Consequently it is considered as one of the most powerful methods of online marketing and advertising today.

This form of marketing is dependent on peers passing the information on to multiple others via online social networks. When executed well a viral campaign should spread rapidly and become referenced and talked about across multiple internet channels.

It is most powerful when it taps into the breadth of its customers’ weak connections to others. Therefore tapping the customer’s entire address book is obviously of more value than just reaching their best friend. Ultimately it is the way that ideas have always spread through communities If something has value then people want to share it.

These methods work when the product is something of value so efforts towards design, usability, and solving pain is most of the solution.It then becomes two efforts, creating the conventions from web 1.0 that people expect, share with a friend is an example and the unique web 2.0 strategies that are more social, using rss/blogs, etc.

Viral marketing creates a win/win situation for all parties. The user is provided a service or valuable information for free and in turn provides your site with free advertising.It is so successful because it creates the curiosity and desire needed to generate the demand for a product or service. It causes people to seek it out.

Hotmail used this form of marketing in a small way that produced big results. At the bottom of each of the emails sent, they included a small line that said something like “get your free email account with hotmail. Hotmail is now one of the biggest free web-based email providers, and one of the longest running alongside yahoo and a few others.

Ultimately hotmail piggybacked on personal emails from one person to another to publicize their free email service. At a time when few people had email,the first and only free email service in the marketplace was appealing and novel - hence their rapid adoption and spread.

Viral marketing existed way before ‘viral marketing’ if you were a marketer, I’d say it was doing your job. As it takes advantage of the millions of communities that all of us have built up naturally,that’s you and me .In reality it has been around forever, spreading the word through word-of-mouth was the world’s first form of viral marketing.

It will yield its best results if a valuable and tangible incentive is offered, that will entice individuals to forward an email message to their friends.However,marketers should limit the incentive to a specific quantity to avoid spam-like distribution of the message.

Viral marketing essentially relies on other people to get involved. You can learn the ways to help motivate them and can feed them the information and campaigns that are mostly likely to spark their interest, but ultimately you have no control over what they do with it.

Viral marketing still has the strongest effect if your product can be somehow incorporated into the communication between two people. This includes phone systems (mci), electronic postcards (blue mountain), free e-mail (hotmail), and the communications tool that someone is inventing in his or her garage as you’re reading this chapter.

It is always as effective as others say it is if only it would be done properly. It is effective, yes.However it does depend on a high pass-along rate from person to person.If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly.

Viral marketing extends this into the digital domain by harnessing the electronic connectivity of individuals to spread your message. It 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, to millions. Viral marketing is similar in nature to a contagious disease, in the way it spreads. However, it’s always beneficial to the business conducting the campaign.

Essentially it works best in combination with e-mail marketing, since e-mail marketing provides viral marketing with a great communication medium. You can use e-mail to spread the message as really it is a good bit about winning hearts and minds. Viral marketing is advertising that you voluntarily pass around because it’s cool, not necessarily because you want to help build publicity.

There is some noticeable overlap where a guerrilla ad that doesn’t quite look like an ad is so great that you end up telling other people about it.A notable survey was done recently on such an add and it showed a full 70% of people interviewed remembered seeing the ad so viral marketing if done right is incredibly powerful stuff.

It is creating an awareness of a product or a service, without really advertising it. For instance, you wear branded jeans with the name tag on the back.Therefore viral marketing helps to spread the word and can help produce a result.

Also it facilitates and encourages people to pass along a message voluntarily. Viral marketing is essentially the word-of-mouth or refer-a-friend tactic done through the internet. The concept is actually very simple: promote your brand, product or service by creating a message that is intriguing and entertaining enough that people would want to pass it to their friends online.

Viral Marketing is but one of many techniques that together have a cumulative effect in attracting customers and subscribers to your business - in attracting targeted visitors to your website. Momentum is gained by aiming every element of the overall strategy at developing the relationship with your visitors.

It has been able to successfully allow marketers to increase the value of free services online, because referrals are the major way that most people market with free services. So, these tools of internet marketing have been able to allow people to significantly pursue various affiliate programs in order to increase the value of these free services.

Viral marketing campaigns can achieve great success they just have to be planned out like any other marketing campaign. Undeniably it is considered as one of the most powerful methods of internet marketing and advertising today.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail,it counts on the eagerness of one person to pass on the product. Clear market evidence shows it is doing it’s job on the consumers, it keeps them on-line and now with domino pizza, consumers are buying products just to get more marketing, a never ending cycle.

What ever happened to letting anticipation build just waiting for some movie to come out, that carrot in front of you face has gotten bigger and your wallet is getting smaller. It was huge in the mid-90’s before the dot-com bubble burst and everyone realized that eyeballs didn’t necessarily translate into dollars.

However Viral marketing if done right can be a cost effective way to get the word out about your business and get customers buying.Although it’s fair to say that alot of people talk about viral marketing,but they don’t do it very well. It also describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the messages exposure and influence.

Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message from one to two to thousands , to millions.One of it’s major strengths is it uses the power of one customer’s recommendation to another.Therefore that helps to spread the word about a product or company.As viral marketing is a method of encouraging recipients to pass along the marketing message to other potential consumers. The impact of video email and the quality of the information presented can facilitate the proliferation of this form of personalized marketing.

Blogging started really taking off after the dot-com boom and bust. It started taking off after world-com and other corporate scandals. Blogs and other social software rely upon the trust of the reader, which is why links, references and disclaimers feature on many (not all) posts.

Transparency is key in the modern advertising-savvy marketplace.Blogs and the blogosphere in general have become an important tool in the viral marketing frontier. Many reputable bloggers are approached by companies wanting to advertise their services or products, all with the intuitive of instigating a viral effect.

Viral marketing is not only putting yourself out there with some free information, but its utilizing the

coolness factor by getting people to write about you and spread the word .It is beneficial in that it has the potential to reach large audiences very quickly meaning companies will potentially get their message to their target audience and beyond in hours. Viral marketing is a great tactic to earn revenue when promoting a product or service .

Article marketing is no doubt is an indispensable tool in internet marketing.There are many people who find writing articles to be dreadful, others may feel it is just too much work and or no one reads them. Article marketing is a process of writing meaty articles and submitting them to article directories on the Internet with the goal of getting traffic and get traffic you will if you do it right.

Viral marketing is the ethical means of driving more traffic to your website. Most of these techniques are free to implement although such will require hard work and commitment. However be very aware that it is a sophisticated strategy that requires considerable thought .

Essentially it is the technical term for what is commonly known as word-of-mouth advertising. Although viral marketing is as old as human civilization itself, the internet has brought its efficacy and reach to a new level, and the technologies that provide the motive force behind this movement continue to evolve.

Personally, if I’d been busted for being a poser and poorly imitating youth pop culture i would avoid using phrases like - Busted. I think pop culture and viral marketing have a lot in common as they are both engaging, creative, and unfortunately in the most part largely misunderstood.

I certainly feel word-of-mouth and viral marketing are one of the best ways to advertise a product to consumers as i feel it’s honest and really gives consumers the perspective from an unbiased individual.

Again, I stress that this is a legitimate marketing tactic which can achieve fantastic results if it is done correctly.As internet marketing is extremely competitive you should use all the avenues that are available to you in advertising your web site and products.

Experiment with the various ways of viral marketing until you find the ones that work best for you. Internet competition is a ruthless and competitive rivalry that shows no mercy.Therefore every means and methods of internet marketing should be used and employed.



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Titus Hoskins asked:


Viral Marketing Techniques Every Web Site Should Be Using

Viral marketing can work wonders for any business, web site or product. It can be a great source of sales leads, one-way links and targeted traffic. Yet, many marketers are not taking full advantage of this ‘viral factor’ in their marketing efforts.

How about you? Are you using any viral marketing methods with your web site? Or does the word ‘viral’ make you cringe?

Many people believe ‘viral marketing’ is a myth, one of those Internet follies that only happens on rare occasions when some fantastic product or site comes along.

In reality, viral marketing techniques can be used by any web site - big or small. They can be used by any marketer who takes the time to put some simple steps into place. Viral marketing ‘done right’ can have many benefits. It will: - increase your link popularity (often one way links) - increase targeted traffic to your site - build your brand recognition - create targeted leads for your products - automate your marketing efforts

Here are some simple viral marketing techniques you can try with your web site, product or business:

1. Word of Mouth - We have all seen this phenomenon displayed with many products . People spread the word about some great movie or gadget and suddenly everyone knows about it. Human nature dictates we tell our friends about some great product we have bought or found. Nature of the beast, it’s just the way we are - so why not take full advantage of it?

If you have a web site - put up a simple ‘tell a friend’ form so your visitors can easily tell others about your great site. Easy and very simple to do but many webmasters don’t do it. Similarly, if you have a newsletter, service, product or with any aspect of your site - just include a few sentences at the end of your copy - asking very politely, “if you found this service, product or web site helpful - why not tell your friends, family and colleagues about it.”

2. Branding - Make sure you have a logo on your site or product. Branding your site is very important if you want your site or product to be noticed and talked about. For that matter, a catchy brand name can be a ‘viral technique’ in itself - so try and come up with one that springs from the lips with a distinctive ring to it!

People recognize brands, it gives them a clear image of your site or product. Include your brand or logo on every page of your site and on every product, service, material coming from your site or business.

3. eBooks - Savvy marketers jumped on this new invention very quickly, they knew the ‘viral’ power of these little ebooks. Ebooks are electronic files that can be downloaded from any web site and distributed easily around the web. You can also have other webmasters or marketers, ‘re-brand’ these ebooks with their own links. High quality ebooks get passed along very quickly and are great viral tools.

Anyone can write a simple ebook on the topic of their site. If you can’t write, just get permission to use a collection of articles from the numerous ‘article directories’ on the web such as www.ezinearticles.com or www.goarticles.com . Ebook compiling software (in both .exe or pdf format) is relatively cheap or can be found for free on the net. Just Google to find it!

4. Viral Software - Some simple software products or applications can be very viral, often passed around or downloaded from the web by thousands each day. These have to be useful or handy products that the users will desire - ecalendars, organizers, personal planners, link checking software, and so on. Many are desktop products that sit on the computer user’s desktop - prime location in the marketing arena.

And the best examples of this kind of viral software have the company logo, sales message and contact email - with LIVE LINKS to all of the above - conveniently displayed within the product. These simple software programs can be great viral promotional devices that spread like wildfire across the web. (get an example of this below in the author’s resource box)

5. RSS - Newest player in the viral game! RSS which stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ and just by the nature of what it does; RSS is an awesome viral tool. Originally used by news organizations to syndicate their news stories, it is usually associated with Blogs because blogs use an RSS feed to distribute their content. Good quality RSS feeds are picked up and displayed by different web sites all across the web.

Since Microsoft has announced the next version of Windows will have RSS integrated into its operating system, new RSS applications will take viral marketing to heights that have not been witnessed before. Alert marketers are already gearing up for this viral explosion.

You should also be gearing up for RSS if you haven’t already. Using a simple site like blogger.com (owned by Google) will give you a basic blog and RSS feed to spread your message or product to all interested parties.

These are just some viral techniques that will help increase your web presence. They will also boost your traffic and increase your links. Used properly, these viral techniques will also spread your web site, product or service around the globe.

What more can you ask for



Marketing in NLP