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Viral Marketing Explained

Guest post by: Saiful Azim Muhd. Halimi

Article Overview: Viral marketing is the most powerful and cost-effective form of advertising. Like viruses, this amazing marketing strategy takes advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands and then to millions. Microsoft’s Hotmail is considered to be the best example of viral marketing.

Viral Marketing Explained

Viral marketing or buzz marketing can be defined as a marketing strategy that encourages an individual to willingly spread your marketing message to others. It relies on individuals rather than traditional campaigns which later creates the potential for rapid growth in the message's publicity and effect.

So, much like a flu virus that can easily spread from one person to many others, awareness of your company can be dramatically increased by persuading your clients and subscribers to refer your business to friends and family.

This is a marketing technique that broadly makes use of websites, emails, instant messaging system and social networks. Viral marketing relies heavily on word of mouth advertising. Someone sees or reads what you have to offer and tells a couple of their friends. Their friends see or read your message and they tell a couple of their friends, and they tell a couple of their friends, and so on.

In order to obtain greater results through viral promotion, it is essential to implement viral techniques that grab the attention of the customers towards your products and services. This can be achieved by providing video clips, free software and game downloads, file sharing, writing quality articles for e-zines and article publishers, participating in forums, blogs, give a freebie, create a brandable e-book, offer an e-card, and many more.

The advantages of utilizing viral marketing in your online business are many. By employing this advertising procedure, your online business will be presented with better brand visibility as your website experiences massive traffic. Internet consumers are more likely to tell their friends and family about their shopping experiences than their favorite shops and movies.

Viral marketing compels people to actively employ your marketing message rather than passively hear or view it, and this significantly increases the chance that they're going to absorb it, remember it, and repeat it. As long as your message is entertaining, together with a convincing reason to pass the message on, and you make it very easy for them to share it, there is no telling where it will go, how far it will spread, or who it will reach.

Viral marketing also helps to keep your advertising costs low, by getting customers to do the advertising for you. Microsoft's Hotmail is one of the best examples of viral marketing, because its incredible success is based on the simple tactic of adding a small Hotmail advertisement to the bottom of every e-mail sent by a user on the Hotmail system.

In 12 short months, Hotmail built a multi-million dollar business using this simple viral marketing technique. Almost zero advertising was needed to get over 100 million members after the launch.

Viral marketing works effectively in social networks that your customers are already using. By creating a "buzz worthy" topic that gets people talking about it and passing the message along, you create a "buzz" that spreads across the Web. Soon, traffic floods to your Website to see what the buzz is all about. Once they are there, if these visitors like what they see, they pass the information along, and the buzz continues to grow.

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Article Tags: advertising procedure, brand visibility, brandable, buzz marketing, e book, e card, e zines, family br, flu virus, freebie, instant messaging system, internet consumers, marketing strategy, massive traffic, rapid growth, social networks, traffic internet, viral marketing, word of mouth, word of mouth advertising



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Re: 4 Ideas for Viral Marketing - I do agree with GT. Viral Marketing has various face and many people adopt different strategies. Some go for impressive sales pages, e-mail marketing, etc. I couldn't see much answer to this post. Let's hear from others too. Thanks, Robert
Re: Search Engine Friendly Web Development - I would like to add some more things in search engine friendly web development. 1. PPC campaign 2. Viral marketing 3. Social Media Marketing Avoid flash in website and other use CSS files to shows the content style.
Re: New man with Twitter Studies - Hi Pete, Thanks for your input and the info about the Viral Tweeter Business tool which I have checked out and for the sake of a one off fee for affilaite access at $7 it is worth a punt, regards, Mal.
Re: What is your Business? - We are running a Online Marketing Firm and we have some good clients to which we are offering a complete Digital Marketing strategy like Search, Mobile Marketing, Branding and Design. I think in Online Marketing company online presence can be a wining factor for the success of the company.
Need Beta Testers for My Ebook Feedback and Testimonials - Hi Forum Members, I finished writing an ebook on Viral Articles and how to spread them. Looking for people who want the copy for review before I take it to the public. I might end up adding more content afterwards, but for now, I have zero testimonials or feedback so if anyone is interested, I'd like to hear. And I prefer hearing from active members of this forum. Your short testimonials will include your URL as well and I didn't want to approach internet marketers because I wanted testimonials from regular people. I need to hear what you thought about them, what more information it contained and how much do you think I should price it at. It's more for people who want to start writing articles but not sure where to start. Because the information isn't necessarily new like 'Video Marketing _______ ' or 'Social Networking _____ ', I am thinking of only pricing it under $10 and use them as a list building tool. It's about 40 pages. Let me know if anyone is interested in reviewing them and giving testimonials. Your testimonials may or may not be used at my site and will be kept printed. Regards, Takuya


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