Viral Marketing Strategies

Dirk Wagner © 2004

Virtually every successful internet marketer uses some sort of viral marketing in his or her business. According to Viralbuzz a viral marketing agency, viral marketing can be defined as any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Basically, viral marketing can be considered “word of mouth” marketing. How many times in your life have you tried out a product or service because someone you know recommended it? Viral marketing is and can be a very powerful medium for your business if you learn how to do it properly.

Free web-based email account companies like hotmail.com and yahoo.com use viral marketing to increase their free subscription base of email users to millions of people all around the world. Viral marketing is a great strategy to use for the internet marketers with limited funds to spend on advertising. Some forms of viral marketing that may be considered with your internet marketing business are writing articles, free ebooks and courses, e-zines and newsletters, and free polls and surveys. Let’s take a closer look at each of the above forms of viral marketing.

Writing Articles

Article writing is a great way to increase traffic to your website through viral marketing. There are article directories that you can use to publish your written articles with and if you are fortunate to get the article picked up by webmaster for his/her website or newsletter, you have just exposed your website via the resource box at the end of the article to much more people than you may have originally intended. This leads to increased traffic and potential sales.

Free E-Books and Courses

Giving away free ebooks and courses is another great way of viral marketing. You can either write the ebooks and courses yourself, with your particulars about your internet marketing business inserted in the downloadable ebook or course, or you can find plenty of successful internet marketers that will provide you with their brandable ebooks that you can brand with your particulars and give away for free on your site. Once again this can lead to increased traffic and potential sales.

E-Zines and Newsletters

Another very popular way of viral marketing is through your own e-zine or newsletter. If you write about something that may be of interest to a person, you will find they are more likely to forward that on to a friend or relative. Your e-zine should contain valuable information not just a bunch of links to your affiliate programs, or sales copy. It is also a smart idea to use some sort of email capture on your website so people can subscribe to read your e-zine or newsletter. You also build up a trust with people that have subscribed to your e-zine, which will lead to increased sales.

Free Polls and Surveys

Free polls and surveys can be used to obtain information about your visitors and potential customers. The use of polls and surveys are a great way for you to elicit feedback from visitors and learn about what your potential customers are looking for. You can also benefit from using polls and surveys on your site by implementing some new content and design that your visitors suggested. When you use suggestions made by your visitors you give them the feeling that they matter to you as people not just a potential sale. This should elicit site loyalty from your visitor.

The above are just some of the ways viral marketing can be used to increase traffic and potential sales for your internet marketing business. Good luck!

 

This article has been reprinted with the kind permission of Dick Wagner.

Dirk Wagner is CEO and owner of http://www.team4success.biz and the free, easy to install #1 home business toolbar with automated updates. A website dedicated to helping the home-based business entrepreneur start and succeed with their very own home-based business by publishing his free online course for successful Home Business. 

 

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