Sunday, March 20, 2011

The Best Viral Marketing Campaign

A viral marketing campaign is a marketing technique that utilizes existing social networks with the goal of improving brand popularity or promoting a product. Also known as ‘word-of-mouth marketing’, ‘self-replicating advertising’, ‘pass it on marketing’, ‘explosive text marketing’, and ‘self-generating marketing’, this method makes use of social connections as well as the internet in order to make the campaign catch on. A viral marketing campaign can utilize promotional videos, music, Flash games, images, advertisements, ebooks, and other types of media.

The term ‘viral marketing campaign’ is obtained from the idea of a self-replicating virus. The virus represents the campaign medium and the objective is to “infect” the targeted persons. If the campaign effectively persuades a targeted person, that individual will then eventually share the idea to one more person, which results into “infection” of more people. Due to this, the popularity of the campaign surges exponentially. As a result, even though the campaign is only targeted to certain people, it nevertheless becomes popular to a larger market, making it very efficient due to user-to-user sharing.

Nowadays, the internet has an enormous role in the implementation of most viral marketing campaign. This is due to the fact that numerous people use it and its ability to host the different kinds of media today. Additionally, people use the internet to communicate with other people and therefore it is a readily-available channel for influencing other people.

A specific facet of the internet that is important in a viral marketing campaign are social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. If you want your campaign to spread like a wildfire, then you should focus on lighting up the fire, so to speak, these social networks. The reason for that is that people spend a lot of time in these websites. People can quickly share online content with their friends using these sites, which makes it an ideal medium for a viral marketing campaign.

To sum it up, a viral marketing campaign is an effective way to promote a brand or product. It utilizes social connections that are complemented by the internet technology.

Viral Marketing Strategies - Tips

Viral marketing strategies are an excellent way to advertise a product, brand, or website on the internet. There are many ways that you can get people to talk about what you want to promote, and all it takes are simple modifications to your website. Viral marketing strategies are capable of  enlarging your site traffic when become contagious. If you plan on using viral marketing strategies, then here are several examples to help you get started.

One of the most popular viral marketing strategies nowadays is utilizing social networking sites. A social networking website is an advisable place to initiate a viral marketing campaign due to the sheer amount of hours that the site members log in them. Furthermore, these websites are built for easy content sharing, making it a wonderful starting point for viral marketing campaigns. You can use social networks as a viral marketing strategy by making a dedicated Facebook and Twitter page to what you are promoting. Furthermore, you can also put in social plugins to your website so that visitors can quickly post and share your site content to their respective social network profiles.

Another one of the useful viral marketing strategies nowadays is video marketing. YouTube and other video sharing sites are also good starting point for a viral marketing campaign as people go to these websites for entertainment. The requirement for this strategy is creativity, so that you can make a video that will get the attention of the viewers, giving it capability to become viral. The tools that you will need are a video capture device like a video camera, and a video editing software. While this particular viral marketing strategy is somewhat technical, a well-conceived video can easily become a worldwide hit if it becomes popular in the internet.

Finally, one of the most traditional marketing strategies that still works nowadays is giving away freebies. In this strategy, you provide a free bonus to people when they are able to refer your website to their contacts. The freebies could be some useful tips, a software, an ebook, or anything that will motivate people to promote your website to others.

Examples of Successful Viral Marketing

Nowadays, there are a lot of effective viral marketing examples that can be a good source of inspiration. If you intend on making a viral marketing campaign, it is a good idea to study the strategy that previous campaigns have utilized in order to become popular with people. Always remember that in viral marketing examples, the internet has always played an essential role in contributing to the success of a campaign. Here are several viral marketing examples that are worth evaluating.

One of the most effective viral marketing examples that was a huge hit in the video-sharing site YouTube is the ‘Will It Blend?’ campaign. It was initiated by Blendtec, a company that produces blenders. This campaign is comprised of many videos that stars Blendtec founder Tom Dickson. In each video, Dickson shows the power of Blendtec blenders by attempting to blend various objects, for instance, a golf ball, an iPod, cellphones, marbles, pens, light bulbs, and many more. A lot of people watched the videos in the internet and it greatly increased the sales of Blendtec blenders.

Another effective viral marketing examples that became popular in the internete is Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ album. In this campaign, the band announced that fans can download the album for free in their own website. Anyone who attempts to download the album were given the option to donate any amount. After just two weeks, there were over 1.2 million album downloads and the campaign has earned $9.6 million in gross sales. Apparently, each person who downloaded the album has donated an average of $8.

YouTube is also one of the successful viral marketing examples today. Prior to the popularity of the site, there were only a small number of websites that stream videos in the World Wide Web. YouTube started a website that let people upload and share their own videos in the internet. Additionally, the videos in YouTube were embeddable, allowing people to post them directly in websites, forums, or blogs. These characteristics have greatly contributed to YouTube’s popularity and as a result, it is the internet’s top video sharing website today.

Viral Marketing Examples - Techniques

Viral marketing techniques are a great way to advertise a website, product, or a brand. There are many different kinds of techniques that you can utilize when launching a viral marketing campaign but the bottom line is if it becomes a success, the payoffs will be way beyond what you have invested in it. This is due to the fact that viral marketing techniques have the capability to exponentially enhance your visibility among your target market through word-of-mouth that passes through different social channels. Here are several viral marketing techniques that you can use when engaging in such campaigns.

One of the most frequently-used viral marketing techniques is article marketing. To accomplish this technique, you will need to write relevant articles about the products that you are trying to market and submit them to various online article directories. This is an excellent way of technically enhancing your site visibility to search engines, which also improves its PageRank. This will make your brand or website more accessible to people when they are searching for something that is related to it in the internet. Although it doesn’t directly deals with your target market, article marketing is nevertheless important because it greatly improves the chances of a successful viral marketing campaign.

Giving away free e-books is another one of the viral marketing techniques that are prevalent nowadays. These e-books should contain vital information about the particular niche that you are in. This will make people who read it appreciate what they have learned from it and therefore they might share it to others. A good thing about e-books is that it can be easily reproduced electronically. Users can make copies and share it with other people, thereby initiating the chain for a viral campaign.

Lastly, improve the accessibility of your website by installing social elements to it. This is maybe one of the most pertinent viral marketing techniques today since it is ordinary for people to share information using various social network channels. You can do this by putting links to your website that will allow site visitors to easily share the content on their own social networking websites. Another method to do this is by putting RSS feeds to your website, which will encourage users to follow the latest happenings in your website.

Effective Viral Marketing Strategy

If you are planning on jumpstarting your very own viral marketing campaign, you will require some effective viral marketing ideas for it to become a hit. Viral marketing ideas are perhaps the most important factor in any viral marketing campaign as it is their appeal on people that can make or break it. Thus you have to be careful and insightful when planning on your campaign since there is only a little that you can do once you have released it. Here are several established viral marketing ideas that you may want to consider.

One thing that you need to keep in mind when thinking about viral marketing ideas is that you always have to engage with your audiences. One means to do this is through making an interactive contest. For this type of contest, you will ask people to submit a photo or a video of them that is compatible with a certain theme. The theme should center about the product or brand that you are trying to promote. The contest will also require you to reward the winners with a prize, so that it will certainly attract people to join it.

Another one of proven viral marketing ideas that you can emulate is a referral system that gives incentives. This is still in line with the idea of engaging with your audience. The cloud storage service Dropbox utilized this type of referral system wherein they provide an additional storage for their users who are able to refer the service to a friend. This may not be applicable to all types of businesses, especially if you provide physical products or services. Alternatively, you can offer digital goods such as exclusive videos, e-books, or software as an incentive. What is essential is that the incentive is encouraging enough so that it will make people refer your business to others as well.

One final example of viral marketing ideas is making “how-to” videos. The videos need to be related to the service or product that you intend to promote. What is important here is that you can provide helpful information to people. Alternatively, you can also create teaser “how-to” videos that continues to your website, which in turn may help you boost your site traffic or even improve your mailing list.

Viral Marketing Campaigns - Conceptualize

Initiating viral marketing campaigns can be considered as the most essential procedure in the process of making one. The conceptualization stage in particular can spell the difference between successful viral marketing campaigns and those that did not click. This is due to the fact that once viral marketing campaigns are already released, the verdict is already in the hands of the audience. Here are several most effective characteristics that you should keep in mind when making viral marketing campaigns.

One of the most guaranteed ways to ensure the success of viral marketing campaigns is humor. Being able to make people laugh is important because it is something that your audience can easily recall. Moreover, there are a lot of different types of humor  but unfortunately, not all of them are ideal. You cannot just launch a video that features slapstick or crude humor and expect it to become a hit.  The smart type of humor is recommended as it has the “wow” factor that people enjoy.

Controversy is another effective formula in viral marketing campaigns. As the saying goes, bad publicity is still publicity. A lot of viral marketing campaigns utilize a sense of shock value in their project in order to induce an emotional response from the audience. These viral marketing campaigns often use sexuality, violence, taboos, or anything that is within the borders of the social norms in order to spark a controversy. When using controversy in viral marketing campaigns, try to be as subtle as you can in order to not offend the sensibilities of your audiences. Keep in mind that you do not want to alienate your audience. You may also need to include something that will stick to your audiences’ thoughts after the initial shock fades.

Lastly, you can start successful viral marketing campaigns by being informative. What you need to do is give out helpful information that people will find useful. Keep in mind that the knowledge that you will provide must not be a common one but also not too trivial as well. Giving simple tips can prove to be a huge difference maker as it is something that people will surely remember.

Viral Marketing Services - Benefits

If you are interested in doing a viral marketing campaign for your business, one of the things that you can do to get started is employ viral marketing services.If you want to try out making a viral marketing campaign for your business, one of the things that you can do to initiate it is hire viral marketing services. A viral marketing service is a company that specializes in creating viral marketing campaigns for a business organization. The company will be responsible for planning a campaign as well as putting it to motion. Although the idea of making a viral marketing campaign on your own seems exciting, it may be best if you leave it to the experienced hands of viral marketing services. Here are some reasons why hiring viral marketing services may be advantageous for you.

First of all, viral marketing campaigns require so much planning to make certain of its success. The planning stage is possibly the most crucial period in a viral marketing campaign as it can determine the outcome of the promotion. What viral marketing services can do for you here is that they can ensure that the campaign will go in the right direction. First of all, their professional experience is very helpful because it takes guesswork out of the process. Another thing that they can contribute in the planning stage is conduct a market research so that you can choose the correct people to target.

Another important advantage of viral marketing services is the technical skills that they can provide when making a viral marketing campaign. Whether you want to start a contest, implement a referral system in your website, or make a viral video, all of these things will need a person with a technical expertise on these activities in order to do them smoothly. Additionally, no disruption of your work is required if you hire viral marketing services. It will be business as usual for your company and therefore no time is wasted.

Last but not the least, viral marketing services can help you sustain a “controlled” marketing campaign. Even though the point of viral marketing is to spread the promotion material to as many people as possible, this scenario is not recommended in some cases as this double-edged sword can mess up your strategy. Viral marketing services can help make sure that the campaign is still in check in order to reduce the chances of unintended results.