THIS MARKETING ARTICLE IS SPONSORED BY:

www.DroppingJawMegaPack.com

INDEX OF SECTIONS>>HOME OF THIS SECTION >> Viral Marketing - A Study Of Successful Sites

Viral Marketing - A Study Of Successful Sites
By Gary Huynh

Viral marketing is a concept which allows word of mouth advertising to spread your message far and wide without ongoing maintenance and promotion from the originator.

Hotmail is the most famous example I can think of to show you the power of viral marketing.

Everyone who used their free email service would advertise the service at the bottom of the each email they sent out.

The types of advertising messages which grow the fastest are services which advertise themselves when being used…such as the Hotmail example.

Another good example is a service such as http://Plaxo.com

This is an online address book. When a user signs up, the service scans the user’s address book in the user’s email client and emails all those users an invitation to join Plaxo. This is done with the member’s permission, of course.

Other services which use this technique of viral marketing are social networking sites such as http://Myspace.com

When users sign up for a free account, the first thing they see is a form to invite their friends to the site.

I've deducted a few tips from following high profile and low profile viral marketing campaigns of many types.

First of all, you can provide incentives for someone to spread your advertising for you, such as giving them money but just the incentive of money will not make something truly viral. Often some of the best viral marketing campaigns are purely accidental as you'll discover in a later example.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the example of a site called “The Interview With Jesus”.

Here’s the url: http://www.interviewwithgod.com

The story of that site, I think is, the owner took a public domain poem and created a website to host the poem. Word got out and the thing just exploded with traffic from friends sending to friends.

So something that is truly viral will spread on its own even without an incentive attached to it.

Another truly viral example is the story of a New Jersey teenager who created an online video with his webcam. In the video, he lip syncs to a popular Romanian pop song called “Dragostea Din Tei,” which translates “Love Among the Linden Trees,”.

He sent the video to his friends and it became so viral that he got some television time and his 15 minutes of fame.

To create a truly viral campaign such as the above two examples is not easy but there are ways to boost your viral marketing efforts from studying those examples.

First, it must have mass appeal. The wider the audience, the better. Second, it must advertise itself. Look at the Plaxo and Hotmail examples.

If you study the examples I've provided of viral marketing, you'll find that some require a lot of programming knowledge and others require nothing but an idea that many people enjoy and like to pass around.

If you're aiming to make money from a successful viral marketing campaign then you have many options.

1.) Capture email addresses and build a target database of prospects.
2.) Place Adsense ads on your site and benefit from the sheer volume of traffic to your site.
3.) Promote affiliate products.
4.) Sell advertising on your site.
5.) Create a product of your own.
6.) Take donations.

Even if your site is purely altruistic, you will need extra money to pay for bandwidth charges so the above forms of monetization will come in handy.

About the Author:

Gary Huynh makes his living by creating and publishing information products to niche markets. Find out how he can help you create a six figure income doing what you love: Six Figure Marketer

OTHER ARTICLES OF INTEREST:

Network Marketing Success- The REAL Fear that Sabotages MLM Success
What is the single biggest fear that sabotages most people's success in network marketing? Are you suffering from it and do not realize it? It is NOT what you think, as it will surprise you! Read...read more

Network Marketing Training- Tapping into the MLM Success Power of Your Upline
Network Marketing Training- Tapping into the MLM Success Power of your Upline by Doug Firebaugh What is an upline in MLM and Network Marketing? It is the "Line of folks above you" that are...read more

The Big-Pay Off -- Brand Value
Many CEOs and marketing directors find their time wasted evaluating marketing opportunities instead of acting on them. When every possibility is followed, a meandering trail of hit and miss...read more

"The Truth About Network Marketing: Debunking the Myths"
Just as various sorts of business opportunities continue to sprout like mushrooms on a rainy day, so do misconceptions about network marketing abound practically everywhere. Are you one of those...read more

Winning the Game: Your Strategic Marketing Plan
If you want your small business to compete with the "big boys" you should have a "strategic marketing plan." A strategic marketing plan basically spells out how you will use your available resources...read more

RSSTAGHERE4