Five Elements that Make Viral Marketing Work
by Desmond Mantor
http://www.havetraffic.com
But for the unflattering connotations of its name, viral
marketing is a sound and effective way of generating traffic
to your site. Viral marketing, in the world of the Internet,
is an equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising. Although the
experts tried to give it a more appealing name, viral
marketing has come to stay as the virtual term for
word-of-mouth advertising that creates traffic flow and
business. A successful viral marketing campaign has five
basic elements, which are not always utilized but you can
certainly enhance the chances of success if you include more
elements.
The first and foremost of these five elements is to offer
incentives like free products or services. You have to spend
money to make money. In other words, you give something free
to gain a customer. People have a weakness for free gifts.
The second element is to include the forward button to your
marketing campaign so that the customer hits it and spreads
the virus, so to say. It is the simplest way of spreading
your message. No wonder, it is an essential part of any
viral marketing campaign.
The success of any marketing effort depends on the degree to
which it professes to address the urges and needs of people.
People want to be loved, popular, successful and emotionally
gratified. Loads of internet businesses promise to make
people instant millionaires and people fall for this promise
because there is no greater motivator than greed! If your
viral marketing effort is able to offer a powerful
motivation to the readers, you have it made!
Another component of any successful viral marketing campaign
is to exploit the existing networks of people. Most people
have around 10 people in their inner network and many more
in their business or familial networks. Viral marketing
seeks first and foremost to infiltrate the inner network.
The campaign, like a real virus, will spread exponentially
if you can successfully get even 5 people from the inner
network to forward your offer on to 5 more of their friends.
Again, this is nothing more than "word-of-mouth"
advertising. The medium has changed, but not the principle.
The final element of any successful viral marketing campaign
is only important if indeed you do succeed. Assuming that
you offer a free product or service that satisfies some
emotional need and that people actually use their forward
tab--what then? You are going to need the resources to
handle all of the traffic heading your way. You need to
be able to quickly transform from a small, hopeful
enterprise into one that can process a lot of orders in a
timely manner. Otherwise, the moment will pass and you will
be back where you started. Therefore, you need a strategy
that includes some way of bringing servers online as you
need them. The best viral marketing campaign in the world
will fail if customers cannot place orders. So, with
planning and an effective hook that satisfies an emotional
need, viral marketing does indeed work!
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