Are you looking for a way to make the private label articles
that you bought do even more work for you? Here’s a
suggestion for a new way to use those articles in a tool that
can increase your market share exponentially. It’s called
viral marketing, and it works on the principle that people
enjoy sharing good information and products with each
other.
Viral marketing is a relatively new concept in sales that can
be used with private label articles. The idea is that, like a
virus, one site or individual can "catch" it from another. It's
the ultimate in word-of-mouth sales, and consists of six
simple principles:
First, it gives products or services away. It's usually pretty
easy to give away things, no strings attached. The hitch is
that this item you're giving away is going to encourage
people to spend money with you. For instance, if you are a
massage therapist, gather up those private label articles you
bought on alternative health and relaxation techniques and
compile them into an ebook. At the end of the book, or on
each of your private label articles, include your contact
information in some way that it can't be deleted from the
main book – for example, you could save your book in PDF
format. You might even go so far as to put your email
address on the bottom or inside margin of each page.
Second, it is easy to transmit to other people. Electronic
documents are particularly good for this principle because
you can duplicate them an infinite amount of times and
email them or transfer files to anyone who can receive them
– and every ebook that you give away makes the sets of
private label articles that you purchased even more of a
bargain – you pay for your source once, and then pass it on,
and on and on.. What’s more – an ebook of your private
label articles is easy for your customers to copy and pass on
to friends.
Third, it's very scalable. Again, electronic documents are
ideal. Back to the massage therapist example, the therapist
might think about giving away coupons for free ten-minute
massages instead of an ebook. If he or she has an
overwhelming response, there's no way they can make good
on all those massages. However, with the ebook compilation
of private label articles, he or she would be able to give
away as many as were requested – instead of being
distributed on a small scale, ebooks can be given away to an
infinite number of customers, and a newsletter mailing list
for articles is infinitely expandable.
Like a virus, viral marketing exploits everyday behaviors of
people. When they find a great idea, people naturally want
to share it with their friends. If they're offered something of
value for free, they are more likely than not going to take
advantage of it.
It utilizes existing transmission methods. Viral marketing
may take advantage of the gossip chain or email, of the
Internet download system or even of postal mail (though
that can get expensive) to get more use out of those private
label articles that you bought. Really, viral marketing uses
the same avenues of transmission as a chain letter – but it's
not trying to sell anything or overtly get you to do anything.
Instead, it's working on getting information about a person,
a product, or a service out to the public.
And lastly, it takes advantages of resources that belong to
other people. This does not make it a bad thing; rather,
that's the single tradeoff for your free gift. If it's an ebook,
your downloader is using his or her own computer memory
to get it, or they may be using their own email resources to
receive it from or email it to someone else.
As you can see, viral marketing is a powerful new concept.
So how can you take advantage of that for your business?
Creating Viral Ebooks
If you have an existing body of published articles on your
website, they should not be static; instead, you should use
them as an active marketing tool. If you don’t already have
a body of articles that can be converted, you can buy an
entire set of private label articles from a web content service
– or even a fully completed ebook. To be worth
downloading, though, it should at least the equivalent of 20
articles around one subject. Once you have a good
collection, whether your own articles or articles purchased
from a content service, compile them into a viral ebook that
you can disseminate to your customers and anyone
interested in your products or services.
Think about it: if your business centers around selling herbal
products and natural foods, then a viral ebook of private
label articles that tell consumers how to best implement
nutritional supplements for weight loss could be an ideal
marketing tool as well as a valuable source of information. If
you sell Beanie Baby collectibles, a compilation of the
articles you've written (or hired others to write) detailing the
most valuable collectibles along with good-quality
photographs will be valuable to your customers and might
also encourage them to purchase some of the collectibles
you're selling.
But viral ebooks extend beyond your own customer base.
Hardly anyone's customers exist in a vacuum; most people
have friends interested in the same things they like. With a
viral ebook, you don't have to depend on someone emailing
a link to your site to a friend; instead, they can email the
ebook to their friends. And since the ebook includes your
contact information and website with each and every article,
you have instantly made a new customer contact, just from
compiling your existing information into a more easily usable
tool.
