You've probably heard of viral marketing. It's a form of
marketing that spreads in a manner similar to real viruses or
email viruses – the idea is that just as it's easy to catch a
cold, it's easy to catch an idea.
Viral marketing uses existing social networks to spread
brand awareness, a new idea, or news about a new product.
And when used properly, the marketed idea spreads more
and more rapidly. It depends heavily on generated
excitement; for instance, when Star Wars fans heard about
the last movie in the series coming out, it took hardly any
time to spread from one end of their gossip networks to the
other.
You can leverage the ideas and principles behind viral
marketing to increase your online sales, particularly if you
are focused on a small niche market that you know well.
First, The Article
The most important part of your strategy is the development
of the viral package. That's your article, and you want it to
spread to as many people as possible. You must make it
exciting. You must make it attractive enough for others to
share it with their friends, and the friends with their friends.
And you must make it available.
The article is just the carrier of your personal information,
don't forget. The package is important, but your personal
information is the one vital piece of the article.
Your article can be about anything that excites your niche
community. If, for instance, you are selling things to dog
breeders, news about a new breed of dog could be very
exciting. Important information about a communicable
doggie disease is also going to spread well, though you must
be certain to end on a caring and positive note. If you're
marketing to submariners, an interview with Tom Clancy
would be a hot item.
Ideally, your article should be a timely and an un-covered
piece of information, but the hot news isn't always there
when you're ready to start viral marketing. What you can do
instead is use an article that has wide interest but addresses
a topic that hasn't been fully covered yet.
Second, Spread The News
Once your article is ready, with your intact name and a
hyperlink to your site at the bottom, you're ready to get it
out to the public. You can start by posting it on your site and
referring to it in your blog; that often generates interest. If
you go to any popular web forums, you can also spread your
news there, with a link back to your site where the article is.
You should definitely place your article on the ultimate viral
marketing tool: an article directory. Article directories are
repositories of free articles webmasters may download and
include on their own websites free of charge; the hitch is
that the article must be unchanged by the person
downloading it, and it must retain the resource box, a
section with the author's name and a URL link back to their
web site. By uploading your article to one of these
databases, you can encourage it to spread to people you
don't even know.
Third, Be Patient
Your viral marketing article is probably a slow-acting virus;
you won't see results right away. Instead, you'll find that
you have to wait, sometimes a significant amount of time,
for anything major to happen to your site. But you may
notice fairly quickly your number of website hits going up.
You may also be told about your own article by someone in
your niche market community; that's always fun!
But the best thing you can do while you're waiting is to
develop another article to build into a viral marketing
package, repeating everything you did with the first one. A
lone virus doesn't spread very well, but if you can send out
several viruses in succession, you may start seeing a
significant boost in the number of customers coming to your
site. Be ready for them; have a working signup link for your
emailing list or your enewsletter, and schedule yourself a
little extra time in case you have work to do from increased
signups or sales. The internet is a great marketing tool.
