What Is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing is an extremely powerful way to grow your newsletter list, but what is it?

 

First, lets start with a definition. Viral marketing is the process in which a piece of marketing material is passed around via existing social networks, to exponentially increase brand awareness, similar to the functions of a biological virus.
The marketing material is normally a funny clip, a joke, a funny cartoon, a game etc, basically anything that is entertaining enough for someone to pass it along to all of their friends, and those friends to pass it along to all of their friends and so on.
The thing that you intend people to pass on will obviously contain your marketing message along with it, such as a web address or brand name.

 

How Much Does it Cost?

That's the best part of viral marketing. It can normally be done at a very low cost, and if it's something you've done yourself, it's completely free.
If you want to super charge your viral marketing campaign, you can pay for the initial injection of people to spread the word. For example, you can take out an advertisement in someone's newsletter, each newsletter might have thousands of people on it, this will definitely be a good start, especially if you don't already have a newsletter with a few thousand people on it.
Solo advertisements will be the most the most expensive, and may be the most effective. However, you might want to consider a few lines advertisement somewhere in someone's newsletter. This will make it look like the owner of the newsletter is recommending your website, which may be the best route, you might have to experiment to find out.

 

What Kind Of Exposure Should I Expect?

That really depends on how good your viral marketing message is. If it's not shocking, funny, exciting or anything that someone wouldn't really want to pass on, then don't expect much. However, if you can stir up a very strong emotion in someone, then they'll want to share it with as many people as possible.

Lets assume you send your message to 1000 people to start with, those people might tell 2 people each (Quite often, people will send something to their entire friends list). If they just tell 2 people each, it means you've just got your marketing message to 2000 people you wouldn't otherwise have been able to reach, and it cost you a grand total of nothing. If those 2000 people subscribe to your newsletter, you can message them over and over again for free.
Those 2000 people might also tell 2 people each, that's another 4000 people, those 4000 people might tell 2 people each, giving you 8000 people, and so on.

Obviously this wont be exactly how it goes. Some people might tell no-one else, other people might tell 100 people each, others will do somewhere in between. It all depends on the individual. You'll hope to get the people that will tell hundreds of others each, but don't hold your hopes up for that.

 

How Should I Compose My Viral Marketing Material?

This will highly depend on your industry. No matter what it is, it must be something that people will want to pass around.
Something that works quite well is if you make an ebook. An ebook is a downloadable book or report, containing useful information. This way you actually give people something they can own, hold and posses to some degree. It can be something they will refer to from time to time. This will expose them to your marketing message and expertise many times, this will hopefully convince them to sign up to your newsletter, buy your product or whatever else you want them to do.

An alternative is to write a few jokes related to your industry. Perhaps relating to problems that people in your industry face with amusing solutions, this will require quite a bit of imagination though.
For example, another site I run is based around an online multiplayer computer game. One thing that I did was to create a cartoon about a problem that some people face in the game and the consequences. Everyone that saw it loved it and it resulted in quite a few new subscribers.

Once you've decided on what your viral marketing material will consist of, you need to send it out to your newsletter subscribers, if you have any, or buy that newsletter advertisement in someone else's newsletter. Once that's done, just sit back and wait.

 

For more information on viral marketing check out these sites:

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this article, please feel free to go back to the other "Make Money With Your Site" articles and read any that catch your eye.