Promoting Website Through Viral Marketing
Friday, September 19th, 2008Viral marketing uses people to spread your message like a virus from person to person, hence the name. If properly implemented it is much more cost effective than other forms of marketing because people do the work of spreading your message for you. At the core of the viral marketing campaign you need to have something that people will find valuable, interesting, or funny so that they are compelled to share it with their friends, coworkers, etc. A few of the popular choices are:
- Create a video that will be funny or controversial so that people will want to pass it on to their friends.
- Create something of value like valuable content or tool that people will find useful, funny or controversial.
The trick in both cases is to come up with something funny, useful or controversial that will help the message spread but also carries a message of your brand or is somehow associated with your products or services. There are a huge number of viral marketing campaigns that had success. For example you might have seen the OfficeMax Elf Yourself campaign. You can find more information on it here http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2007/12/officemaxs_viral_hit_elf_yours.html. I suggest you also check out the Dove viral video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U. Website design companies allow people to download free designs and other useful software for their website like a photo gallery http://www.flash-gallery.org/ or an mp3 player http://www.flashmp3player.org/demo.html. In all these cases people find the content funny, interesting or valuable and pass it along to others and the message spreads like a virus from one person to another, but most importantly it also carries the brand message or is associated with your service or product.