What Is Viral Marketing – Can It Help Your Online Business?What Is Viral Marketing – Can It Help Your Online Business?
Viral marketing is completely unique and a great way to market your business. Interestingly, this form of marketing is both traditional and modern at the same time, and yes, you can apply its principles on the Internet too.To understand this better, we have to first understand the human psyche a bit. We all by nature tend to disbelief the sales person or a company trying to sell something. We would rather believe a friend who has tried the product, and would rate it positively. Viral marketing works in the same way – it uses a host (like a friend) to spread the word about a business, a product or a service.
History Of Viral Marketing On The Internet
Traditionally, viral marketing has been used for centuries. Perhaps when humans began to migrate, a particular group was informed by a scout that there were greener pastures on the other side of the mountain, and so the group decided to move. The same principles apply today too. Online viral marketing began when Hotmail began to promote themselves through their hosts. So in effect, Hotmail was using a host and reaching out to his/her colleagues and friends – the personal network of those with a Hotmail email address. It worked very well – the popularity of Hotmail soared.Viral marketing works very well for big offline businesses as well. Companies such as Amway and Avon depend purely on this and they keep doing good business. It can work online too.
The Main Advantages Of Viral Marketing
Viral marketing works on a network that is already in place and as an advertiser all you have to do is tap into this. Compared to other forms of marketing, this is extremely cost effective too, and thus the return on investment is higher. And since you are tapping into personal networks, the conversion rate is much higher because you can gain from the credibility of your host. Viral marketing gives you quick results as well.How To Promote Your Online Business With Viral Marketing?
You can use social media websites and e-books to promote your business. SMO or social media optimization allows you to boost your Internet presence at community websites and online communities. Approach other webmasters to offer your e-books free (with distribution rights) as an incentive for sales. This can be an effective viral marketing strategy.Did you know that you can also post free videos and make a pitch at the end? Online videos have become very popular now and many like to share them.
5 Viral Marketing Tips For Online Video Promotion
- The video clips need to be short. Keep them less than 5 minutes because you want your pitch to be watched. Most people want to go through many videos at Google Video or YouTube, and so you do not want to make it too long.
- Try to ‘wow’ the viewer. The content of your video must be provocative, entertaining and interesting so that viewers will want to share them.
- The most effective videos are purely entertaining. So do not make it commercial. Add your pitch at the end and post your link.
- Create many videos because you cannot be sure which one will be liked the most and shared.
- Use bookmarking links and tags across the various social networking websites to maximize distribution. Help people find your videos and share them.
