Viral Marketing - linkerbation is a normal, natural thing. Perfectly natural

Starting a Viral Marketing Campaign

There are no hard rules when it comes to devising your Viral Marketing campaign, but there are some tips you can follow when planning your efforts:

Focus on your brand and products before the message
What makes your brand / product successful and why would people want to pass along your message? Do you have something unique and engaging that the intended market will want to talk about?
Ensure that your website or newsletter is built to allow users to refer it to others
The message must be easily forwarded and not lose shape or structure in the process.
Give away products, entertainment experiences or services
Free goods are powerful attraction factors in Viral Marketing. However, free for the sake of it is not usually successful as the prize needs to be relevant to the audience. This is where it is important to understand the target market's needs, motivations and behaviours to select the relevant incentive.
What appeals is honesty and authenticity
There are various different aspects that a Viral Marketing campaign can focus on, depending on the intended target market:
- Entertainment factors
- Utility functions (offer something the reader can use)
- Incentivised actions (instant gratification)
- Undercover (seeding the campaign without the user knowing the brand)
- Uniqueness (something the reader has never seen before)
Whichever aspect you choose, be authentic and truthful. People will only forward something they believe is worthwhile.
Personalise referral emails
When your message is forwarded, ensure your technical design can support personalisation in the subject line. (E.g. "John Doe thought that you would love to see this")
Take advantage of other resources
Successful viral campaigns use other resources to get the word out. Identifying the resources that the target market utilises (e.g. Social Media websites) and placing the message in these spaces increases the exponential potential of the message.
Track the results & analyse the data
It is important that the campaign is tracked according to the objectives set out initially. This can also help tweak the campaign mid-flight in order to improve results.

The beauty of a well executed Viral Marketing campaign lies in the minimal costs and the high success rates - as with all word-of-mouth, if handled properly, it can reap huge rewards.

Coming soon: Chapter 13. What should you expect?

Defined by Wikipedia as advertising on the Internet (who would have thought), Online Advertising is so much more than flashing banners and annoying pop ups. Get the full scoop in Chapter 13: Online advertising - throwing a banner into the works.

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