How to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign

How to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign

Viral Marketing refers to the creation of a marketing campaign that leverages network of people to pass on a marketing message to individuals within their sphere of influence.  It is analogous to the spread of pathological virus or a computer virus.

Viral Marketing

For a viral marketing campaign to gather momentum, it is essential that the message being transmitted does not appear to be blatantly commercial.  Famous viral marketing campaigns include Hotmail’s appendage of a subtle marketing message at the end of their users email.  Every time a hotmail user sent an email, there was an invitation to the recipient to ‘Join Hotmail’ in the footer.  The sender didn’t mind because they were getting FREE email, and the recipient was implicitly compelled to sign up.  Apple are using a similar viral marketing process with the iPhone.  Every time an iPhone owner sends an email from their iPhone, the message “Sent from my iPhone” is appended to the end of the email.

Viral marketing as a concept is extremely powerful, and can often take on a mind of its own and promulgate a marketing message to an obscene quantity of people in a relatively short period of time.  Consider the ‘Will it Blend?’ infomercials on YouTube by American company Blendtec.   They have generated millions of views for their infomercials whereby they showcase the power of their blenders for blending such items as iPhones or golf balls.

You may be thinking; “Well I don’t have the marketing budget of an Apple Inc of Hotmail, so how can viral marketing work for me?”.  Well there are many different ways in which an average Internet marketer can leverage the power of viral marketing.

5 excellent methods to create a viral marketing campaign are;

1. Viral e-Books
2. Viral Software
3. Free Templates
4. Tell A Friend Links
5. Viral Video

1. Viral eBooks

A viral eBook consists of the creation of an eBook that provides value added content, that a focused target market will find extremely useful.  The author will usually give these viral e-Books away for FREE and encourage recipients to forward the e-Book to their list or distribute it by other means including ‘word of mouth’.  Viral e-Book are a powerful medium to build credibility and trust online.  When a customer first downloads your viral e-Book they most likely don’t know who you are and are thus unsure if you are a credible source of information.

Having read your FREE e-Book they will feel you are an expert in your niche and be more likely to purchase from you.  They will also pass your e-Book onto their list if they feel it contains value added information that their list will find useful.  You need to ensure that your e-Book contains multiple links back to your website.  Again individual ‘love learning, but hate being sold to’.  Therefore DO NOT include affiliate links in your viral e-Book.  Just provide expert, useable ‘how to’ information with sufficient links back to your website.  Advise readers to pass the e-Book on their list and let the viral process propagate organically.

Three ways to distribute your e-Book are;

• Sell or give away the master resale rights. You want to incentivise people to pass on your e-Book so give them permission to sell your e-Book or give it away as bonus or freebie.  Indicate that the resource will help them by; profiting from the sale of the book, including the book as an attractive bonus to help stimulate the sale of their own product, or as a means to attract people to join their list.

• Submit to FREE e-Book Directories. Submit your e-Book to the following e-Book directories and initiate the viral process; – Warrior Forum
  FREE Download, SureFireWealth.com, FREE-ebooks.net, THe FREE Site, Authors Den, EbookBroadcast, BookLocke.

• Give the e-Book away to your affiliates. Include the e-Book with the sales materials on your Affiliate promotional material page.  Encourage them to insert their affiliate link and use the e-Book to drive traffic to your site.  If someone buys, they get the commission.

2. Viral Software

Software has high perceived added value.  It is the most downloadable product on the Internet.  If you are a software developer, develop mini applications and embed your marketing message, banner or upsell products.  An effective strategy is to give away a lite version with limited functionality and they encourage the user to upgrade.  Enable affiliates to include their affiliate links and they will distribute your software far and wide.  Distribute your software through FREE software / download sites, and participate in giveaways.

FREE Software directories suited to distributing your software through include; Upload.com, Tucows.com, Promosoft, Warrior Forums FREE Downloads, SurefireWealth.com.

Give people the give away rights and allow them to sell your software and keep 100% of the profits.  Ensure your software contains embedded links back to your site.  Even if you are not a developer you can get simple cost effective applications developed using sites such as Elance.com.

3. Templates

Simply give away free templates that contain your domain name.  Send them to your affiliates and through FREE download sites. You can buy the master resale rights to templates and then insert your brand name / domain name using a program such as Photoshop.  Alternatively hire a graphic designer on sites such as Elance.com.

Another powerful viral medium is to give away WordPress themes.  THe best sites to distribute FREE wordpress themes include; WPSkins, ThemeBoss, FREE WP Themes, WPThemesFREE, Themes WP, Bloggeries, SureFireWealth.com.

4. Tell A Friend

Encourage users to ‘tell a friend’.  Sometime just stating those 3 words will be sufficient.  To encourage the process incentivise the individual.  Offer freebies, upgraded accounts, free membership or special discounts.

5. Create a Viral Video
Video is one of the most powerful mediums for viral marketing.  If you can embed your video with extreme entertainment qualities or reveal exceptionally useful ‘how to’  information it could go viral.  Use the strategies detailed in Video Marketing Devastation to give your video the maximum chance of going viral.

You now have sufficient information on what it takes to start a viral marketing campaign.  I would advise you ‘get your feet wet’ using all of the above methods for maximum effect.  You could be only one step away from several million visits to your website, so start today and ‘give away’.