What does a virus have to do with marketing. Actually Nothing.

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages people to share a marketing message. This creates the potential for exponential growth. You’re simply creating a marketing campaign that will increase your branding, your product and/or service sales. If it works, your campaign spreads like a virus.

Viral marketing is targeted advertising. It’s sometimes used to describe some Internet based stealth marketing campaigns like the use of blogs, amateur web sites, and other forms of virtual real estate to generate word of mouth sharing for new products or services.

Viral Marketing is a mostly about winning hearts and minds. It’s basically about two things: incentives and attention. You give someone an incentive to share the information so you get attention for your business. These strategies can effectively generate website traffic by creating buzz building campaigns.

You’re better off with viral marketing than with third party advertising because it conveys an implied endorsement from a friend. This implied testimonial dramatically increases your credibility. It’s been called the best thing that’s happened to marketers since the invention of advertisements.

Viral marketing campaigns are especially important to small businesses because they usually don’t cost much, if anything. It works extremely well on the web because instant communication is easy and cheap. It’s like having an army of affiliates that work for nothing.

The ease of executing the marketing campaign makes viral marketing very popular. The relative low cost targeting, the high response rate, and the speed of awareness make it appealing to almost everyone. Using viral marketing means doing less work. It’s much easier than most people realize.

It’s become the new way to increase market penetration and build brand awareness on the internet. Viral marketing allows you to increase brand awareness. Viral branding helps you build your brand’s reputation. Your business will grow simply by getting other people to spread the word about your business. Viral Marketing is a sneaky way to let people to know about your business while providing them with a benefit.

Harness the power of your existing visitors and social networks to explode your business without spending a dime. Viral marketing will only work if your service or product is popular enough to advance through a word-of-mouth process. It’s not about wasting people’s time. It’s about giving them some benefit in exchange for them sharing with others.

The usual way viral marketing works is by giving away an information product that can be freely distributed. The info product carries your message and uses the recipients resources. It’s also an excellent technique for avoiding spam mail complaints.

It works best if you have some way to monetize the freebie. Always include an upsell to generate back-end profits. You might also provide an offer of other free viral products that may interest them. A perfect solution for this is the software Viral Manager Pro, it can automate the whole process of giving a freebie on the front-end. Plus incorporating email marketing and optional upsells, to generate the back-end profits!

- Neil Harvey

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