 | Viral Marketing: What it is, and how you can start using it to grow your business |
Welcome to the world of Viral Marketing. Congratulations!
Because you are about to discover how to use an ancient form of marketing to redirect web traffic into your sites and so start filling up your bank accounts!
Viral marketing has been around for ages, and now I have tasked myself on this ‘7-Part Viral Content Challenge‘ to share my thoughts on how to apply this fascinating concept.
As you can see, this is my contribution on Part-1 of the challenge, #7PVCC for short.
But before we move forward, keep in mind this is for education purposes only. No quick riches are warranted or implied by just applying the ideas posted here. You must combine and test different methods until you succeed. Results are not typical because every body has different background and work ethics. Please check Our Terms of Service for further details. Also download and read the free pdf report Viral Marketing Power, featured below, which more information about the nature of viral marketing and marketing in general.
With that said, let’s jump in and start the journey…
Viral Marketing Background
For ages, people have recommended a service or person to others if this particular person’s product or services were exceptionally good.
Over time, this method became one of the most effective forms of marketing- after all, you would most likely use a service or purchase something a trusted friend or family member recommended, wouldn’t you?
Viral Marketing Defined
Viral marketing basically describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others , thus creating the potential for exponential growth via that exposure and influence.
user:mohamed_hassan-5229782
No doubt, viral marketing is definitely one of the best methods for generating traffic and buzz for your business.
Publishing viral content can be a very good thing for internet businesses, specially small ones that are just starting out.
But watch out! On the flip side, a lousy product going viral will cause everyone to shun your product or business. And that’s the thing you do not want to happen.
How would you create a good viral campaign then? You ask… Well, just follow this blog, and you’ll discover more ideas that will ignite your viral brain.
Stay tuned because in my next post, I will tackle the first thing to do before starting a viral marketing campaign.
For now, just go ahead and download this free PDF report..
Viral Marketing Goals Setting
This is Part-2 installment on the #7PVCC Challenge.
As promised, today is all about the first thing to do before starting a Viral Marketing Campaign.
Let me tell you right of the bat. That first thing is goal setting. But you can refer to it as objective setting, campaign planning, and many other different names. The point is you must define in advance what it is you want to accomplish by running your marketing campaign.
For example…
Is it to grow or create an audience or communication channel?
Is it to make sales?
Is it to just create awareness for a new company, product or service?
Or do you just want to promote an affiliate program?
No matter what it is, it must be defined up front.
On top of that, or even before that, you must have your market, and then decide what media you’ll use in your campaign. That is, will you use
articles, posts, images, podcasts, or videos?… What type of videos? Memes, compilation, product reviews, TV Commercials?… Uh! Maybe you should run several campaigns to find out what your potential audience wants.
To put all the above in in order, you may say that the “order of things” is as follows:
- Define your market or niche
- Define your objective
- Decide what media to use
- Create your plan
- Put your assets in place
- Create and Launch your campaign
- Syndicate
- There’s a step 8, which is actually step 0, which I will probably touch later on, if time permit.
About defining a market…
Here’s my 2-cents opinion: Every marketer should have a market defined. But not any market that comes to mind or matches your hobbies, passion or whatever, but a profitable one. This day and age is very easy to define a profitable market using the right knowledge, approach and tools. Problem is, that the majority of people trying to teach about it, have it all wrong. Other problem is that the right tools are expensive and require knowledge and creativity; and the cheap ones are too time consuming… by the way, creativity has an actual meaning here because more important than defining a market is the ability of knowing how to flip it, and that’s where creativity and knowledge can help. Think outside the box, they say. But I say: Get inside the box and then think out of it. For anyone wanting to learn how to find and flip a market, I recommend taking action following this link if you really, really want to learn how to find and flip a market.
Defining your objective
Defining your objective is crucial because that will help you in the implementation of all the other steps. Think for example step 5, putting your assets in place. Obviously, you should deploy your assets before hand, depending on your objective…
For example..
You want to create an Email List? Then you must have an Opt-in Page and Autoresponder sequence in place.
If you want to make direct sales with your campaign, then the best approach is to have an eCom Store or Funnel in place.
And so on, and so forth.
Part-2 Recap
To recap today’s lesson let’s just say the following: You must have your market, so that you have plenty of topics to talk about and a lot of objectives to accomplish. You decide to focus on one of those objectives, create a marketing plan, and put the required assets in place. Then, and only then, you are ready to start creating your campaign.
OK, that’s it for today. It is getting lengthy and I am getting tired. So, let’s stop it here for today. But stay tuned because tomorrow I will talk about what to do immediately, after launching your campaign.
In the meanwhile, if you don’t know where to start, I recommend getting this solid system below..
Content Syndication
Heads up! This is the stage when the hunter becomes the game ☺
My Part-3 contribution on the #7PVCC Challenge
At this point, you have created your campaign, that is, content that you want to go viral as you go hunting to fulfill some objective. You have these minions (your content or baits) in place, ideally your own battle field, like your own blog with your own domain, hosted and controlled by you. You have deployed your forces. Now what?
Well… If your battle field is heavily transited by eye balls that consume your baits, it’s done, you have just deployed and launched your vital marketing campaign at the same time.
In the other hand, if you don’t have an audience (eye balls) that consumes your content, you must start campaigning to promote your “viral campaign”… Ouch!
You’ve just discovered the need for content syndication. No, it is not creating or enrolling in unions or anything like that. It is spreading your content on relevant third-party properties that already have eye balls interested in your content.
There’s art and science for it. You can Google it to explore the possibilities… I’ll throw in some examples below.
Here’s how experts at Outbrain.com define this process:
” Content syndication is when web-based content is re-published by a third-party website. Any kind of digital content can be syndicated, including blog posts, articles, infographics, videos and more. Think of it as a kind of barter arrangement. The third-party website gets free, relevant content. “
You see? Ideally you get eye balls for free, and the the third-party gets content (your content) for free. It’s applied bartering at its best. Sure.
But if you continue searching, you will discover that there is another type of content syndication, and that is paid content syndication, which is considered the best by many. Or is it?
I’ll leave it like that for today. Hope you have noticed the importance of having your own platform fully populated by an audience interested in your content.
Tomorrow I’m be coming back with another post on the same topic for this challenge.
What? No link to click today?… Yes, there is. By default is the yellow banner above. ☺
Alternatives To Content Syndication
Hi, the topic today was kind of a surprise because I did not announced it yesterday. But here I am as usual forging ahead to complete this challenge. So, check below..
My Part-4 contribution on the #7PVCC Challenge
And let’s jump right in. There are hundreds of alternatives to Content Syndication.
How ever, don’t understimate the power of these 5 liested below, starting with Press Releases.
- PR’s
- Ads
- Joint Ventures
- Giveaways
- Events
But hey! Do your own diligence. Don’t you ever think for a second that in viral marketing hacks, tactics, methods or whatever are engraved in stone. All the opposite, the truth is that we marketers have to experiment to discover what works for us. For instance, giving away good content for free has always work well for marketers.
And by the way, there’s no link to click today either, except for the default green above, or if you prefer, the yellow is good as well. Even better for you and me, take both ☺
That’s it for today. There is a pause of 4 days. After that Part-5 will appear below. Be safe.
To your success,
Tec Joa
https://digibizcode.com