Are You Using These 5 Viral Marketing Strategies to Market Your Business?

Viral marketing is a marketing strategy similar to "word of mouth." It's where you get others either talking about your products and services or sharing something you have created.

Although there are many ways to make your business go viral, here are some simple strategies you can use to start building a viral marketing campaign for your business:

1. Either create or buy an ebook you can give brand.

Creating ebooks is easier than ever, especially if you use free software like Open Office. All you have to do is write up your ebook and then convert it to PDF. Write something short and sweet that relates to your products or services and give lots of great tips.

Start giving it away to your visitors. Not only is this a way to start a viral marketing campaign for your business, you may also build your list. Make sure you tell your visitors they can give away your ebook.

If you want to increase the chances of your free report going viral, purchase branding software. What branding software does is it allows those who download your report to change custom links within the ebooks to their site links or affiliate links.

Others are more likely to give away your report when you give them a good reason, like a chance to make extra money.

2. If you know how to do web design, create some website templates to give away.

One advantage to this strategy is that it also allows you to build backlinks to your website. Put a link to your website in the footer of the template. Let others know that in order to use the template, they must leave the link in place.

3. Write articles.

Articles are one of the easiest marketing strategies to make viral. Everyone loves good content, and there are millions of webmasters on the internet looking for content for their ebooks, websites, and ezines.

Post your articles to as many directories as you can. Also, make them available to article lists like the ones on Yahoo Groups, and you're more likely to have your article published more.

4. Create a video.

Videos are a hot internet marketing technique. They're really addictive. Internet users watch millions of them every month.

Watch some of the videos on You Tube that are related to your topic. Which ones catch your interest? Use what you learn to make your own videos. Videos are easier than ever to make because there's tons of free software out there you can use.

5. Add a tell a friend script to your site.

A tell a friend script is a script you put on your site so that others can recommend your site. Two examples are internet marketers Mark Joyner and Mike Filsaime. They have both used this technique to help them get millions of visitors and earn millions of dollars.

To find a tell a friend script, just do a search in the search engine for "free tell a friend script".

Every bit of marketing your do may help your business go viral. Try these tips and start building your own viral marketing campaign.

Creating an Integrated Marketing System

I was able to secure a contract for our firm to help a fiction and non-fiction book publisher develop an integrated marketing system. They felt that they did not present a consistent face to their customers. Every division was doing its own thing when marketing. They believed this to be inefficient, frustrating, and not cost-effective.

I and our team researched the firms’ front and backlist to get an accurate picture of the firms’ products, as well as the firms’ closest competitors. From this research we were able to determine that the companies marketing strategy was all over the place; but the main reason why the company did not have an integrated marketing system was the fact that the company had no real brand image. I was able to convince the company’s principals that they would have to first define a brand image for the publishing company. A powerful brand image would give the company a direction, a mission, and an image they could pursue.

We were able to develop a brand image by analyzing the companies past products at looking at what some of their closest competitors were doing. The key to accomplishing this was to look for a common thread in the publishing companies past published materials. After a brainstorming effort we were able to find it.

The new branding image for the company was that they would specialize in brand topics. They would create lines of books on various topics. This would be the companies branded image; the specialization of topics and very specific subjects that they would cover extensively. This process that I developed would also take less time and less money that what the firm had originally projected and what they were spending at the moment.

The new image gave the firm a direction that they could now pursue and would allow them to integrate their marketing system now that all of the personnel had a defined goal or mission that they could pursue. Some of the new titles that were created from this project gained critical acclaim; which helped them even more with their branding image. The company enjoyed an increase in profits by 150% over the previous year, by adapting this new marketing and branding plan.


About the Author

William F Dupree was the owner of IMPS (Interactive Marketing & Promotional Solutions Inc.) a sole proprietorship marketing firm located in New York City that specialized in developing interactive marketing, promotional and branding strategies for primarily publishing and publishing related businesses. Prior to founding IMPS in 2005 Mr. Dupree was a senior marketing manager at EDL Business Development Group for seven years. Before joining EDL he worked for Diamond Marketing Group where he developing sales strategies, branding, product planning, event planning, and created interactive marketing strategies for an assortment of businesses. William Dupree can be contacted at http://www.linkedin.com/in/wlliamdupree