Posts Tagged ‘Tutorials’

Viral Marketing — Getting Started

There are many advantages to viral marketing. Viral marketing can be effective for either web-based and everyday “store-front” businesses. If done correctly, viral marketing campaigns can absolutely bring thousands, even millions of new people to your website and business. It will bring additional traffic to your site and build up your link popularity. Viral marketing campaigns are inexpensive and work well. The idea is to promote your website mainly through word-of-mouth. Every website can use these marketing strategies. It just take a few steps.

First, you must be careful not to drive people away with an overly pushy viral marketing campaign. The way to do this is to have information people will find useful and will want to send to their friends. People instinctively want to spread information, for example, after they read a great book or enjoyed a good restaurant, they will tell everyone.

One way is to post a tell a friend signup page. Make it accessible from all pages, and easy to locate, however, after the initial contact with the friend, DO NOT send more emails, unless they opt in at a later date (you do not want to be labeled a spammer)

Compose an online book, provide wallpaper or backgrounds for PCs, along with clever tools, such as online weather forecasts. Make certain that you brand these with links reminding people of your web site.

Be sure to get your own logo for your website or merchandise, along with a clever name brand. Be sure to place this on each web page and even on all of your products, if you can.

Use RSS if your content is dynamic. A wide variety of websites from all over the world will grab and show a top quality RSS feed.

Your promotion needs to target audience emotions while including a forceful call to action. You should strive to be original and while being persistent while avoiding pushiness.

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Guerilla Marketing for Beginners

Guerilla Marketing for an online site or blog is not a “fixed” group of strategies. No strict regulations apply as such (however, see the guidelines, below) Guerilla marketing gets its power from originality and innovation. It does not entail expensive conventional avenues like TV or radio campaigns. These are tried and true methods that conventional companies have used for years: hand-outs, pens, T-shirts, or decals.

A few alternative advertising strategies include such things as contests, P.R. stunts, or whatever other revolutionary method of marketing that you can conjure up. A great new tool at your disposal? Podcasts. Be creative.

The first step to becoming a guerilla marketer is to whet your creative skills. Seek out numerous ways to advertise your product or service to possible customers.

Examine what you sell from the perspective of the customer. Who is the target consumer for this item? How do their minds work? For example, if teens are your target demographic, you will try to steer away from boring campaigns and aim for something dynamic. However a trendy and cutting edge campaign is not liable to draw the elderly or conservative business types. For a demographic that is based on gender rather than age, naturally you should customize your campaign to appeal to either men or women.

Integrity and work ethic in business are required regardless of the kind of marketing methods that are employed (with guerilla marketing, employ multiple campaigns; don’t limit yourself to just a couple)

Regardless of what others may say. As is the case with any other business that enjoys success, spreading the word is useless if your product or service is second-rate. The best marketing technique is word of mouth. But it is also a two-edged sword. Word of mouth can be damaging if your product is not acceptable. At one time I worked for a national tax company that reminded its employees of the saying — something to the effect that if a person is happy with your service, he/she may tell one or two friends. But if they are not happy with you, they will inform everyone they know!

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