Viral Marketing (Step-By-Step Guide To Building A Profitable Niche Marketing Business - Part 21 of 27)

Viral Marketing is defined as “Any advertising that propagates itself the way viruses do”; E.g. When Hotmail users send e-mails, they “infect” the recipients with the tagline at the bottom of their messages. Viral marketing denotes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Thus, the name “Viral”! Viral Marketing is also called V-Marketing, organic marketing, word-of-mouth marketing or word-of-mouse marketing.

Viral Marketing works best when it induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. In simple words, you pass your message on to 10 other people - each of these 10 people pass on that same message to 10 other people and so on. Such collaborative communications, by nature, needs others in the chain. Everyone simply tells everyone else. ICQ, a service that prompts you when selected friends or colleagues are also online, is an example of a service that is viral by its nature. Its users want to tell their friends about it so that it will be more useful to them.

Viral communication is clearly an enormous opportunity for creating brand growth. Get it right and the rewards are enormous. Your consumers will spread your message for you, at astonishing speeds to a phenomenal number of people. Get it wrong and your carefully crafted proposition will get little further than the marketing director’s in-box.

Viral Marketing is not a pyramid scheme

MLM (Multi-level Marketing) has its own detractors as well as champions. It is important to point out here the main differences between MLM as is generally practiced and the viral marketing concept that is being discussed here. Just as MLM differs from the infamous pyramid money making schemes (that were grand con efforts), viral marketing is significantly different from MLM.

The major criticisms against MLM are two:

MLM thrives on an unending infinite multiplication through down line proliferation. At the same time, what is being marketed is a physical entity. The participants in MLM are oblivious of the fact that there is a limited supply of the products and there seems to be no one controlling the chain and ensuring that supply can be matched with demand. If the market were to get over saturated, and there is no supply to meet it, the people at the lower rung of the chain are going to get burnt. Those who joined early have nothing to worry as they have made their bucks from their down lines.  The criticism thus is that the persons who started this and the early perpetrators in the chain have not pointed out to their down line that there is a limit to how far the chain can actually see fulfillment. Moreover, the participant has first to pay a deposit to join the chain. As long as he/she can see their returns from the deposits coming from their down line, everything is fine. When this stops (due to supply constraint or failure of the primary seller), there would be large number of participants at the lower rungs who paid deposits expecting to recover it from their promoted down lines, but cannot do so.

The second criticism arises from the fact that what the participant is earning from is from the participants’ down line and not from the actual sale of goods or any tangible value. Thus what is being marketed is a dream and the economic theory tells us that this cannot go on.

Well, viral marketing, as we are discussing does not suffer from any of the two lacunae. What you are selling is primarily information, and the transactional cost of either supplying the information or of spreading the message is very low. Thus the risk factor is practically negligible. There is no supply constraint. You can sell as many copies of the e books as there would be persons that you can find in the chain. Moreover, there is no deposit being asked; the upfront investment, if any, is minor. You will not be faced with a situation where you have signed up down lines, but have nothing to offer. Also remember that content that can be offered can be as varied as you get persons to join the chain.

Secondly, the earnings being made are from tangibles. They are from real people visiting sites and subscribing to the information that is provided or through buying of other goods and services that were advertised. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It is one of those wonders that are offered by the internet medium and technology. 

Viral Marketing through Ebooks

Viral Marketing can be performed in several ways. Many of these different forms of viral marketing have enjoyed enormous success over the years. Viral marketing has been applied to emails and the World Wide Web alike. Another proven technique is the use of E-books as a powerful tool for Viral Marketing.

Ebooks or Electronic books are self-contained "executable" files of HTML. This HTML may be a web site you've created or HTML you've specifically prepared to be compiled into a downloadable .exe file for distribution. When downloaded, this file will self install on your client’s desktop.

Ebooks are very similar to normal physical books in the sense that they are rich in content. They are a huge resource for information. Anything you can put in a physical book, you can put in an Ebook. If your site is about tropical birds, why not write a tropical bird guide. If your site is about web design, you could write a beginner's web tutorial.

An Ebook basically is a packaged offline web site that allows authors a great deal of flexibility in presentation of content. Ebooks can be downloaded from your website and stored and read offline at any time. Ebooks come with user friendly navigation tools that lets the reader skip to any page or search for any keyword in the Ebook.

Ebooks can be completely interactive with the Internet and can contain live links, graphics, forms, JavaScript, embedded video, audio, animation and more. Hyperlinks and internal search engines enhance navigation, allowing the reader to find items of interest quickly and easily. Ebooks combine the functionality and purpose of physical books along with complex software.

Ebooks will play a very important role in Viral Marketing over the next few years, no matter what the product or service offered by a company is. How can your business benefit from the Ebook direction especially in terms of Viral Marketing? Read on to find out.

Why are Ebooks an effective viral marketing tool

Here’s how viral marketing with Ebooks works. First of all, it is essential that your Ebook contains interesting information. It is very difficult to market something if it is of no use. Readers of your Ebook should get to learn something from the Ebook. In this sense it is very similar to a physical book. A reader would throw away a book after reading a page or two if he/she finds it to be boring and dull. The same is the case for Ebooks. No one would want to download your Ebook if it is not rich in content. In other words, your Ebook should have some useful information that the reader wants.

To use Ebooks effectively as a viral marketing tool they should be offered to visitors of your website for free. The production and distribution costs of an Ebook are generally very small. This is what makes it an effective tool for viral marketing.

The Ebook would have the layout and feel of your business service or product, which would familiarize readers with your brand. The Ebook you create would have a message promoting your website and a link to it. This will bring back the reader to your website and create an opportunity for more business. Thus, Ebooks can contain advertisements or links to your website that would persuade the reader to come back to your website. For example, a footer on every alternate page can have some message about your business and a link to your website that would interest the reader and encourage him to visit your website by clicking on that link.

How does Viral Marketing come into the picture here? How do you ensure that Ebooks can be given to more and more readers and in turn generate traffic for your website? A very simple way of doing this is to allow other visitors to your website to either download your Ebook for free or sell at a very nominal rate and then allow them to sell the Ebook to their customers. Be sure to include hyperlinks to your web site all over - at least one in every two pages. Also, you can include brief advertisements and all kinds of other things. The advantage of such a strategy is explained in the above paragraph.

Your customer can either upload the Ebook on his/her website or offer it individually to his/her friends through email in the form of an executable file. Note that Ebooks can be created in the form of executables (.exe) with the help of various software. These software(s) are explained later. 

To make the Ebook more appealing to your customers you can offer them incentives. For example you can offer your customer a commission every time a person visits your website through your Ebook on your customer’s website. Tracking software can be integrated with your website that would give you a detailed analysis of all your visitors and track the website from where they were directed to your website.

This will allow not only your direct customers but also customers of other people selling your Ebook on their websites to come back to the source of the Ebook, which is your website. This will benefit your customers in two ways. First of all he/she can sell your book at his/her own price. The second benefit is that every time your customer brings in traffic to your website through your Ebook, he/she would get a commission. Your customers can again employ the same strategy and allow their own customers to market the Ebook, thus, making the Ebook viral.

To further benefit from Ebooks, allow your customers to copy, change, and co-brand the Ebook, which would contain a few ads and links about their own sites in addition to your own links. This will also help your customers to generate traffic for their websites. This is a proven strategy and should be employed.

Ebooks are one of the best promotional tools online. With its vast variety of uses, just one quality Ebook development and distribution can produce an on going viral marketing tool that will work 24 hours a day, seven days a week and multiply itself by leaps and bounds.

Tips for creating an Ebook

• The most important aspect of an Ebook is the content. Unless, the content is well written and interesting, you would find it hard to attract customers. The importance of content in your Ebooks is already known.
• The format of the Ebook is very important. You may create an Ebook using Adobe Acrobat (.PDF format) or as a solid .exe file. An .exe file is recommended. . The main advantage of using PDF is that it works with almost all operating systems whereas executable files generally cater to only Microsoft Windows users. A more detailed explanation of all popular formats for creating Ebooks is given in the section 2.1.4 - Comparing different formats for Ebooks.
• Make sure your source code is protected. This should be done for security reasons. Your source code may allow unauthorized users to hack into your website which is the last thing you would want from a marketing campaign.
• Allow icon customization (allow using custom icons for your EBooks).
• Allow resizing of the compiled EBook to the preferred size. Resizing and icon customization basically allow your customer to change your Ebook according to his/her preference. You should allow your customers to reformat and edit content from your Ebook. However, care should be taken that they are not allowed to delete advertisements and links to your website. Making links and advertisement un-editable can be done while creating the Ebook.
• Allow co-branding of your Ebook. This is a very successful strategy and gives your customers a huge incentive to download your Ebook and pass it on to their customers.
• Create an Ebook search function. This provides easy navigation. Readers should be able to skip to any page in the Ebook directly. They should also be offered keyword search functionality that enables them to search for a particular keyword in the Ebook.
• Support Flash Files, Shockwave, JavaScript, DHTML, Audio, Windows Media, Midi Files and other formats.
• Insert a tracking feature in your Ebook that not only tracks users downloading your Ebooks but also provides different statistics.
• There are many Ebook generators available on the Internet that provide the functionality described above. You can also start your Ebook campaign by buying Ebooks from other users and then reselling these Ebooks.
  

EBook Generator Software

There are several software packages available online to assist you in compiling your Ebook. These generators assist you in each of the functions mentioned in the above section on Tips for Creating Ebooks.

The Prices range from $30 to $149.

E-ditor: This is a nice ebook compiler that includes a step by step interface that will guide you through the entire process. Unlike other programs, this compiler comes with five "skins" to enable your ebooks to have a unique look. It also includes a pop-up message box that loads prior to your ebook loading when your ebook is launched. This box can contain system requirements, copyrights or whatever text you'd like.
Cost: $97.00
http://www.e-ditorial.com/

Ebook Edit Pro:  This is a great ebook compiler. Not only is it easy to use, but it also includes a pop-up message box that loads prior to your ebook loading. In addition, you can select which buttons you would like to be displayed such as, navigational, print and home buttons. It also has an added feature that enables you to include an affiliate ID within every ebook you create and make money for referral sales. An Affiliate ID is given to any user who joins the affiliate program provided by Ebook Edit Pro. Any eBook you sell or give away will have your affiliate ID embedded. If someone clicks the link, you will earn commission if they purchase. Ebook Edit Pro also has a free demo on its website.
Cost: $64.95
http://www.ebookedit.com/
 
Activ E-book: The great thing about this compiler is that it assigns an ESBN number to each ebook you compile. It also has a free demo that is fully functional for up to 10 files to be compiled (including graphics). You can create and distribute ebooks with the free demo, but you must register the software if you'd like to sell your ebooks.
Cost: $29.95
http://www.ebookcompiler.com/

WebCompiler: This program is a little complicated the first time you use it however, once you've figured it out, you can easily create an ebook. This program will allow you to use your own product icon and also includes a search feature.
Cost: $149.00
http://www.webcompiler.com/

Viral Marketing through Emails

Email is one of the best ways of spreading your message - it's fast, cheap and, most important of all, it can be viral. Have you ever sent a message to your friends, maybe a joke or a story, only to have it sent back to you days later with several other email addresses in the CC field that you don't recognize? That's because your friends have sent it to their friends, and these friends in turn have sent it to their friends and so on. The Email chain is endless.
It's fair to say that email is an ideal mechanism for viral marketing, because a message can be spread to multiple recipients almost instantly.

Email allows us to touch people at any time and in any place. Email enhances a whole dimension of branding by allowing our brands to be directly connected to the times and places in which we deliver them. Because we can touch people more precisely, we can brand ourselves more precisely as well.

Email that you send to your customers and friends, if interesting, would be again forwarded by your customers and friends to their own customers and friends.

A good illustration of viral marketing through Emails is through Ezines and newsletters. The term Ezines is coined for publications sent through Email. These publications could be anything - articles related to your website or business, press releases for a new service offered by you or any other write up inviting people to visit your website.

Email Newsletters or Ezines
We had a whole chapter on Newsletters. However, what we didn’t discuss then is that newsletters can be a great viral marketing tool. If your newsletter contains information of value, such as tips, hints, news or tutorials, you'll find that subscribers will forward it on to others.
The use of newsletters can also help build content for your web site which increases search engine visibility. Another great benefit is that your newsletters, or ezines or ebooks will proliferate links on many sites that point to your site. Several leading search engines, primarily Google use Page-ranking algorithms that measure how many links point to your site and rank your page in search findings accordingly. The way to do it would be to promote uploading of your material on your customers’ sites.

Most importantly, a newsletter should contain valuable information, not just sales copy - otherwise interest will quickly drop off and you'll be getting a number of unsubscribe requests. Worse still, your ezine will be deleted as soon as it arrives; leaving you with a valueless list that only sucks up your time, resources and bandwidth. 

Ezine Advertising is one of the most powerful ways to market and promote your products and or services. There are literally thousands of electronic newsletters on the Internet with millions of people who subscribe to them. Placing ads in online newsletters is an inexpensive way to reach your target market quickly -- especially when you compare it with other forms of advertising.

In 2002, ezine publishing took a quantum leap, as its status evolved from "amateur's hobby" into becoming the most powerful marketing tool for business online. Email newsletters have come of age, and increasingly, more ezines will take this route, as subscribers prefer them to drab, lack-luster text-only ezines. In the coming year we'll see more ezines published.

There are tens of thousands of Ezines being published every month, with a collective audience of millions. And the editors of most of those Ezines are all looking for quality content for their newsletters.

If you master this technique you can get your name and your website URL in front of 100,000 or even a million readers. Right now there's a shortage of good Ezine Articles. So, if you write well and you know how to do research on the Internet, there's a huge market waiting for you.

However, Ezines and newsletters can go unnoticed easily. People get a lot of junk newsletters which they delete without looking at them. Subscribers would only subscribe to Ezines which are actually useful to them. Besides, it's very important to inform subscribers exactly what you will be doing with their details as the Internet is rampant with mailing lists being sold off by web masters. Savvy surfers are becoming more selective in what they'll subscribe to - they'll expect some sort of commitment that you won't be distributing, selling or renting their email addresses.

Tips for Creating an Ezine and Emails that are viral

• Pick a topic that you know something about and then go to the Search Engines and find as many websites as you can that deal with that subject.
• As well as collecting information for your article, make a note of any URLs that offer free resources dealing with the topic of your article. Include those URLs in your article.
• You should choose a topic very carefully. Once the topic is selected, doing enough research on the subject is vital. Organize the material and write in an interesting style. Make sure that you provide links to free resources.
• The content in your Ezine should not be pure sales copy. There has to be valuable and genuine information. Promotion of your product or service should be subtle. Viral marketing using Ezine is different than running an E Mail marketing campaign that blasts millions of mail messages to unsuspecting readers.
• At the end of your article, attach a 5 or 6-line 'Resource Box' that includes your website URL and/or your email address.
• When you have finished your article, do NOT send it off straight away. Let it lie fallow for 2 or 3 days and then come back and read it again. You'll be amazed at the improvements you can make. Those final improvements are what make the difference between an article that gets published and one that doesn't.

Viral Marketing with affiliate programs

Affiliate Programs create powerful alliances between an online merchant's web site and various "affiliate" web sites. Affiliate programs as discussed earlier, are a great marketing tool, especially due to the fact that they are viral in nature.

However, affiliate programs are attractive only if they offer useful and valuable incentives to the customers. The best form of incentive would be cash in the form of commission from product or service sales. This is a great incentive for your customers to join your affiliate program and spread your message in turn.

Tips for making your Affiliate Program attractive

Here are some tips to help you in attracting customers for your affiliate programs on your website. Doing some research would help you immensely in increasing traffic to your website and making the affiliate programs as viral as possible.

• The most important aspect of any affiliate program is the incentive. You should offer better incentives than your competitor sites. Money is the biggest and best form of incentive you could offer your customers. Offering a percentage of your sales revenue resulting out of each successful hit can be a great incentive.
• Apart from the normal incentives offer something unique such as cash awards and bonuses for three customers who are responsible for bringing in the highest traffic or highest business to your website. This would provide greater motivation for prospective customers to not only join your affiliate program but also refer your website to more people.
• Most standard affiliate schemes reward only the subscriber directly responsible for bringing more traffic. Develop a second and third tier incentive program for your affiliates. In other words, reward both the affiliate responsible for bringing visitors to your website as well as the other person who had originally referred this affiliate. Let me illustrate this strategy. Let us say John referred Max to your website and your affiliate program. Max liked your affiliate program and joined it and eventually bought your product or service offered on your website. In this case, John would get a percentage of the profit. Now let’s say, Max referred your website to a friend of his - Harry.  Harry visits your website - likes your product - and buys it. A single tier incentive program would reward Max by giving him a percentage of the profit generated. A two tier incentive program would offer Max a percentage of the profit as well as John a percentage of the profit because John referred Max in the first place. This strategy is expansive but very fruitful.
• The above point can be explained in simple terms as “Make it as easy and as natural for affiliates to promote your product or service as possible, by letting your affiliates benefit those whom they refer”. This will encourage your affiliates to convince more people to visit your website and even join your affiliate program.
• Keep updating the content of your affiliate program. For example, if your affiliate program is subscription to a paid or even free newsletter, make sure that you update the topics and content of the newsletter constantly. The content should always be informative and unique.

You can offer incentives to your customers and affiliates for getting your site visitors by sending referrals to their friends, and you can also provide incentives to get these friends to respond.
However, if you make the incentives for both parties the same, then there is no reason why a friend will become a carrier.

The trick is to make the incentives for each party different, and make the incentive for the carrier greater than the one for their friends. This has the effect of motivating each friend to then become a carrier.

Using Ebooks for Affiliate Marketing

Let us discuss of all the ways that an e-book could fit into an affiliate marketing business.

If you've been delving into affiliate marketing at all, you're no doubt aware of the viral potential for e-books, first of all as affiliate products. It's the affiliates who make them viral, after all, passing the word about the product to their website visitors, e-zine subscribers, and clients, in hopes of earning a commission from a sale.

Then, reseller licensing of the e-book product, or allowing those who buy the books to give them away, adds another viral layer to the promotion.  In either case, there's now even more incentive for the book to be pushed along.

The possibility of re-branding the e-book (that is, customizing certain portions of it, or changing the affiliate link coding so that the current host of the download can gain from the affiliate commissions) also adds pass-along momentum. Re-branding might be offered for a low cost or even for a free Ebook.

Let me explain the concept of re-branding further. If you've created a useful Ebook which also promotes your products or services and where affiliates can change the links in your book to point to their affiliate links, you can let your affiliates give this book away to their visitors and subscribers, so that they are giving their visitors something useful and they have the chance of selling your products to them as well.

A merchant's affiliates, or an affiliate's sub-affiliates, could use their own links instead of the author's.  If there's another goal that overrides the affiliate commission, or perhaps if only some of the affiliate links will be re-brandable, or the downloader who re-brands a link will have to purchase the product first in order to use or evaluate it, then the loss of immediate affiliate commissions can be amply made up for by the viral spread of the book.

Free as well as “for sale” ebooks might be used by affiliate merchants to promote their offerings.  An e-book can be a report, a catalog, a sales presentation, a detailed list of features, and so much more - the possibilities are endless. It could be whatever that is helpful to your visitor and your customer.  It can contain graphics, hyperlinks and, with some compilers, even animated graphics and multimedia stuff.

You might create e-books around a subject that pertains to your affiliate program/s.  Your affiliates can then create "adjunct" e-books around your program offerings.  For instance, a businessperson whose core is consulting of some kind might produce a book that elucidates the importance of his service in achieving clients' greater success.  Another could write a book on how to use her product to its fullest advantage.  Or an in-depth discussion of an interesting issue could lead into a mention of the product or service "in the background".

Either an affiliate or a merchant can use downloadable ebooks to enhance the attractiveness of his/her website or ezine, of course, as an incentive, or to engender a feeling of trust in his/her visitors/readers, by providing good information and advice therein.

This technique certainly trains affiliate program merchants to help their affiliates to become more acquainted with viral marketing. Using ebooks as a source of affiliate viral marketing can only increase traffic and in turn profits for your website.

Viral Marketing on the Web

How many times have you followed links from one site to another and another - only to end up at the first website? The World Wide Web is easily one of the best mechanisms for Viral Marketing.

As discussed earlier, the simplest and most obvious way of getting people to link to your site is to make it an incredibly useful site packed with informative material. This takes advantage of the main reason people use the Internet - to find information. If you narrow down the focus of your site, you have a much better chance of being found on the search engines, and by those who are looking for the specific information you provide, and hence your chances of being linked to increase greatly.

Another strategy that would immensely help is increasing the link popularity of your website. You want to be found wherever possible and appropriate, throughout the Internet. If your competition is there, you should be, too. Inbound links from other websites to your website provide two benefits: increased traffic to your web site and increased rankings in search engines that calculate inbound links in their algorithm, like Google.
Like you, other site owners are trying to increase their link popularity and require reciprocation or give preferential placement of your link on their site if you provide a link in return. This means you need a page or directory on your site to provide reciprocal links. Creating a links page or directory within your site makes your site more content rich and certainly more viral in nature.
Also, you can encourage your visitors to link your website to theirs. This is only possible if your website is useful to them and rich in content. Sometimes, providing incentives to visitors for link reciprocation would do you a world of good. You can encourage visitors and other complementing sites to reciprocate your website’s link in return of commission and “giveaways” for each person visiting your site through their link. This strategy may pay rich dividends.

Word-of-mouth Viral Marketing

Word-of-mouth is considered the very best marketing, because it is unsolicited. Here are some ways to encourage friends to share with friends, and use their network to promote your site.

• Install software for website referral. Such software allows visitors to recommend your website to their friends and customers. It is imperative that your website is informative and useful.  Try and provide something unique on your website. This could be a new product or a new service that would interest your visitors and encourage them to spread the word for you.
• Make it easy to e-mail or fax your web page to a friend. Encourage readers to e-mail your web page to a friend. This is similar to recommend your site, but allows your visitor to send specific content as well. This is easier to accomplish without a database-driven site.
• Create Email newsletters and send these newsletters to your friends and customers. Always encourage readers to forward your e-mail newsletter to their friends. Do this at the end of a newsletter, and you may jog some readers to do it immediately. It's easy to do.
• Create attractive Press Releases with a link to your website and send these to customers and friends. Press Releases are very viral in nature. By providing a link at the bottom of the press release, you ensure that the reader would click on the link and visit your website. It is a good idea to submit your press release to publications that have the same type of target audience as you.

Measuring Viral Effect and performance

As with any marketing campaign, tracking the results and optimizing performance over time is absolutely necessary. Understanding how viral and effective your marketing campaign is crucial information, not to mention interesting. You may be reaching a huge audience with your viral campaigns but the key is to analyze how many of these actually visit your site.  You may have the right viral marketing strategy but somehow your message may not be efficient enough to bring back visitors to your website. Fixing it could increase your sales by 200%. This is just an example; there are many reasons why you want a detailed analysis of the viral effect and performance of your campaigns.

Thankfully, sophisticated viral marketers can track insightful and actionable data that can be used to evaluate performance. Important metrics to analyze are pass-along, click-through, and conversion rates. Marketers should separate the click-through and conversion rates by original customers from referrals and evaluate their respective performances. These metrics will alert a marketer about the offers and customers that drive the highest ROI.

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