Archive for June, 2007

Viral Marketing: What Is It And Does it Work?

Viral marketing refers to the marketing method of using your existing website visitors or other website owners to send you new referrals, visitors, and subscribers. This is a very effective strategy and can be used in many different ways.

An easy way to get started with viral marketing is through article marketing. You simply submit articles that you have written to article reprint directories. These are sites that other website owners and bloggers visit in order to find free content for their web pages.

When you submit an article to a directory, you are allowing other people the option of publishing your article on their web page. In exchange, they will include a link back to a site you have specified. To get the best results, write articles that have something to do with the content found on your site, and make sure the link you include is a link that has the same type of information as the article, rather than simply sending the traffic to your home page.

Creating an ebook is another way to use viral marketing. You can sell the ebook and include resell rights or you may give the ebook and allow others to give the ebook away as well. You will want to stipulate that while persons may resell the ebook or give it away for free, they do not have the right to change the information.

This is important. If you create a title page that includes your URL (or if you add your URL to other places within the ebook), you will want to make sure that the persons who resell the ebook know that they cannot take your info out of the ebook and replace it with theirs.

A similar idea is to create a special report (sometimes referred to as a “viral report”). A special report is anything longer than an article but shorter than an ebook. They are very popular as they do not take much time to create. And many people enjoy reading them as they can get a crash course on a subject in a short amount of time. Again, you can choose to sell them with resell rights or simply give them away.

If you choose, you can create brandable ebooks and reports. This means that some of the links inside the content can be changed to reflect a person’s individual affiliate link.

For instance, we’ll say that you created an information product on gardening. To gain publicity, you created a special report that contains some basic information and explains that if the readers want to learn more, they can purchase your information product. Your affiliate can include their specific affiliate link and when one of the people they distribute the report to becomes a customer, you and the affiliate will both be paid. Viral marketing is a great way to increase your traffic and your sales.

Are you looking for a complete affiliate marketing solution?

If you are, I suppose you are not a stranger to Clickbank that allow affiliates to sell digital products. And I beleive you might have head about PayDotCom too. Today, I discover new challenger.

I have just signed up to a new affiliate network – SharePayNow. It is still in Beta, and so far it looks good. Oh yap, you know, as an affiliate, we are not requried to pay any fee Why is Clickbank and Paydotcom keep charging me

It is still too early at this point to determine if SharePayNow will to make it in the near future. But it is often worthwhile to get in earier to take advantage of the opening offers.

Have I mention that both digital and physical product vendors?

Check it out now at SharePayNow

Need Marketing Inspiration?

You may not realize it, but turning on the television, radio, and Internet can teach you new marketing techniques and strategies. Each day, companies are bombarding us with their marketing messages. By the age of 65, the average American will have viewed over 2 million television commercials. And that doesn’t begin to take into consideration the ads we see in newspapers, magazines, online, on billboards, or hear on the radio.

Some companies choose to use catchy jingles and slogans so that we constantly find ourselves humming along. Others tug at our heartstrings in order to establish an emotional connection, and some (purposely) annoy us. Here are a few quick lessons we can learn from these companies:

Try to keep it simple. Nike says, “Just Do It”; McDonald’s “loves to see you smile,” and Calgon can “take you away”. Creating a simple, catchy, and easy to remember slogan can set your product apart from the competition.

Capture your target market’s emotions and they’ll become loyal customers. Back before people had unlimited long distance, phone companies created commercials featuring a depressed older lady who brightened up and became happy when her son called her from across the country. Back then, long distance phone charges were expensive and people were careful not to rack up a big bill.

The phone companies knew that people considered long distance a luxury item. In order to get people to use it, they pulled at their heartstrings and featured the lonely old woman. People were moved by this ad and immediately thought of their own mothers and how they could instantly brighten their lonely, old mother’s day by calling her.

Savvy marketers know that causing a bit of an annoyance isn’t always a bad thing. Take, for instance, the product Head On! and their annoying commercials which featured people with headaches, saying, “Head On” over and over again. The people who saw the commercials may have been a bit annoyed, but they remembered the product and some of them became customers.

Marketers are also discovering that moms are the ones that make the purchasing decisions for their families. Major companies are learning that if they want to sell more cars, more Florida vacations, or more potato chips, they need to make their product more appealing to moms.

These are just a few of the strategies that you can see on a daily basis. The next time you need some marketing inspiration, try turning on the television or picking up your favorite magazine. You may even want to keep an idea file, full of ads you have seen and particularly liked. The next time you are trying to come up with a marketing campaign, look through your idea folder and adapt one of your clippings to your own product or service and see what happens.

Come across this free downloadable MP3 about Search Engine Success. It is about an hour recording.

As the title stated, this free audio book is about achieving search engine success for your website.
Typical topics are covered including improving the position (ranking) of your website in the major search engines, attracting potential customers, getting free traffic, etc

If you’re developing your first website or wanting to make your existing website visible, you might want to check up this audio book. It’s free anyway.

Check up Search Engine Success

Marketing can be tricky. There are many variables to consider. It is much more of an art form rather than a perfect science. If you feel like you are not getting the results you should be, here are some tips on how to review and revamp your marketing strategy.

The first thing to look at in your marketing strategy is whether or not you are targeting the right market. Your target market is the group of people you are trying to promote your product or service to. For example, if you have created a nursing bra, your target market would be new mothers who are breast feeding. If your marketing efforts are not hitting that target market, you are probably not going to be seeing much response.

Another thing to consider is the color of your website and your ads, as well as the graphics that you use. Choosing colors in complementary tones will work best. If your website consists of harsh colors or colors that do not match, your visitors may click away before they even finish reading your advertising.

People enjoy seeing graphics on a page as it helps to break up the wording and adds visual stimulation. However, the pictures you choose should be easy to see and convey the proper message about your product or service. If the pictures are blurry or out of focus, or if they contain potentially offensive material, your website visitors will click away and they may not come back.

You may also want to re-evaluate your sales copy. Your copy is the advertising message that you communicate to others. You will want to make sure your headline is catchy and that you cover the benefits the customer will receive from your product or service. Many people are only concerned with “what’s in it for them”. If you do not clearly specify the things they will receive, they’ll move on. It is a good idea to be honest and keep things simple and concise. Avoid any hype or exaggerations.

Along with the actual wording of your copy, the layout should also be reviewed. Many people simply skim websites rather than read them from top to bottom. You can use a larger font for the headline, in order to draw the reader in, and then you can use things such as bulleted lists to highlight the important parts of the copy.

Finally, you will want to look at the amount of exposure your ads are getting. If you had a certain sales goal that you are not meeting, you simply may not be reaching enough people to meet that goal.