Month: January 2014

Grow Your Business With Viral Marketing!

Add creativity to your marketing style

New and creative content is widely recognized as one of the most compelling features a website must reflect if it is to be a leading force in a race that is – at times – described as ruthless competition which exists among Web-based businesses. With so much competition and rivalry going on, every conceivable method of marketing and promotion must be utilized in order to operate a successful enterprise.

It matters not that you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know about your business, or even that you exist; nothing you do will matter to them and you will not be able to achieve any noticeable degree of success on the Web if you cannot compete. Worse of all, your business will just wither away and die.

While there are so many methods and schemes used by eCommerce sites and business owners today, there are still some that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these methods you can derive benefit from is known as Viral Marketing.

While the term Viral easily depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary while a virus might infect computers and possibly damage them – we’ve all had enough of all those pop up ads and spyware programs – Viral Marketing is a method of spreading your message.

Viral Marketing overview

Viral Marketing, also known as Viral Advertising, is a marketing technique used to build public awareness of a product or company. It utilizes various forms of media to reach the public without actually promoting a product; but by employing other forms of attractive media that can catch a person’s interest in an addictive-like manner in the sense that, s/he feels obliged or amused to actually pass it on, and with it, the product or company advertisement being promoted.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a particular media they will pass it on to their friends and family. Companies therefore sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story or some such media which, when a user passes it on to another with the company’s brand or logo, or the product description or any other content, the goal of getting word out about the company or its product would have been achieved.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because is it relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pass on the product information to another (friend, family member, co-worker, etc.). If recipient sees the name of a person they s/he knows as the sender, s/he probably won’t block it, but instead would open it and with that opening the marketer’s objective would have been accomplished.

Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they enlist help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing campaign can deliver through the efforts of one person in determining the amount or size of the incentive that can be attributed to that campaign.

Use Viral Marketing to your advantage

The primary and most sought after advantage of viral marketing is the degree of publicity and public awareness the advertiser’s site and company gets. A viral marketing company gets to generate a flow of traffic that is actual visitors who eventual could be customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus the right kind of incentives and prizes, you can really reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

Many of the sites and companies that are serious marketers are catching on to the effectiveness of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could relegate your business to relative obscurity and eventual non-existent. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

Viral marketing: A little sneaky but it works!

Viral Marketing is truly a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along and it is a very low cost method that does not require investing a lot of resources. All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story or use of some ideas that are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandal and gossip to make them more popular. Remember the movie “The Blair Witch Project”?

Many big companies that have tried viral marketing and have had a number of success stories as a result. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail. They were the first known big company to utilize the scheme and it has worked wonders for them. Now it’s your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for your Web business. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your bottom line.

Low-Cost Traffic Generation Methods

Drum up traffic on a limited budget

There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of website traffic! If no one goes to your site, it has a little to no chance of generating income, as many sites have tried and failed in their attempts to generate traffic, which resulted in the sites’ demise.

It takes money to maintain an income generating site which, according to the old adage “it takes money to make money”, should come as no surprise…

…But, it doesn’t require a total liquidation of your bank account contents to generate website traffic for yours or any other website. There are a number of free and low-cost traffic-generation methods available to anyone who is willing to put in the time required to get positive results from these methods.

Ever wonder how big businesses drive traffic to their sites? Most of them have spent, and are spending, tons of money to drive traffic to their sites by investing in various advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and techniques. This was all worthwhile because they had deep enough pockets to finance the marketing that made them what they are now… high earning, big hitting websites.

You don’t have to do this if you don’t really have their resources. As mentioned earlier, there are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don’t have or can’t afford, and we will talk about a few of those ways in the following paragraphs. Even if you are only successful in converting a small percentage of visitors into clients, it still works especially if you get a high number of website traffic.

The link exchange method

This is a sure and proven method. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You’ll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

An important prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the provision of service and information that is of interest to your target audience.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking on the search engine result pages. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic to your website without the high advertising costs.

The traffic exchange approach

This is like exchanging links but on a larger scale. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links but could be made cheaper because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when viewing the sites of other members, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

The viewing of another member’s site or page is done in a give-and-take manner where a site can use your site(s) content and vice-versa. You both benefit from each others efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. Once again the public awareness of your sites existence is boosted.


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Article writing and sharing invites traffic

There are many eZines and directories on the internet which provide free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can do the articles yourself. There are also many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money, it is wise to do those articles yourself.

Write articles that are themed with the niche of your site and write something on a topic in which that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to visit your site. Write articles that provide tips and guidelines relating to the subject or niche your site is based around.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that will link them to your site and write a little about yourself and the topic discussed on your site. If you provide a light, information-rich and interesting article, they will go to your site and return for more.

Newsletter publishing will create traffic

This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a newsletter, but on the contrary, this is not as difficult as you may think. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in on your newsletter. This will provide free advertising for them as well.

As your newsletter gets passed around, you can widen your sphere and public awareness of your site while building an opt-in list with members that can regularly visit your site.

Traffic from forums and online communities

This only requires your time and nothing else. You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities as well as your website. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site.

Share your two cents and let them see how knowledgeable you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.