Viral Marketing: Marketing for Next to Nothing
Three times in the last 2 weeks I’ve been asked for tips on cost effective ways businesses can market themselves for next to nothing. The first strategies that jump to mind are social media and viral marketing.
These two strategies have become an exciting, new platform for businesses of all sizes to market themselves through. These strategies are designed to encourage people to forward the message on to friends in order to gain exposure for your business. Social media and viral marketing is gaining more and more popularity due to the cost effective nature and potentially rapid response rates. So what is involved? All it takes is a good idea and a few email addresses, a few readers of your Twitter or Facebook page and your message could be out there in front of thousands in minutes.
Today we will focus on viral emails since it is achievable for any businesses with any budget. Almost everyone in business now uses email on a day-to-day basis. It is used much more than any social media site or search engine combined. The key to viral emails is entertainment. If you can use humour without offending your potential clients and customers you are on the right track. Getting the right balance can be critical. People are likely to share with friend’s things that they are interested in.
Viral email campaigns can have both positive and negative effects depending on how it engages the audience. It needs to be contagious hence the name. When done well, it has the potential to travel well beyond traditional marketing strategies even to epidemic proportions. Humour and offbeat creativity are what often makes it successful.
Make sure you don’t break any Spam laws in the process, you need your contacts to forward your message on to their contacts and so on. Don’t be tempted to cheat the system and get email addresses by other means.
Like all marketing you need to have clear objectives in order to create a good campaign. Your goals may be to build brand awareness, gain media exposure or build a database for future promotions.
Questions to ask yourself when creating a Viral Email:
- Is it entertaining?
- Does it engage your target market?
- What impression will it create?
- Will people forward it on?
- What are the possible positive outcomes?
- Are there any possible negative outcomes?
- Does it have a call to action?
- Will people see straight through it as marketing and be less likely to participate?
