Spreading the Word with Viral Marketing: Creating Effective Campaigns

June 11th, 2008 Posted in Spreading The Word with Viral Marketing

In order for your viral marketing campaigns to be effective, you have to make it obvious what you want your visitors to do. Use a call to action to get them to do it. Don’t assume that people will take the time to open their email program and send an email to a friend about your especial or coupon or include the URL on your web page because you have a great offer - it doesn’t happen! You have to make it easy.

Here are some tips to make your viral campaign effective:

  • Have a fantastic button or graphic that catches their attention.
  • Provide a call to action telling the visitors what you want them to do.
  • Place the button in an appropriate place away from the clutter.
  • Have the button link to an easy to use “tell a friend” script. The “tell a friend script” accepts the name and email address of your site visitor who is sending the message to a friend. You need to provide a section for a message. You might provide clickable options for this such as “Thought this might be of interest,” or “Knew you’d be interested in this.”
  • Give clear instructions on how to participate; make it simple, intuitive and easy.
  • Offer an incentive to encourage them to do what you want them to do: “Tell a friend and be included in a drawing for (something of interest to your target market).:
  • Leverage, leverage, leverage: “Tell five friends and be included in a drawing for (something of interest to your target market).”
  • Avoid using attachments in the message you want to spread. This will avoid any potential technical problems with opening the attachments as well as allaying any fears related to viruses.
  • Have your privacy policy posted. If the user is going to pass along a friend’s email address, he or she wants to be assured that you will not abuse the information.

Viral marketing will only be successful if the content is good enough or valuable enough to be passed along.

Tricky to get right, but so worth it. I’ve created a very informative webinar about viral marketing, and you can get yourself a CD of that webinar very easily.

-Written by Susan Sweeney 

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