Friday, August 2, 2013

Viral Marketing: Dirty Secrets Revealed!

Viral Marketing: Dirty Secrets Revealed!

As a business owner, you have no doubt wanted to sell more.  You do that by getting in front of more people.  Then something like www.onedollarshaveclub.com comes out with the guy walking through a warehouse and boom, the guy is a millionaire.   “Why didn’t I think of that?”

There is actually a method to the madness, or genius, depending on how you want to look at it.  

All successful viral marketing campaigns have a formula.  I guess its kind of like what science is based on, this reaction gets this result.  Here are the dirty secrets of viral marketing.

The formula all starts with an idea.
1.              Know what you target market is interested in.  If you are selling chewing tobacco, your target market probably likes auto racing and baseballI’m from Ohio, how can you not like auto racing and baseball? Guide an idea through a commonality that exists within your target market. 
2.              Give away free stuff.  The word “free” attracts everybody’s attention.  If you stand with brown bags of crap and put up a sign that says “free crap”, I bet people stop.  On your website, this can be an e-book, a tool, a video… everybody has a bag of crap they can give away free.
3.              Make it easy to pass on.  Like a cold, make it easy to share.  Put the link to your bag of crap at the bottom of all messages, posts, blogs, etc.  Make it easy to forward or copy and paste.  Functionality is a key component in facilitating peer to peer transactions.
4.              Remember people’s primary motivations for wanting to share something.  We all want to be thought we are cool, loved, respected, funny, sexy, smart, or even good in bed.  Tailor your content to align with motivations to share.
5.              Use the resources of others.  This point reminds me of the book on Musashi.  The king was trying to defend his castle and ran out of arrows.  He quickly made a bunch of straw men dressed as soldiers and lowered them down on ropes.  The enemy, thinking they were getting attacked, quickly starting shooting the soldiers.  The king then drew them back up and used the arrows.  Think news release services, social pages, blogs, guest blogs, etc.  

In closing, I truly appreciate your time in reading this blog.  If you need online digital marketing services for your business, give us a call at www.redtruckseo.com

Chris Seminatore

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