Viral marketing is a technique which is being used by many of today’s top Internet marketers to grow their subscriber lists. Another expression for this is “word-of-mouth marketing”, you will certainly have heard of that before.
You should apply this technique as well. This is a very effective way of getting new subscribers. And it’s definitely much cheaper than ezine solo ads or banner advertising…
1.) Free Ebooks
Ebooks have been definitely the top choice for many Internet marketers (although they are getting less effective). If you’re giving away valuable information, you can be sure that many readers will appreciate this and might want to get information from you on a regular basis. So be sure to include your signup form or subscribe email address on every page if possible. You can also insert your affiliate links into it and at the same time, you can have exposure for your own web site(s).
In *.exe ebooks, you can also insert a little pop-up for your newsletter. If you want hundreds or even thousands of downloads, you should upload your ebook to software sites like http://upload.cnet.com/ and http://www.tucows.com/ . Include a note that you will allow others to give away your ebook for free. If the pieces of information included in your ebook are valuable, you have just started a traffic virus!
You can see this in action here: http://www.internetmarketing-success.com/newsletter-ebook/ . My ebook “How to start your own profitable newsletter” has been downloaded more than 15000 times from my server.
2.) Free Reports
It is no secret that most of the top Internet marketers are using free reports to market their products and services. You can do it as well. Just write a short 7-12 part report about a topic from within your niche which gets delivered by autoresponder. Your existing products, products you’ve purchased reprint rights to and your affiliate products will then be promoted 365 days a year. You will get enough email addresses to market your products to.
You should offer other webmasters and newsletter publishers an incentive if they offer your report to their lists. It must be something valuable, of course. They will know that you’ll use your free report to sell your products and services, so offer them at least a free top sponsor or solo ad in your own newsletter. A reciprocal link will work as well. After this initial process, the report should get passed around by itself because of the valuable content. Another option is to turn this report into an ebooklet and apply the tactics described above.
3.) Tell-A-Friend
A Tell-A-Friend is just a form which allows visitors to enter their friends’ names. The system then sends them a personalized message from you, telling them about something special, either a web site or a newsletter. By adding a few lines of JavaScript or something similar, it can be added to any of your web pages. One of these Tell-A-Friend services is located at:
http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/announce/index.php If your content is good enough, you don’t even need further incentives – as your products will be recommended because of their quality. A Tell-A-Friend form just makes it a bit easier. With most of them, you can also add a personal message to it.
4.) Viral Software
Many companies have started using viral marketing with software. Software has a high perceived value and if it is free, many people will download a piece of software that can help them with certain tasks. Intel, for example, had done a viral marketing campaign with a little calculator program that was used to calculate profit margins of computer resellers. It had been announced in targeted computer related newsletters and the free offer was sent to about 49,000 subscribers. 4500 people clicked on the link and approximately 1800 downloaded the software and subscribed to Intel’s newsletter.
Now that may not sound too much. But the real effect came through when the campaign was over. Many of these initial subscribers put up links to the download page of that calculator and Intel still gets subscriptions from this one time campaign after more than 2 years! If you can create a software program that carries your advertising message, you can create the same effect. It just has to be something people from your niche would like to receive.
5.) Writing articles
The one viral technique that is being used by almost all of the top Internet marketers is writing articles. The viral part lies in the fact that you have a resource box at the end of your articles which allows you to include a sales pitch for your product or just an email address for subscribing to your newsletter. There are several possibilities for distribution. You can either contact newsletter publishers from your niche directly or you can submit your articles to article announcement groups at Yahoogroups or Topica.
And last but not least, you can submit them to several article directories where they can get picked up by publishers looking for quality content.
If you are using at least some of these strategies regularly, you can get subscribers to your ezine almost effortlessly. Just make sure you are giving away quality products…
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