There's enormous power in viral marketing, and it stems from the fact that it can be very tightly bound to its audience. You can broadcast an idea to the winds, but only a few will ever germinate or bear fruit. But if you're able to ensure that people who have need of your product or service get to receive news of it directly, then the per sale cost of advertising will be substantially lower.
How The Internet Scores Over TV And Print
It's natural that the advertising you create, is closely linked with the type of product you're offering. If you're creating something that has value in a limited geographical area, then your medium of advertising will differ from a situation where you sell globally. But the Internet can be of great value to you in either case. This is where it scores heavily over both print and TV media. Both of these can't be applied universally without prohibitive costs. However, with Internet based viral marketing, you can be both local and global at extremely low costs.
On the other hand, even Internet based viral marketing isn't a piece of cake. Most of us know that there are billions of pages on the net, and these are growing exponentially. Besides this, the average unsolicited e-mail is never opened and more often than not, the sender is blocked as a spammer. How then do you ensure that your message is seen?
Early Attempts To Use The Internet
Earlier attempts at getting free advertising included hosting free e-mail, and including a small banner ad in every e-mail sent. However, this was hardly focused advertising. Everyone got to see the same ad regardless of their interests. As you might've guessed, this approach got very poor results. A far more successful effort, is being seen in the offering of contextual advertisements. If your e-mails are generally about travel, you offered more ads on travel, ticketing, hotels etc. While it's not being explicitly stated, it means that the free hosting service scans your e-mails for keywords and creates ads for you. This is very similar to the Adsense service offered by Google. However, while this is much focused advertising, it's still not viral.
The initiative becomes viral marketing when a service like Adsense, is embedded on sites offering specialist advice, discussion forums and bulletin boards. You tend to take the advertisement far more seriously because it appears on a site or a blog you have begun to trust.
It's not easy to produce such advertising. You have to understand your users and their demands completely. Software can do a great job, but only if you give it the correct information to work with. With properly focused viral marketing, you can ensure that the right person gets the right message, every time.
Author Resource:-
Charles McDuffie is an author and entrepreneur for ASB Enterprises. http://xrl.us/oxmtr>Click here to learn more about viral marketing.
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