Viral Marketing on a Shoe String Budget
A virus in the computer world, as defined by the American Heritage Science Dictionary, is a program that duplicates itself in a manner that is harmful to normal computer use. Most viruses work by attaching themselves to another program. The amount of damage varies; viruses may erase all data or do nothing but reproduce themselves. In the marketing world, the virus is viewed much differently. It is our little sentinel, carrying our sales message all over the global market. The anatomy of an internet marketing virus, and what makes it ‘viral’, is also completely different than a computer virus.
First, a computer virus relies on interaction between a defined set of variables. There is no gray area, just 1s and 0s. A marketing virus relies on triggering an emotional response from a human who interacts with the media. The level of favorable emotion triggered is directly related to the likelihood that the virus will spread. The more people that have a strong favorable emotion, the more quickly the virus will propagate through the social network.
One of my favorite viral marketing campaigns was Burger Kings “Subordinate Chicken”. It created a wildly entertaining experience for visitors and was laced with a bit of controvers, creating the perfect recipe for rapid awareness. If we inspect the success factors of viral marketing campaigns, they can be broken into four key ingredients.
1. Access – The internet is the perfect medium for a viral marketing campaign. Things travel at the speed of light, cost per impression is essentially zero and the opportunity to provide a free experience for the user is possible. The campaign can be designed to have no barrier to entry.
2. Ease of transfer – Through email, communication and transfer of the virus is simple and rapid. Blogs and social networking sights increase the distribution points for the media.
3. Universal bait – The value of the content is measured by the perception of the people subjected to the virus. If the bait being used to lure a user to interact with the media is of high value, the more proud the user will be to pass it along to others in their network.
4. Favorable emotional response – A negative response can also create a viral effect, however, as learned by the Subordinate Chicken site, enough negative responses can stop the spread.
By including these key ingredients into the design of a viral marketing campaign, a very low cost sales message can be spread all over the world.
To investigate a new viral marketing tool that I’ve discovered, visit http://www.squidoo.com/xlrevshare
Brett Nordin is a business consultant and entrepreneur with a passion for various business topics including sales, marketing and business development.
Using Videos May Actually Hurt Your Affiliate Sales
It would be an understatement to say that video has taken the Internet by storm. I mean, come on. You’d have to be living under a rock not to notice. But if you’re planning on using video to help boost your affiliate sales then lean in close. What I’m about to share with you may come as a shock.
Using video to help increase your affiliate sales may actually HURT your sales. Yup, you read that right! But before I tell you how, let me preface it by taking my hat off to brave folks who even “try” to make videos to promote the products or services of others. Kudos to you if you’re in that bunch.
This advice is especially for you and all those who want to follow in your pioneering footsteps…
I’m probably singing to the choir when I mention how difficult it really is to create quality, professional video presentations of ANY sort – much less those that promote the products of others. If you’ve ever tried it, you’re likely shaking your head up and down in agreement right now.
And, you’ve gotta admit…
Some of the videos being produced and used by affiliates right now to promote products and services are just, well, how do I say this nicely… CRAP. Makes me want to scream!
You probably feel the same if you’ve seen some of the same videos I have. So… The moral of this story is: “Just because you’ve gone and made a video to help promote a product or service as an affiliate, doesn’t mean you can start planning for retirement.”
But rather than rag on how unprofessional and horrible some of the promotional videos appearing on the Internet are. Let’s talk about how to correct some of the common mistakes so you get better results with the videos you produce. Yes, video can be a powerful affiliate marketing tool. But if you don’t know what you’re doing it really will KILL affiliate sales.
For example…
Nobody, “read my lips” NOBODY is going to sit through a 3-5 minute video presentation about what you’re offering. I don’t care if you’re giving out $100 bills, a steak dinner, a dozen roses and a week long tour of Tahitian beaches in the nude.
Why? Three reasons…
- People are too busy to watch
- People get bored too easily
- 50 years of TV has trained us to watch 90 second commercials
Anything longer than 90 seconds and on the TV you click the channel. Anything longer than 90 seconds on the Internet and people head their mouse over to the little red box with the “X” in it.
Second, you don’t want to make a video that takes up the viewers entire computer screen. I mean, Geez Louise!!! Those honking, monsterous 1027×780 “slap-me-in-the-face” presentations are downright threatening to most viewers. Heck, when I see one of THOSE bad boys popup on my computer screen I want to rare back and get the heck outta there! It’s down-right scary.
You’re laughing. But I’m serious…
You click to open a video and instead of a small, nicely sized video. They blow into your virtual world and park a Dump truck right in your face. What’s THAT all about? Ya think I might MISS something???
Ease off, and produce video commercials or infomercials starting at 640×480 and below. Better yet, be unique. Try different video sizes. You might even save some bandwidth and find that your video loads much quicker for your viewing audience!
Finally, unrehearsed so called “underground” videos, short for (lazy and unprofessional) have not proven to help affiliate sales one iota. People see right through that nonsense. And, considering the response rates you’ll obtain from using such videos, your chances of converting the viewer to a buyer would be better if you used a blank white space where the video should be. Do that and your marketing efforts may actually be mistaken for ingenious.
Alright, that’s all the ranting I’m gonna do for now. So I’ll shut up. Just remember. Don’t start counting your chickens just because you’re using video on your site to promote an affiliate product or service. People demand and deserve the best. So give it to them.
If you don’t have the time or energy to create or produce your own professional-quality affiliate promotional videos. And if you’d like to see an example of the type of videos proven to boost affiliate sales. Then visit Jay Douglas’ web site.
Jay Douglas is a professional video infomercial producer who is giving away free video infomercials you can use to instantly boost your affiliate sales. Get your free infomercials here…
http://www.cbsqueezevideos.com/friends.html
Top Tips To Improve the Thrill for Your Sales Presentations
Our current survey brought forward some results that, though not altogether surprising, were very concerning on PowerPoint presentations. As you would expect 85% of respondents organisations used PowerPoint and 33% of these users use it every day. That just goes to show how embedded into the commerce world PowerPoint is.
In the 95% of respondents who use PowerPoint 83% used it in face to face presentations. Take that along with 73% of users presenting to clients and 72% to prospects you begin to see just how significant a tool PowerPoint presentations is in our clients facing world.
PowerPoint is now the most significant tool for every sales group. All of this work leads to this one presentation. This solitary presentation can justify all the hard work, or it could waste it. If you can spot the value that the final piece of the jigsaw has, then you begin to see how significant it is. These figures show just how little care is being taken within a business for its PowerPoint presentations. If we take all these together the picture is rather damning. When you look the cold hard facts it can be rather scary as the probability of you or I being obliged to sit through one of these substandard PowerPoint presentations is extremely high.
Just how is PowerPoint built in companies today? Here at Eyeful we keep a close eye on PowerPoint usage in the corporate world and one of the ways we keep bang up to date is with our annual survey.
If you can see the value that the ultimate piece of the jigsaw has, then you begin to see how significant it is. In our experience in order to connect the potential of PowerPoint you must realise how to get the most out of it. By updating your presentations frequently you can ensure you keep up with your market.
A top class presentation, like a good story, has a beginning, middle and an end. Dividing your presentation into these three sections will help you create the composition that enables to you get your message across. The Beginning – This is the second most significant part of the PowerPoint slides. It should seize the audience’s thought and give them a flavour of what’s to come. What you use to seize their thought should depend on your audience and be applicable, but some examples are: An attention-grabbing or funny story (but remember, use of humour can be a double-edged sword! A small video clip of no more than 60 seconds… Strange statistics about your trade or your audience, a quote that is related to what you’re going to talk about.
Hugh Roberts has been a specialist in sales presentations for 20 years and a regular contributor on this subject.
For more articles and surveys on this subject visit http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk
Using SMS to Market to Customers
The key to any successful business is its customers, after all without customers no business can survive. If your company is struggling to attract new, or maintain existing customers, you are probably in tricky financial times, with high stress levels and low motivation, which starts compounding the problems. The answer is simple, keep your customers happy and they will return, and typically, bring their stakeholders.
There are many ways to keep customers happy, some are short term solutions – a quick fix, but some can build strong, prosperous bonds that benefit both parties for years. The easiest way to stay in your customers’ minds is simply communication. Staying in contact with clients, even occasional contact with one time only clients, demonstrates your company is not just selling a product to as many people as possible without a second thought. Additionally it creates a more approachable view of your company and services, as well as hopefully reminding them of successful previous transactions with a view to possible future transactions.
Every business, big or small, communicates with customers in different ways, flyers, emails, letters etc. however few businesses are as technologically up to date as their customers. Text messaging has been around for many years, but really only took off in the last decade, however it is probably not one of the first communication method that springs to mind. SMS messaging is a perfect platform for communicating with customers, it is quick, cheap and can spread the word to as many willing customers as you can get!
The advantages of SMS communication is clear, for instance imagine you bought a product you really enjoy, be it a gadget, service, piece of art or whatever and you then received a text to let you know the next version is now available from the same shop. It would definitely leave a good impression in my mind and a call to action to get the new product.
If you’re customers did agree to receive promotional text messages just from your company but then unfortunately decided they would not like to receive further messages, they can easily opt out without feeling pressured or hassled.
Many business, no matter how technically advanced their products or services are, could benefit by communicating with customers via SMS. It is a polite and effective way of providing that extra bit of customer service that is a proven winning formula to successful businesses!
John Mce is an SMS expert writing on behalf of PageOne (http://www.pageone.co.uk) Find out more about SMS customer communication to see how it could improve your business. PageOne offer complete SMS packages, for any business wanting to send bulk SMS. (http://www.pageone.co.uk/Products/BulkSMS.aspx)