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Viral Marketing for Small Business Websites... The most gloried story on the Internet regarding the power of viral marketing concerns the free email service Hotmail. In its early stages, Hotmail chose to add a short tag line to every one of the emails that was sent through their service. I'm sure many of you have seen it, it reads: "Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com" That simple little message helped to sign up 12 million users within 18 months, an astonishing number and one we'd all love to have. There are other examples of viral marketing working, such as with ICQ, the instant message service and PayPal, which allow users to make payments online. Now, you might be saying to yourself, I'm glad these huge companies are doing so well for themselves, but how does viral marketing affect my Internet presence? Well, the same guiding standards for success of a website apply for a small business. There's really only two necessary factors to get viral marketing working for you:
While many people might forward your website address to others if they're delighted by it, your odds increase if you give them a concrete method to do so. On my hobby website, www.r-agostino.com, we have a simple form whereby individuals enter their email address, and then the addresses of their friends, and submit it to us. We then send their friends an email, inviting them to the website. The original individual then receives 5% off their next purchase for recommending us. Sound complicated? It's not. There's even services out there that will automatically collect and send out the emails for you. One that I recently tried is, www.Recommend-It.com. They have a very simple form to sign up for the service, and all you have to do is insert their HTML code into your website. Even if you don't want to set up a system for people to recommend you, make sure that you at least ask people on your website to do it themselves. You'd be surprised how often people just hadn't thought that some of their friend would find your product or resource useful. Just add a simple line like: "Do you like this website? Then please recommend it to your friends!" or, "Know of someone in need of our services? Please recommend us!" It's doubtful whether a line like that will have the success of Hotmail, but if it picks up an extra customer or two, it's well worth your time! |
MARKETING: The other side to advertising... Precise and exact marketing... Viral marketing for small business... For a Free No Obligation Consultation on your best web design ever... Click here... Contact Information:
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