Brad Powers

Whether you are an experienced viral marketing professional like Brad Powers or one just starting out, you can always benefit from more viral marketing tips.  Here are two to help you with your marketing campaign.

First, make sure to personalize any referral emails that you send out.  Response rates are much higher when the recipient feels that he is being addressed individually. Start with the subject line, using the recipient’s name there if possible.  Then, try to use the name in the document as well.

No good viral marketing campaign is worthwhile unless you follow through and track the results.  Make sure to look at pass-along, click-through, and conversion rates.  Separate out the click-through and conversion rates by original customers from those that are referrals so that you can evaluate their respective performances.

There’s so much talk about viral marketing these days but what really makes it so attractive? If it’s successful it can “increase exposure for your company and product while increasing the number of links to your site.”  The challenging part is actually thinking up the idea but there are some great ways of doing just that. First, look for your target audience on the Internet. There are different places people from similar demographics will hang out so try to determine those first.  Identify the most common sites that fit your potential clients’ demographics from tools to contests, photo collections to specific topics.  Gamblers for example aren’t going to have the same interests necessarily as cooking buffs.  Once you’ve done that, work out different ways to “put a spin on one of those ideas” for your campaign.  Another thing you can do is look into different social media sites (like YouTube), look at their big success stories and thereafter “put a spin on it to tailor it to your industry.”  It seems like viral marketing can really do a lot for all companies – big or small – but the trick is to identify how it can work for your specific goals. Brad Powers is an online marketer specializing in the use of viral marketing techniques.