Newsstand

September 21, 2011
Tips for Lighting the Viral Marketing Fire [DMA11]

Everybody’s always looking for online marketing techniques that will catapult their brand to the top of the heap and have everyone talking about it. This is the basis of viral marketing and when it works, it can achieve incredible results. The only trouble is, trying to pull off a viral marketing campaign is a lot like catching lightning in a bottle. There’s no real, proven recipe – it either captures the public’s imagination, or it doesn’t. But there are a few things you can do to help increase your chances of success.

• Creating and publishing a video through sites like YouTube and Vimeo are one way of trying to ignite the viral marketing flame. Both sites are social media enabled to allow easy sharing through Facebook and Twitter. The great news is you don’t have to have million-dollar production value, and uploading to either of these sites is absolutely free.
• Arrange for some valuable giveaways of goods or services to generate buzz and get people visiting your website. Use social media channels to advertise, and leverage your email marketing list to do the same.
• Create a mobile phone application. This is a bit higher level, but when done right it’s one of the most impactful online marketing techniques. You can even have a phone app created that doesn’t have much to do with your business – flash games have a tendency to catch on with the public and can end up driving serious traffic to your website.

The DMA Newsstand Archive