Juno Web Design » Marketing and Advertising

6 Ideas for Viral Marketing

David Wiltshire — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:18:54 +0000

Here are six ideas to help you start your viral marketing campaign:

1.Purchase the branding rights to a viral E-book. Allow people to give away your free E-book to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the Internet.

2.If you have the ability to set up a forum or other bulletin board, you really have a great tool. Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own website. Some people don’t have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.

3.Do you have a knack for web design? Create some templates, graphics, etc. and upload them to your site. Then, allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site. Make sure that you include a link back to your site in the copyright notice and require them to keep your copyright notice in tact.

4.Write an E-book. Allow people to place an advertisement in your free E-book if, in exchange, they give away the E-book to their web visitors or E-zine subscribers.

5.Write articles that pertain to your product or service. Allow people to reprint your articles on their website, in their E-zine, newsletter, magazine or E-books. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.

6.You can easily find products on the Internet that will sell you a license allowing you to distribute the product free of charge to other people. Look for those products that provide “branding rights”. That is where you can include your own name, website, and contact information.

Increase Traffic From Yahoo Answers in 3 Easy Steps

David Wiltshire — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:16:40 +0000

Do serious marketers really use Yahoo! Answers? And if so, do they do it with success?

The result is a reverberating “yes!” on both scores.

True, there are some immature questions (and answers) on Yahoo! Answers. But there is a raft of sensible questions that give you the chance to build yourself as a niche expert. And best off, a lot of of these questions finish up on a regular basis at the top of the search engines… Specially if you optimise your answers using long-tail keywords for your SEO!

Here’s how you are able to use Yahoo! Answers to drive hits to your web site and build your newsletter…

1) Find Niche Questions… And Answer quick

You should allow time once or twice a day to answer questions that are directly affiliated your niche. But here is the key: You want to be quick. If you are among the 1st to offer a careful answer, your answer is more probable to be selected as the best answer. (And that means more hits and exposure for you.)

Otherwise, if you post an answer after loads of other people have already posted, your answer will probably just repeat everybody else’s answers. And that’s just a “me too” answer.

2) Post sensible, complete Answers

Do not be haphazard. The more beneficial your answer, the more probable it is to be selected as the best answer. And the more heedful answers you provide, the more your reputation will rise as a niche expert. Both of these lead straight to more traffic, a bigger list, and more sales!

3) Place Your Link

Do not forget to post your link as the “source” of your answer. But be sure to link to a content page rather than a squeeze page.

What Works & What Doesn’t in Viral Marketing

David Wiltshire — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:45:43 +0000

Stop with the enforced e-mail forwards already! Trying to force or bribe people to forward your info to a friends or family in order to be rewarded or win looks skanky in today’s ultra-permission-based world. Especially when you tell visitors nothing about their friend’s or family’s privacy in the space directly next to the e-mail form.

A true viral campaign gets forwarded because consumers are compelled to do so by the glory of the content, not because you bribed them with points or something else.

What absolutely will not work:

Suggesting that e-mail recipients forward your message to their friends and family will not work. Adding a line at the bottom of your e-mail that reads Please feel free to forward this message to a friend is more likely to get it deleted than forwarded.

What absolutely will work:

Offering something worthy of sharing like a valuable discount, vital information or offering an incentive for sharing like additional entries into a sweepstakes or an added discount or premium service will work.

Relevant or timely information, research, or studies that are included in your e-mail might encourage the recipients to share with their family and friends. Interactive content like a quiz or test, especially if it’s fun, will inspire forwarding.

Jokes and cartoons are almost always forwarded to everybody the recipient knows. Why? Because they are entertaining and entertainment is meant to be shared.

A really cool multimedia experience is always going to achieve a lot of pass-along. Rich media is new and the novelty and tech factors alone are often enough to make the e-mail recipient eager to share it.

Oops! Almost forgot one really important thing. You can craft a brilliant e-mail following all the rules, but if a consumer visits your site and has an experience less than what was promised, you are going to achieve viral marketing, alright the bad kind. So be certain that your product or service is ready and is as advertised.

Start Viral Marketing Campaigns Using E-books

David Wiltshire — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:40:17 +0000

Viral Marketing sounds like something bad but it is actually something very good. It is, also, a powerful way to generate traffic to your website.Think about how a virus spreads from on person to another. One person gets sick and just by sneezing they can give the virus to many more peopleâ€¦ those people get sick and share their germs with everyone they know and the next thing anybody knows is that there is an epidemic. That is the very concept of viral marketing. The idea is to get everyone to spread your marketing message around because they want to.Now letâ€™s look at using an E-book to start your viral marketing campaign. First you create an E-bookâ€¦ a really good one that has links to your website, to your sales page and affiliate links to products and services that you recommendâ€¦ and you give it to three people. In the book you encourage those three people to give it to their friends and family.Before you know it the E-book is spreading across the Internet like wild fire. Digital information duplicates easily and quickly so before you know it, thousands of people could be reading your free E-book.Make certain that you let people know that they have permission to forward the E-book around the Internet. When you create the E-book, you have the right to give people certain rights. One of those rights could be that you allow them to give the book to other people. Make it clear that this book is free to give away.You can write the E-book yourself, use private label content or you can hire a ghostwriter to prepare the content. There are a lot of ways to create an E-book. Once you have your E-book written, use software to create your E-book.

The Biggest Email Brand Killers

David Wiltshire — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:02:43 +0000

One of the biggest mistakes to do is to use email like the electronic version of direct marketing media such as postal mailers, catalogs, radio, television, newspaper inserts and even brochures. A world class brand builder can become a sure fire brand killer in no time if it is treated with ignorance, carelessness, and laziness. The brand killing capability is very much dependant on the emailâ€™s relationship with the recipients.The relationship is more personal because of the intimate relationship between the people and their computer. And because of this intimacy, positive and negative feelings are encourages by the companyâ€™s name. No mail is as irritating as junk mail and the penalties for such emails are getting much stiffer. A flood of spam complaints can affect the email program to the extent of shutting it down.The email is becoming a personal medium, slowly. The recipient should be made in charge, he should be able to decide from whom he should receive email from, what kind of email he wants to receive and when he can stop receiving those emails. An email program which dose not includes all these conveniences will do severe damage to the companyâ€™s or brandâ€™s name.The first thing to concentrate upon is to remove poor permission practices. If this thing isnâ€™t taken care of, nothing done after that will make up for the loss. In simple words, it is completely wrong to email a commercial message to anyone who hasnâ€™t given the permission to do so. Sometimes, a person is simply signed up for receiving email while registering on the website because of checking boxes in a hurry. Thus, it is important for the registration page to display the privacy policy which says that the registration also includes agreement for receiving emails.And in spite of this, there is a high chance to get large complaints because of the unclear opt-in process. Some companies send emails to a person who has downloaded whitepaper or brochure form the website. It is better for the check box be not checked before hand. The job of checking the box should be left to the visitor.In spite of taking these precautions sometimes it happen that the recipient will head straight to the report spam button when they do not want to receive email anymore. This happens when the recipient dose not trust the unsubscribe process. The first reason for the loss of trust is because of not sending the message in the desired format: text or HTML. The readers subscribe intrusting the company and when their email program fails to honor their trust, the company has to pay for this. It is very important to give the reader the option to choose from text or HTML format. Usually technical people prefer only text messages where as the teenagers prefer messages in the HTML format.The content of the email should exactly meet the requested information. If a subscriber has asked for sales announcements then do not send them company news. Similarly, the frequency of email should also be kept in mind. If request has been made to receive a weekly newsletter, do not send bi-weekly newsletters. An occasional exception such as sales bulletins or news can be used sparingly. Customers complain a lot about the pouring of emails during the holiday season. It is better to focus on the quality rather than quantity.It is not a compulsion that the content of the email look like spam and considered as a spam. If the recipients able to recognize the sender or dose not consider him to authentic, the mail directly goes to the spam folder. Three things should be considered to keep away from this problem. The sender or the subject shouldnâ€™t appear vague. The content should be relevant to the brand name and its products.The unsubscribe procedure should be checked regularly. Failed unsubscribe and repeated requests for unsubscribing not only blocks the email program but also kills the brand name. Along with checking this link, it is highly recommended to check other links as well. Clicking on the link should take directly to the landing page and not on home page or a â€˜Page Not Foundâ€™ page. Also, effort must be made in reducing the number of clicks done to achieve a certain action.

Building Email List Based on Permission

David Wiltshire — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:04:53 +0000

The biggest challenge for email marketers is to build a cost effective list. This is because at least thirty percent of the email addresses change on most lists. Therefore, marketers have to go for a more aggressive approach in order to expand the list and to get more significant investment returns.Taking permission is the basic key to maintaining a almost constant email list, along with other steps. Permission is certainly not the optional thing. If permission is not taken it means direct landing up as a spam complaint or even greater, breaking the U.S Law for spamming.The sign up form should be featured on every web page. No opportunity should be missed for turning the visitor into a subscriber. Subscription value can be enhanced by adding sample emails, screenshot of an email, testimonials and good copy on the sign up and registration page.To attract more number of subscribers, incentives can be offered upon signing up. The incentives can be as small as white papers and as big as special discounts. Incentives increase the conversion rates to great extent.Today everything is becoming search engine optimized. Therefore it is the need of the hour to optimize the website in order for the website to land in first hundred search result. The current and archived web pages and newsletters must be optimized for increasing the traffic rate of the website and subscription rate.Search services such as Google AdWords can be made use of, for including subscription link on the landing page and for promotion of the website. Opt-in check boxes must be added on the demo requests, registration forms and white papers. This increases the conversion rates by at least fifty percent.Very simple method to increase new subscription is by including the â€˜Send-to-a-friendâ€™ option. If the current subscribers find an email interesting, there are greater chances that the email be liked by their friends too. And if they like the emails, there is an even greater chance that they will subscribe to receive future emails.Email subscription can also be encouraged by print ads, catalogs, direct mails, radio and television. Employees can be directed to include the â€˜Subscribe to the companyâ€™s newsletterâ€™ link in their signature lines. The sales employees and customer support can ask customers whether they would like to receive promotional email, in appropriate situations.Sign up forms can be distributed at seminars and public speaking engagements and presentation on newsletters can be given at such locations. Permission can be taken to include opt-in forms in trade show lead generation forms so that booth visitors can subscribe.If the postal information of the customers is in the database, post cards can be sent to them which ask them to subscribe to newsletters. Sign-ups can be promoted in transactional and confirmation emails. It is optional to include opt in link on receipts of credit card, product registration cards, invoices and warranty.The companyâ€™s email and newsletters can be promoted in other companyâ€™s publications. Sites and industry directories can also be used for promotion. Product shipping boxes are the next important place to include the opt-in form. Many catalogers and retailers even include promotional offers of non-competing companies.Newsletters which have topical articles can be used for press release, along with information such as how to subscribe and content being offered. This option is useful to smaller companies.

Strategies for Email Marketing

David Wiltshire — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 06:21:24 +0000

Any marketing to be successful requires a particular strategy to be followed. Hence, email marketing also involves using some strategies. The biggest advantage of using email as a marketing strategy is personalization and segmentation. These advantages are also the most underutilized feature of email marketing, by most the companies.It is very important to make the companyâ€™s emails as clear and relevant as possible for every recipient because that particular email is competing with the rest of the emails in the recipientâ€™s inbox. Email can be made relevant by personalizing subject lines, articles, offers, product showcased, and flowing emails depending upon recipientâ€™s action.Before carrying out an email marketing strategy it is best to send out pre-campaign test to uncover problems before actually implementing the strategy. The test results can be monitored by checking ISP filtering, blacklisting and filtering. The test messages should be sent to different email clients and platforms. The authenticity can be established by the sender of email by adding SPF code in the DNS record.Every email client and platform has a different preview pane and they have different policies for blocking images. To deal with this, the emails need to be redesigned so as to be read easily and rendered properly. The top portion of the email should deliver the maximum possible information. Also creativity should be increased by playing with HTML colors and fonts. Images should be less relied upon as there is greater chance of them getting blocked the email clients or ISPs.Everything becomes passÃ© over a period of time. A thing which worked few months ago might not work today. Variables such as design, format, copy style, subject line, offers, content types, personalization, product categories, etc., need to be tested constantly.Email relationship should be paid special attention from the start, because majority of the decline requests comes in the first two months after subscriberâ€™s opt-in. A well organized program must be designed which should engage the subscriber immediately. A welcome message should be sent out instantaneously, followed by current email including the latest offers and promotions.An email can also be sent which offers the best of the past newsletters along with exclusive offers for newcomers. The trust can be build by making things clear such as frequency, proposition, content type, and privacy policies, from the start. Apart from concentrating on new comers it is also important to take care of the long term subscribers. Over a period of time nearly fifty percent of the email list becomes inactive.This happens when the subscribers do not open the companyâ€™s emails from a long time. Such subscribers need to be awaken by trying new subject lines, new email formats, and by sending best of newsletters or spicy deals.Short surveys can be carried out to know about the customerâ€™s requirements and to uncover potential trends.Instead of focusing on metrics such as click through and open rates, marketers need to focus on end goals such as revenue per mail, conversion rates, whether desired action was taken on time or not, etc. Format style and the type of articles liked by the subscribers must be concentrated upon. Searching option also helps in acquiring customers to a great extent.The biggest job is to make a working email marketing plan which actually has specific goals, action steps and success metric. The plan should include enough resources and budget. The program needs to be improved often by continuous testing and analysis, by increasing segmentation and personalization, and by including the latest technology.

Video Marketing Tips – Live Video Or Slides?

David Wiltshire — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:45:54 +0000

Decisions, decisions. What to do? You want to make a video. You want it to be the best video that you can possibly make. So what do you do? Do you go live in front of the camera or do you make some slides and do the voiceover thing? Well, there really is no right or wrong answer here.It really depends on what’s best for you and the purpose of your video. Well, this article is going to point out a few things for you to consider so that you can make your decision. Hopefully, after reading this, you’ll know the exact direction that you want to go in.Let’s start with how comfortable you feel in front of the camera, because ultimately, that’s going to play a major role in your decision. If this is something that you’ve been doing all your life then naturally there’s almost no choice in the matter. However, if being in front of the camera scares the heck out of you, you might want to think about it.How do you look on film? I’m not the greatest looking guy in the world but I won’t scare the ladies away. If however you feel your looks are detrimental, again, you might want to go with another format than live on film.Next, let’s look at the actual purpose of the video. Are you simply talking to people about a subject or your product? If so, and no visual aids are needed, then live video may be your best choice. After all, if you have nothing to show, what kind of slides are you going to make?On the other hand, if you are going to go over a particular process that has a step by step formula attached to it, then slides are probably the better way to go. Just talking about the process may not be good enough to firmly place it in your prospect’s mind.Finally, there is cost. Can you afford to go live? You need a camera, lights and so on. This can run into a bit of money. On the other hand, you can create slides using Open Office, which is free. So there is a big difference in price between the two.Ultimately, it comes down to what is best for you, your project and your budget.

10 Rules to a Better Podcast

David Wiltshire — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:17:40 +0000

Rule 1: Know what you are talking about!

You must come off as an expert! I mean it. There are so many podcast of two people talking without any real information, guessing or remember vaguely the details of their subject. I’ve heard b-move reviews talk about movies that neither host has seen for years and they try to remember the details of the films. I’ve wanted to scream at podcasters to a least print up a wiki-page or something. Whatever is the subject of your podcast, do some research, the more the better. Your charm and wit will only take you so far.

Rule 2: Laugh at your own stupid jokes!

Have you ever been with two people who are old friends as they reminisce? Suddenly they giggle at something that one of them said; both turn to you with a stupid dogf ace look and wondering why you aren’t laughing? Trust me, it’s like that!

Rule 3: Talk clearly.

I listened to one the other day hosted by two guys that were talking about comic books and movies. These two guys sounded like they had just woke and hadn’t had their coffee yet. I couldn’t even finish the show, the mumbling and slow drone made it impossible. The fact that I was driving and it was putting me to sleep didn’t help.

Rule 4: Watch the volume levels.

Many people, including me, listen to podcasts while driving. Now when you have one of the hosts talking wildly loud and the other is a soft talker who doesn’t seem to really realize that he must talk into the microphone, it makes listening to frustrating as you keep adjusting the volume.

Rule 5: Basically.

This is one of the most overused words in pseudo-intellectual talk. The use of this word screams, “I’m trying to sound like I’m smart but not really.” Just listen to how many times this word is used in a bad podcast. You’ll be surprised.

Almost always useless. Qualifiers such as basically, essentially, totally, &c. rarely add anything to a sentence; they’re the written equivalent of “Um.” See Wasted Words, and read it twice. – From the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch.

Rule 6: Read copy before hand!

There are those that can read copy for the first time and sound completely natural. These people are professionals that get paid good money to do so. It’s almost painful to listen to badly read copy. Please, read copy a few times before the show begins.

Rule 7: Don’t be afraid to edit

After you finish, listen to what you have recorded and think if tightening it up may help. Did you talk about something for 25 minutes that really only deserves 10? Be honest with yourself. At great 30 minute show is much better than an hour and a half of mediocrity.

Rule 8: Plan a little

I know everyone thinks they are so interesting, funny, and insightful that they could site down in front of a mic for an hour, send it off to itunes, and they’ll be famous. I hate to break it to you but probably not. I’m not saying to script your whole epic, but a little planning might help keep the train of the tracks.

Rule 9: Use music sparingly

Unless your podcast is for the sake of listening to music, you shouldn’t use too much of it. I’ve listened to too many podcasts where they talk for five minutes and then play 10 minutes of music that I really don’t care to hear. If you’ve got a show about sports cars, that is why people download. It’s great that you are in love with death metal music, but trying to force it down you listeners throats in not they way to get listeners. A sports car podcast is not the place to try to get people to understand your taste in music.

Rule 10: Why?

That’s probably the first thing you should ask. Are you making a podcast just for the sake of making a podcast or do you really have something to say. Do you really think strangers want to listen to you talk about a movie or television show you watched over the weekend? They might if you’ve got something to say about it, not just recapping what you saw. What you can you provide the listener to that would make him or her want to listen? Facts? Insight? Opinions? When you show is done, listen to it and honestly ask yourself, would I want to listen to this and why.

5 Suggestions For Viral Marketing

David Wiltshire — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:01:53 +0000

Viral marketing is a strategy that encourages your customers, subscribers, email recipients to pass on your marketing message to others. That means other people are passing on message about your products or your affiliate products. This can result is massive free exposure for your website or products.

If you are an affiliate marketer, you can generate a large amount of traffic to your site and possibly lots of sales if you can make people start promoting your website or affiliate link. But the question arises as to why would somebody want to promote your product? How can you make people spread word about your products?

Here are some tips to start popular viral marketing campaigns:

1. Purchase Private Label Rights for an ebook related to your niche. Then giveaway the ebook to people for free download from your website. You can also allow people to pass the ebook to others without any modifications. This way you can start a viral virus!

2. If you cannot get hold of a good private label right ebook for your niche, think of writing one yourself. It doesn’t have to be the most perfect or comprehensive manual. Anyways you are not planning to sell it, you are just giving it away for free. The more specific and useful your ebook the better it may be. Writing a short, up-to-the-point ebook shouldn’t take you that long.

3. Give incentive to people to refer others to your site. On your website you can have a “tell-a-friend” script using which you can ask your site visitor to enter the emails of 3 friends and send them a message recommending them your site. If they refer 3 friends they can get a good ebook, or software for free in exchange of their favor.

4. Write such a good and useful short report about any topic on your niche and give it for free download to people. If the content of the report is excellent and very useful then people might feel compelled to refer that to their friends even if you don’t provide them any incentive to do so. Thus a good report can really be useful in starting a viral marketing campaign to boost your online earnings.

5. When somebody subscribes to your email list, keep providing them with tons of excellent information and lots of freebies on consistent periodic basis without overwhelming them. If your list subscribers are satisfied with the quality of information they are receiving, they might tell a lot of people about it and may also write a review on their site about it.

Hopefully the above techniques should help in unleashing a free traffic virus to your website, so that you do not completely depend upon the search engines for your traffic. Instead you can build you online business on solid foundations by creating popular viral marketing campaigns.