Marketing Ideas That Spread

Purple Cows Get Noticed - Do You ?

Your business MUST stand out from the crowd

Getting your products or services noticed and chosen in a world where there are just too many options and too little time is the number one goal for any business.

Most of us as we go about our daily business just ignore the ordinary and mundane stuff we come across (that’s most marketing then), whether its flipping channels during adverts, changing radio stations, walking past shelves or aisles in super markets or scanning through magazines and websites for the juicy stuff.

But if we come across something new, that manages to actually stand out from the crowd, a strange thing starts to happen…we start taking notice…and spreading that ideas to our friends, family and colleagues.

So why is this important ?

There is a fundamental shift going on in the economy as we are reaching a saturation point in the “mass market”.

Each year some 200,000+ books are published in English with fewer than 20,00 actually making it into the average book store and fewer still ever generating any descent sales volume.

More Choice & Less Time

In the music industry sales fell during 2000, for only the second time in a decade. Over the next few years, even after the economic recovery, the music industry continued to suffer. Something fundamental had changed. Sales fell 2.5 percent in 2001, 6.8 percent in 2002, and just kept dropping. By the end of 2005 (down another 8.3 percent), album sales in the US alone had declined 20 percent from their 1999 peak.

This same picture can be seen in other mass markets….and lurking deap beneath the surface there are some very interesting trends.

Perl Jam an international rock band ditched its record label in favour of selling direct to its fans.

4 ingredients a booked for time challenged cooks could not get a single book publisher interested, so they sold their book direct to people who cared using the internet creating the 2nd best-selling book of 2007 and THE best-selling book overall in 2009 in Australia reaching best-selling status within a single day and has since sold more than 1 million copies!!

The key to dealing with these shifting markets and indeed your success as a business is to reach those people (your target audience) that actually care enough about what you are doing ? This is an opportunity that you must not ignore.

Marketing to the masses, using traditional interruption techniques is dying and you need to master these viral techniques and build them into your business strategy to ensure your success.

How do you go viral ?

There are many ways of going viral, using information, software, vidoes or other means but for the small to medium sized business it could be any one of these ideas that I borrowed from online2riches.  Basically you are looking for a way to get your target market talking and at the same time make it easy for them to pass it on….so lets get viral.

1. Write articles.

This is, of course, a favourite internet marketing technique. The reason is that it allows businesses to:

-build valuable one way back links to their websites,
-increase their rankings in the search engines,
-brand yourself or your business as an expert,
-show potential customers how you can solve their problems.

Showing potential customers how you can solve their problems is the most important element of writing articles. The reason is that you are adding value to your products by giving information, and sharing with others what you know without asking anything in return. It also gives you an opportunity to show whether or not you may solve the customers’ problems.

Most internet surfers are tired of sales pitches; they want information. Give good information.

2. Send out a press release.

Press releases are another way to build one way back links to your website. It’s also a way to tell others about your business and show them what you can do for them. On line press releases allow you to connect directly with potential customers.

To write an effective press release, you want to concentrate on news that shows others how you can help them to solve their problems.

Like articles, press releases are often syndicated across many sites, and this allows your press release to go viral.

3. Build a Squidoo lens.

Squidoo is the brain child of best selling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin. A Squidoo lens is like a one page mini site on a specific topic or product. Lenses allow you to give as much information as you want about your products or services. It also allows you to rank well in the search engines because Squidoo ranks well in the search engines.

Squidoo lenses offer readers a chance to vote on lenses, as well as bookmark them. The social element of this site makes lenses highly viral. Create a good lens, and you may go viral quickly.

4. Participate in social marketing.

Social marketing is an easy way to connect with both potential customers and others in your industry. This is an opportunity to get out there and “strut your stuff.” In other words, you have a chance to demonstrate your expertise.

Social marketing encompasses a wide variety of techniques, including social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, blogging, social bookmarking and videos. All of these are highly viral because they are interactive.

5. Write free reports to give away.

Although this technique has been around a long time, it’s also still effective. Mark Joyner used it with his free ebook, “Search Engine Tactics” which has been downloaded over one million times.

The way to make an ebook go viral is to first put it in a format everyone may use. PDF (Portable document format) is the way to do this because Adobe works on any computer. The other thing you want to consider is making the report brandable.

What this means is that you allow others to add their details, or the affiliate links to your report. Those who want to give away your report use a “brander” to add their affiliate IDs, as well as a link to their websites if you allow it.

This gives others an incentive to promote your report. More importantly, it gives them an opportunity to make sales. Branding increases the chances of your reports going viral.

I remember producing a white paper on VoIP for a telecommunication venture that was picked up by a consulting firm who then wanted to give it out for free to all their customers!

6. Build a network of joint venture partners.

Although this technique takes the most work to do, it’s also one of the most lucrative ways to market your business on-line. When you build a list of joint venture partners, you have the chance to reach more potential customers in your market. Not only will you reach more potential customers in your market, you also have the opportunity to gain new affiliates for those who want to sell your products or services.

The secret here is to provide as much support to your potential partners as possible. Make it easy to join your affiliate program and include plenty of viral marketing materials like articles, reviews, and brandable reports.

7. Use Tell a Friend Scripts.

These are bits of code that you can add to your website that make the process of sharing a piece of information you have found with a friend very easy. You just type in and email address and name and it does the rest for you.

A lot of these ideas are web based, but similar principals apply in the off-line world also using coupons, physical promotional products, seminars, demonstrations and tasters.

What results can you expect ?

Well, expect anything from elation to just down right fear as you unleash a viral monster.

A recent example is one on-line burger promotion that was pulled because it actually went too viral…WHAT!!..have you ever heard of a company (or done it yourself) that was forced to pull an advert or communication programme because it sold too much product. Nope! didn’t think so.

A food chain promptly stopped honoring a coupon which was a simple free $2.75 “Famous Star” hamburger which could be claimed at any franchise in the burger chain after this seemingly harmless on-line promotion was super sized by the net.

276 winning contestants were sent a text which included a pass code and a 48-hour-only URL to download their free red meat.

A day later, the URL and pass code spread faster than a Paris Hilton home-made porno as hundreds of bargain-hunting websites posted the URL and pass code, prompting the hamburger outlet to discontinue honouring them amid fears of a run on their burgers.

The crazy thing is though they are going to stop all activity like this now….errmmm…can anybody else see the goldmine here just waiting to be exploited or is it just me

Similar success was found on-line when a dance track was paid homage by thousands of youtube fans who started creating their own versions based around the same song. It went crazy, but the artist got upset and vowed never to do it again because it was an attack on his artistic soul.

Yet another opportunity missed in the fog of mundane or just plain boring business.