The Best Marketing Around
October 10th, 2009 // 1:08 pm @ David Phillips
This is taken from an article from entrepreneur.com entitled Guerrillas Use Word-of-Mouth Marketing.
Is your message, product or service worth talking about? We certainly hope so, because a recent study conducted by eMarketer.com concluded that 53 percent of online traffic comes from recommendations made by family members and/or friends. This confirms what guerrillas have always known: Positive word-of-mouth “buzz” is the best advertising money can’t buy–whether offline or online! So every single business person in the world should be spending a great deal of their time strategizing ways to acquire and retain profitable customers using word-of-mouth marketing–especially since the internet makes it so much easier!
Guerrillas are particularly fond of using three of the very best online word-of-mouth tactics–viral marketing, tell-a-friend programs, and online publicity.
Guerrillas Go Viral
Viral marketing is nothing more than a method for encouraging large numbers of people to spread marketing materials to family members, friends and associates. It’s like planting seeds, adding water and watching them grow! Because so many of the best internet distribution channels are free or extremely low-cost, viral marketing is a guerrilla’s best friend and should be an integral part of your online marketing efforts. And how do you “go viral” quickly? Simple. Give something valuable away for free.
Guerrillas Use Tell-A-Friend Programs
If you’ve spent any time at all on the internet you’ve certainly been asked to provide the names and e-mail addresses of others you know who would also be interested in visiting websites. This is a great way to make it easy for people to recommend your site to their family members and friends! All visitors have to do is enter the requested information and an e-mail with your website’s URL and a short message is generated. And since the e-mails’ “from” lines are from recognizable e-mail addresses, they’re not likely to get blocked by spam filters and are not considered spam.
Guerrillas Generate Online Publicity
As an alternative to utilizing traditional advertising, Guerrillas love using the internet to create buzz about themselves, their products and services, and their companies. That’s why so many smart online entrepreneurs take advantage of free and/or low-cost and highly effective traffic generation strategies, such as online press releases. If you want to get the biggest bang out of your online PR efforts, let the following rules of thumb guide you.
* Use an assortment of weapons. It’s hard to get anyone’s attention using one channel. Use a combination of online and offline strategies and tactics such as recording a radio interview and putting it on your website. Put your web address on your business cards, mention it in your voice mail greeting, and include it in every one of your offline ads.
* Find out what people are talking about. Then write a press release that ties you, your company, or your products and services to the story or topic. Just pick up any national newspaper or visit online news sites to find out what subjects are hot.
* Send out press releases often. One-shot attempts won’t get you anywhere, so any time you have news worth mentioning send out press releases.
* Add a little controversy. Nothing is worse than a boring story, so go ahead and add a little pizzazz to your press releases. There’s nothing wrong with controversy, as long as you don’t go overboard. So stick your neck out, stand up for something, and shout it to the world.
Guerrillas Set Up E-Mail Signatures
Here’s a strategy that’s so simple you can have it up and running in less than ten minutes! Open your e-mail program (e.g. Microsoft Outlook, Entourage, GMail, Thunderbird) and go to the “Tools” tab (or “Preferences” on Macs) and set up a signature file–or “sig file.” Once there, enter whatever information you’d like to appear at the end of all of the e-mails you send, like your name, e-mail address, contact information, active link to your website, graphic, and/or marketing message.
Category : Business