4 Ways To Virally Market Your Website

I’ve been responding to a few requests for help on the Digital Point forums lately from webmasters who are having a few issues getting their message across to potential consumers and/or visitors. And you know what I’ve recommended in most cases? Viral Marketing

Like a virus, viral marketing is designed to spread amongst a targeted community, ‘infecting’ person after person through word of mouth, consequently creating a knock-on effect. It is without a glimmer of doubt, extremely effective and simultaneously proven to work rather well. So the question is, how can we get viral marketing to work for your website?

One of the most classic examples that comes to mind in the online world, is Hotmail and their now famous viral campaign. It was a simple and effective concept, that helped drive the email giant into becoming what it is today – and did I mention it was simple? The concept was setting up a free email service, in which anyone could sign up, and placing a small advertisement in each users signature; “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com”.

We live in an extremely complicated world. Many people are under the misconception that working simplicity into your efforts automatically expels you to the land of failure – when it often ironically works extremely well.

Viral Marketing can be also mean staging an event to get people talking, whether it be something rather outrageous, hilarious or simply unique. I remember some years ago, a major mobile/cell phone carrier (Vodafone) had someone run into the middle of a sporting event – naked, with their company name written on them. From memory I think this happened in the UK – but please feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken.

To get people talking you need to stand out. Some very quick ideas for viral marketing campaigns are;

1. Be Mysterious

Announcing a product/feature with a minimal amount of detail, and issuing a countdown to ’something’. For instance, if I wanted to implement a forum into my weight loss website, I would announce that something new is coming soon, and subsequently insert a count down timer on my webpage. I’m not giving my audience any sort of details towards what’s coming, which consequently creates an atmosphere of suspense and anticipation. While this can be effective in generating hype, you must be aware that it also has the potential to backfire if your feature or product does not live up to this hype. It must be a genuinely useful and needed product or feature to effectively work.

2. Challenges Work Wonders

Engaging in some sort of challenge with your viewers. Some examples that I’ve come across over the years are; “If I can’t raise $72,000 from affiliate marketing – I’ll walk around in a dress for a day” or “If I reach one million unique views – I’ll donate xxxx to charity”. Employ creativity into your website coupled with a sense of humour, and you’ll be absolutely amazed at the results. When I was running a forum centered around the discussion of vBulletin, I made a bet with my users that if I failed to bring in a certain number of new signups within a month (I really can’t remember the figure anymore), I’d send $10 to every single user and colour my hair pink for a day. Users would keep coming back to the forum to check on the progress, and other blogs, websites and forums began covering what was happening, which consequently generated massive publicity for us.  Ironically, this pushed us into the required number of user signups, which meant my dignity and bank account were preserved.

3. Pull a Real Stunt

Pulling a stunt, writing about it and/or video-taping it, and publicizing it on your website. Yeah sounds very simple, and almost like a little bit of common sense, but many of us seem to miss the mark with this one. Either we do something that really isn’t explosive enough to generate the hype we’re after, or something that somehow oversteps the mark. A few years ago, the CEO for Host Gator pretended to be homeless and attempted to find out how much he could earn by asking people for money (which was all later donated to charity). While this happened a while back, it’s still something that springs to mind every time somebody brings up HostGator. Why? Because it was unique. It put somebody who typically sits at the top of the hierarchy, who should be earning a nice little figure, into a position in which he was at the mercy of passersby. And people loved it. Like I mentioned about point number two, this little stunt encompassed a blend of humour and charity which generally sat pretty well with the public.

4. Controversy doesn’t sell

Actually yes it does, I’m just talking trash. Seriously though, engaging in something controversial is typically beneficial. Controversy sells! It does it does it does. You’ve probably heard it a million and one times, and while it is much easier said than done, it is an absolutely fantastic tool to drive an avalanche of visitors to your site. Look at the Shoemoney vs Dennis exchange. I bet a good chunk of Shoemoney readers had absolutely no clue who Dennis Yu was up until this conflict between the two. In my opinion and without trying to offend anybody, Dennis really did himself an injustice in his attempt at defending himself, and could have potentially turned the whole ordeal into something positive if he paid a little more attention to the dispute. I’d also be willing to bet a heap of people who weren’t really fans of either party begin tuning into both blogs to check in on what was happening.