Think Easy Money

Spamming chat rooms or instant messaging systems with undifferentiated marketing messages is certainly not a very good idea. But if they are used the right way, these channels can be great to communicate with the market – especially to establish a dialogue with customers.

Have you ever been to a chat room and posted a message. If you have then you may learn some free web-advertising secrets on how to market your products and service in chat rooms. Chat rooms are usually broken into categories. You will need to find the right chat room where your targeted audience would gather. If there isn’t one, them you may need to create one.

It will be of no use to create one that is obviously for the sole purpose of selling your product or service. Rather, it needs to attract people who would be interested in your product or service. For example: If you sell garden products, your chat room should be on the subject of gardening and not the brand name of the products you sell.

Another way to use a chat room to promote your business is to include a chat room on your web site. Host a free online seminar in your own chat room about a subject of your expertise. Use your chat room to meet with your current customers and answer any questions or address and problems they may have. Regularly schedule free events in your chat room and be certain that your customers are made aware of when they will occur.

For example, you might have an expert in the field available to answer questions on a certain day and between certain hours. You might, also, host other people’s chat rooms as an expert yourself. You, of course, could charge for this but it might be wise to do it free to gain publicity.

Created for Miami Advertising Agency Crispin Porter and Bogusky by The Barbarian Group, the Subservient Chicken is a viral marketing promotion of Burger King’s line of chicken sandwiches.

The campaign is based on a web site that features a person in a chicken costume. The actor performs a wide range of actions based on a user’s input, showing pre-recorded footage and appearing like an interactive webcam. The takes literally the advertising slogan “Get chicken just the way you like it”.

There are more than a hundred commands the chicken will respond to, including:

· Michael Jackson dance moves such as moonwalk · River dance · The elephant · Lay an egg · Walk like an Egyptian · Yoga · Rage · Spank · Taco Bell · Fight

When told to do anything the Subservient Chicken thinks is offensive, like perform sex acts or take off his mask, the chicken walks up to the camera and shakes a scolding chicken finger in disappointment. If he is told to east food from rival fast food places like McDonald’s he approaches the camera and places his finger down his throat but when told to eat Burger King he has a more positive response. The chicken responds to the command “smoke crack” by smoking but when told to “smoke a bong” he waggles his finger scoldingly.

Burger King’s Chicken Fights campaign was recently introduced. The two cockfighting chicken characters are modeled off this chicken. There seems to be no end to the variations on the theme from Burger King. There has also been a lot of criticism leveled at the chain about the Subservient Chicken but for now it looks like Burger Kind is crying all the way to the bank.

A successful viral campaign isn’t always in good taste… maybe that’s what makes them so tasty.

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 that 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.

It is a well known and widely accepted fact, that eBooks….FREE eBooks…are one of the best weapons in a viral marketing campaign arsenal. Here are four good reasons why this is true today and will continue to be true for the foreseeable future:

1. eBooks are cheap to produce and don’t take long to set up. If you have articles that you have already written about the subject you are promoting, you can simply combine these articles into an eBook. If, on the other hand, writing isn’t your forte, you can use rebrandable eBooks that have been produced by others. Just use your favorite search engine and do a web search for “rebrandable eBooks”. You will get a lot of hits and have many to choose from. One way to distribute these eBooks to visitors to your website is to give them as a free gift for subscribing to your newsletter. If your eBook contains material that people will want to share with their friends and family, they will pass it along to them… they will pass it along to others…and you will make money.

2. eBooks are capable of reaching a large audience. The only limiting factor is the enthusiasm or the participants. Therefore, it is absolutely vital that your eBook contain something that people will want to share like timely information or humor. Remember that people like to know something that the rest of the world needs to know. They will pass along something that makes them look like they are in-the-know.

3. eBooks are a way to sell other products other than the one you originally targeted. For example; if you are selling garden products, your customers could also be interesting in eBooks about lawns, trees landscaping, etc.

4. eBooks are effective in building your reputation. It is an implied recommendation if you give a quality eBook and users willing pass on to others.

In order to be successful using forums to do viral marketing there are some things that are required.

Do Your Homework: Prior to joining any forum, you must do some research.

1. Join relevant forums that are in some way related to the promotion’s primary sales market. For example, someone involved with a health related product, many types of forums could apply….everything from holistic medicine to stay-at-home moms.

2. Choose popular forums. There is no point in wasting your time and energy on forums that few members and few posts. Page raking and the amount of active members are two good ways to check for this.

3. Choose forums that allow sig tags. If it’s possible read the rules before joining and pay attention to them. Your time is important, too. It is better to find out that a forum doesn’t allow posts with sig tags before you go to the time and trouble of joining.

After You Have Joined: OK…you have chosen two or three forums that meet your requirements…now what?

1. Keep your sig tag short and update it regularly. The ideal thing is to limit yourself to one link, preferably to your main website.

2. Never create posts that are nothing more than an advertisement. This all but a universal rule and only displays the marketers lack of experience if he does so. At best this kind of post will be deleted by the monitors….at worst, it is grounds for being banned.

3. Work the room. Be an active member on the forum. Plan to spend at least an hour each day there and take the time to get to know the users. Take the time to introduce yourself with intelligent questions depending upon the forum’s topic.

As a marketer becomes a regular member, they will hopefully develop a good reputation and without saying a word about their promotion, those who are interested in their product will approach them.

A new consumer phenomenon is called “tagging” or “folksonomies” (short for folks and taxonomy). Tagging is powerful because consumers are creating an organizational structure for online content. Folksonomies not only enable people to file away content under tags, but, even better, share it with others by filing it under a global taxonomy that they created.

Here’s how tagging works. Using sites such as del.icio.us – a bookmark sharing site – and Flickr – a photo sharing site – consumers are collaborating on categorizing online content under certain keywords, or tags.

For instance, an individual can post photographs of their iPod on Flickr and file it under the tag “iPod.” These images are now not only visible under the individual user’s iPod tag but also under the community iPod tag that displays all images consumers are generating and filing under the keyword. Right now Flickr has more than 3,500 photos that are labeled “iPod.”

Tagging is catching on because it is a natural complement to search. Type the word “blogs” into Google and it can’t tell if you are searching for information about how to launch a blog, how to read blogs, or just what. Large and small sites alike are already getting on to the folksonomy train. They are rolling out tag-like structures to help users more easily locate content that’s relevant to them.

Although tags are far from perfect, marketers should, nevertheless, be using them to keep a finger on the pulse of the American public. Start subscribing to RSS feeds to monitor how consumers are tagging information related to your product, service, company or space. These are living focus groups that are available for free, 24/7. Folksonomy sites can be also be carefully used to unleash viral marketing campaigns – with a caveat. Marketers should be transparent in who they are, why they are posting the link/photos and avoid spamming the services.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) was one chosen to showcase the world-famous Exhibition for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. HMNS quickly realized that while the exhibit was expected to generate a great deal of interest, it didn’t have a lot of appeal for their core audience. The success of the exhibition, therefore, would rest in how it was marketed.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science quickly called in Spur Digital to help reach the targeted demographic audience and generate interest in the Exhibit. HMNS was, also, hoping to acquire new patrons and members to further their future revenue.

Spur digital worked with HMNS to identify the target market for the campaign and developed an integrated online media plan to reach those audiences. The campaign featured an online contest that was marketed through targeted online media outlets including relevant Web sites, Search Engines and third party E-mail lists. Viral marketing was an important component of the campaign, so Spur developed an innovative strategy to get people to refer their friends.

Spur identified the target audience as males 18 to 34 years old who were fans of action and fantasy films, frequent video game players and movie renters, tech-savvy who generally didn’t hang out at museums. Based on this information, Spur chose search engine advertisements that would accompany specific search words, dedicated e-mail advertisements, sponsored e-mail advertisements, banner ads on web sites targeted toward the desired audience, and e-mails to the HMNS list.

Viral marketing has an array of possibilities and ways to achieve your overall goals. However, just like everything else, preplanning and the right setup to create success are the things you will need to make it work for you and your e-business.

The first thing you want to be sure you don’t do is get over-zealous. The one thing you need to avoid at all costs is spamming. Spamming is still used widely, but with the government establishing more restrictions and fines you don’t want this to be a problem for you. The professional image of your site will also suffer if you send mail blatantly.

Spamming requires a database that contains a huge list of e-mail addresses set up so that the message can be delivered with one click. The problem with it (aside from the governmental restrictions and associated fines) is that it irritates the recipients and kills the validity of your campaign, which in turn kills the factors that would motivate someone to refer your site.

You need to personalize by creating your website with personal appeal. You must see to it that your website makes your customers feel safe, secure and cared for. E-mail is important, because it is going to be one of the most affordable ways to keep in touch with your customers.

The proper way to handle email permission is to first let your customer know that you will not transmit their e-mail addresses to third party companies. The next thing to do is to attach the need for their e-mail addresses to benefits they can receive.

For example: Coupons or discounts that are only available to members who receive e-mail notifications. With each e-mail you send the viral marketing effect takes place.

Viral marketing has matured a bit over the years. There seems to have been a shift to the web not just being seen by agencies and brands as another tick box for any ad campaign, which is significant enough, but now being the medium where a campaign is launched to create a buzz before it hits TV and print. Even before a movie is released which used to be seen as the pre-launch buzz-generation activity. Big business “gets it”.

Buzz works! It can work for small and start-up businesses, as well. The planning stage of a viral campaign will set out objectives and develop the viral theme for a buzz. There are three core components to any viral campaign and businesses of any size can use them. They are:

1. The creative material: the viral agent that embodies the message you want to spread in a digital format (image, video, text, etc). The trick is to put together material that people will be eager to share with their family and friends and people are much more eager to share “advertainment” and advertisement.

2. Seeding: distributing and placing the agent online in places that provide the greatest potential spread. Direct viral material downloads or links on specialist viral third-party web sites in order to create awareness and spread before users get to the campaign destination site.

3. Tracking: Measuring the spread of the campaign to provide accountability and prove success. It is absolutely vital that you know what is or is not working. The only way to get that information is to track the results of your seeding.

Lessons have been learned, trends have been developed and there is definitely some science involved in creating a buzz successfully. The buzz technique is here to stay and, if used strategically, it can make a difference to the success of your e-business.

Mobile devices, mobile phones and PDA’s are one of the last great frontiers of viral advertisement opportunities. However, we have become experts at filtering everything, our air and water, our e-mail and pop-ups, and our mobile devices as well. We are good at filtering.

The very idea of unwanted advertising streaming through our Blackberries is abhorrent. Mobile devices are the ultimate opt-in medium and, therefore, a great way for marketers to connect with users…if that’s what the users want. “WANT” is the key word here. How should marketers approach the medium?

There are three main ways to achieve this. They are:

1. Offer exclusive content. Anyone can offer ring tones. It’s the unique content, such as exclusive mobile images of new brand concepts, that drives interest and calls them out in other media like e-mail campaigns, newsletters, marketing has been out there for a while but we marketers have new territory to explore. Video offers fantastic opportunities for engagement. Consumers already bypass their filters for highly useful or entertaining content and will do so for rich exclusive, compelling content.