Viral Marketing Examples: Secrets to Massive Traffic Growth
Here you will see some viral marketing examples that are considered effective by Business Week and other experts. The techniques used vary greatly and they were effective for different reasons.These simply inspired curiosity.
Business Week in 2001 cited the advertising for the Blair Witch Project as a perfect example of viral marketing.The advertising campaign suggested that the footage was “real”, filmed by a group of college students that had gone missing, presumably leaving only their video camera behind as proof.
Teasers were first seen on TV and then posted on the internet. Viewers were encouraged to share the footage with their friends. The film grossed over $248 million worldwide and cost only $35,000 to make.Who wouldn’t want to experience profits like that?
Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” was commented on in Wired as a successful campaign example.It is difficult to assess the exact amount of new business that Burger King has attracted with this campaign, it is a popular website.
Some more “down to earth” viral marketing examples for those of you that may be trying to grow your own business are newsletters and automated e-mails.With very minimal software, you can drive visitors to your website to sign up for your newsletter.That provides you with their e-mail address.
As part of your weekly newsletter, you may ask for the email addresses of customer's friends that would also be interested in your products or services. You can see how this could increase your contact base relatively quickly. You don’t have to worry about being called a spammer, because the customer requested the newsletter.
A wildly effective viral marketing example, according to many experts, is the single line method used by “Hotmail”.They encourage people to sign up for free e-mail. At the bottom of every free e-mail a person sends, there is a single one line message that reads “Get your private, free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com”.The website address is a link as well.
All that they had to do was sit back and wait for thousands upon thousands of people to sign up. People love free stuff.The most highly successful campaigns always offer something free, whether it be playing with a virtual vampire or reading a relevant newsletter.
When you can get people to tell their friends about your product or services, the message spreads like a virus, which is why the phrase was coined. There are many other viral marketing examples.Anyone that is not at least trying it is not expanding their business as much as they could.
