SEM Blog: Website Marketing Blog

What Can You Gain From Viral Marketing?

Posted by Bryan at March 27th, 2008

After reading my last post about defining viral marketing you’ve probably gone out and created a killer product or found something popular’s coattails that you can ride one. After taking all the time to get the process started, you realized that you’re not sure exactly what the benefits of viral marketing are. To ease your worries and as a way to convince you to credit me when your product catches on, I’ve decided to outline for you some of the key benefits of viral marketing.

A big benefit of viral marketing is how inexpensive it can be in comparison to nearly all other marketing methods. Take that product you’ve created and send it out to some influential people in your niche for free. As a professional blogger, I review every thing that I’m sent in the most honest fashion possible. I even carry the product around with me if possible for at least a week before passing judgment. In that scenario, your cost is the loss of one product for a review and a wide audience of people to come in contact with it first hand outside of a retail environment.

Another great benefit of viral marketing is the wide audience you’ll be able to reach. I’m sitting here writing at Starbucks on my Eee PC that I fell in love with after reading a review on it. Do you know how many people, from little kids to grandma’s, ask me about it on a daily basis? That product has just trickled down three levels and I’m only one small factor in the reach the original review had.

The process can easily work with services as well. Take a cool concept like OwnMyTeam.com which is growing it’s numbers to achieve their goal of owning and operating a professional sports team. They’ve spent no money on advertising what so ever and have made more growth through sending info out to influential individuals in their niche to the point that their traffic is steadily beating their only stateside competition even when the competitions biggest marketing piece came from a misleading review of their services posted in the New York Times. People are 10 times more open to an idea if it comes from someone they deem to be at their level.

These benefits don’t end once you’ve finished the campaign either. The trickle down effect can spread infinitely further than your normal ad campaign. But watch out, if you’re product sucks, viral marketing can ruin you over night.