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 Issue #71 - July 18th, 2005 Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses
Brought to you by idesignbusiness.com http://www.idesignbusiness.com Issue # 71 Monday, July 18th, 2005 In this Issue: ARTICLES: FREE RESOURCE: Welcome to Issue # 71 of the Internet Marketing for Small Business Newsletter. This week’s article looks at the most powerful marketing program available to both online and offline marketers. Effective viral marketing campaigns spread across the Internet like wild fire and can potentially make or break a company. The classic example of viral marketing was the rapid growth of Hotmail. Several years ago Hotmail got its start by providing free email accounts to users and simply adding the "Powered by Hotmail" link on every message sent. The developers of Hotmail sold the company to Microsoft and the rest is history. Viral marketing can work for your company too. It just takes a little creativity and some luck. The article in this issue will give you the information you need to get started. We would love to hear any questions, comments, or ideas for future articles, just email us at newsletters@idesignbusiness.com New & Improved Small Business Forum - I am excited to announce that we have improved the idesignbusiness Small Business Forums to better facilitate communication and answer your questions. Be sure to check out the new format and post a question related to your business or an advertisement promoting your business. Small Business Forums New Feature - The idesignbusiness Newsletter is now available for you to publish on your own website. If you are looking for Internet Marketing content for your website that is updated twice a month you can publish our article headlines, summaries and free resources through an XML feed. For more information on publishing content on your website please visit the link below: http://www.idesignbusiness.com/xmlinfo.asp Did you miss the last issue? You can always visit our idesignbusiness Internet Newsletter Archive and easily view and search all our past issues. Neal St. Clair idesignbusiness Advertisement LinkSource.info > Free Link Exchange Directory Looking for targeted links for your website? Do you want to share your website with other webmasters that want to exchange links? LinkSource.info (www.LinkSource.info) is a free link directory organized by category that lets you quickly and easily connect with other websites that want to exchange targeted links. LinkSource.info will help you improve your Google Page Rank and increase your website traffic through related link exchanges. Visit LinkSource.info Today and add your site for free: www.LinkSource.info ARTICLE The Voice of Viral Marketing By John Doetsch Generating buzz through word of mouth will help drive greater sales and from your most important customers. Viral marketing strategies can effectively generate traffic to your website by creating buzz-building campaigns that excite and energize your customer base. However, in order to most effectively execute a successful viral marketing project, it is important to build a significant understanding of your target audience to tap into their social and psychological network. By creating articles or newsletters, for example, that resonate with your audience, you will encourage loyal customers to share the useful information or unique advice with their family and friends. Indeed, viral marketing is one of the most powerful forms of product support as it consists of unbiased recommendations from trusted sources. Initiating a viral marketing campaign begins with the development of unique and attractive content for your most loyal customers. While articles that pertain to the product or service you are selling will help draw visitors to your site, creating resources that speak to your audience in a strategic fashion. Once your marketing theme or ideas have been thoroughly cultivated, you can begin to build a viral marketing campaign around your most critical ideas. For example, post your articles on message boards or deliver special content directly to consumers. At the end of each article, add a link to your website and encourage your readers to send along the information to their friends. Your article, if delivered appropriately, will begin to make its way throughout the web passing from friend to friend and deliver a core business message that brings dramatic business returns. Newsletters and ezines are also extremely effective means of capitalizing on viral marketing campaigns. As consumers become inundated with spam and other e-mailed "junk," sites that can break through the clutter by creating innovative means of communicating with customers via newsletters are likely to generate significant word of mouth traffic. Not surprisingly, then, the newsletters and ezines that own the greatest popularity serve as the most effective platforms on which viral marketing develops. Utilizing word of mouth recommendations, webmasters and small business owners can generate more subscribers when they include tips, tutorials, and relevant news clips that are quick and easy to read. Indeed, making a successful viral marketing campaign successful relies on more than just quality articles. The articles must spur the reader to act and send information unprompted to someone else. Therefore, online articles should serve as more than simple sales letters. They need to provide readers with something that is unique. Modern internet readers do not appreciate being used as business pawns and will quickly exit a site that wastes their time. By utilizing newsletters, then, to promote something more than just your business, online businesspeople can develop a better viral campaign. Several high profile viral marketing programs can be used as a benchmark for the ultimate marketing success. BMW, for example, generated a tremendous amount of attention via a series of short film clips they published online at BMW Films. More recently, Burger King developed a commercial featuring a fighting chicken that rode the e-mail circuit through word of mouth. Marketing experts believe that viral marketing is actually the most powerful form of product attention available to consumers. Unlike television ads or other paid advertising, viral marketing can not be purchased. Instead it relies solely on the recommendations of individuals. Yet, while a successful viral marketing campaign may be difficult to construct, the benefits generated by unbiased attention will make your business strong and successful. © John Doetsch 2005. Online reprint rights granted as long as the article is published in its entirety, including links and resource box. John Doetsch is founder of Websition.com, a website content provider featuring articles written by the Internet&rsquot;s most gifted authors. http://www.websition.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/ Advertisement Promote Your Products & Services Using Email Marketing Are you using email to market you products and services, communicate with customers, and generate leads? If not, you are missing out on the most affordable and effective marketing tools available to small businesses. The idesignbusiness Mail Manager handles everything required to execute a professional email marketing campaign including email collection, contact list management, email delivery, and reporting. Learn how you can begin sending e-Newsletters, greeting cards, email promotions and more today. FREE RESOURCE: Each issue of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses will include helpful free online resources to promote your websites. Knowing how many people visit your website, where they came from, and the what pages they are coming from are very important statistics to understand about your website. The Webalizer is a fast, free web server log file analysis program. It produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML format, for viewing with a standard web browser. The Webalizer takes a little work to install but once it’s up and running it is the most powerful free program available. The Webalizer ABOUT idesignbusiness idesignbusiness provides complete Internet services for small businesses including website design, website development, hosting and Internet marketing. Increase website traffic, build your customer base, and drive revenue using our cost-effective and result driven tools and services. Please visit http://www.idesignbusiness.com for more information. SUBSCRIPTION NOTICE This newsletter is only sent to opt-in subscribers. If at anytime you would like to be removed from this list, please send an e-mail to newsletters@idesignbusiness.com with REMOVE in the subject line or click on the remove link below. Spread the word - Please forward to friends and colleagues. Copyright 2002 - 2005 idesignbusiness http://www.idesignbusiness.com |
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