In this third and last article on viral marketing campaign, the focus will be on sales. Selling might be the hardest part in any business transactions.

You might have read thousand of sales strategies over the Internet. Some experts might teach you the effective techniques on advertising but they are not doing well in sales. Why do think this is happening?

Due to the fact the amount of sales depend on the number of people who buy your product, sales run in cycles. In fact, this is the ultimate reason why you are spreading your campaign anywhere in the world.

Stages of Selling

According to Laurence Ainsworth, there are five stages in sales. Stage one is the Icebreaker (the building rapport stage) then it sails through the nest stage known as the Opening (outlining the issues). Stage three centers on questioning.

“Start with easy questions like “how did you start your business?” and “who do you sell to?” or “why did you buy this machine?” Ainsworth wrote.

“Then ask more searching questions once you’ve uncovered some issues like “why is that a problem for you?” or “what are the implications of not addressing this problem?” Having gathered your information and understood his problems we go to…”

The fourth stage is the Close.

“…as we move into the close keep calm, try to deliberately talk a little slower, then sum up the qualification session by identifying each issue and how you can help. You then ask for the order and stay quiet and you stay quiet until your prospect answers.”

The final stage is the Consolidation. This is the stage wherein you’ll make sure your customers will stick on the deal. Ainsworth wrote,

“There is something called “buyers blues” which relates to circumstances where after a purchase the buyer becomes disillusioned with what he’s bought. It often manifested by the unexpected cancellation of an order.”

To avoid cancellation, it’s mainly up to you how you bring your customers to a celebratory-cup-of-tea.

Ambient and Mobile Marketing

The idea behind ambient marketing is to create a loud mind-buzz using an extraordinary marketing technique. For example, if you are promoting Global Warming, you can create an image of a man swimming in an ocean where there are tall buildings around him. This image attracts a huge number of people, right?

Have you thought of connecting this concept to viral marketing campaign? If yes, that seems possible, folks! If you own a high-end mobile phone, try sending your customers the shocking images related to your niche. When these customers got curious about the image, they can click the link pointing to your website or site.

This technique can boost your list building campaign and who knows, it can also improve sales.

Music and Event Marketing

Music unites everyone. Whoever you are, whatever your job is and whenever your home address is, music makes you feel alive.

Now, if you love music, why not compose a simple jingle about your niche and upload it on YouTube? You can also use this jingle if you have special events to market such as symposiums or general assemblies.

I’m sure many people will learn to love your niche if you have something to offer them and they can listen to it over and over again. If possible, never stick to only one genre. The most popular genre these days is probably Rhythm and Blues.

This may be the reason why Obama won the newly elect US presidential election. Without a doubt, he has effectively utilized his African-American community and showcases their incomparable singing talents for him. In fact, Usher Raymond, the man behind the phenomenal 2004 album “Confessions,” expressed his full support to Obama by singing an inspiring song entitled Hush.

Conclusion

Never limit yourself. There are still hundreds of viral marketing campaigns out there. Keep researching until you will find the best seeding technique you can use on a regular basis. The magic behind successful marketing and selling is pure hard work.

Why do you think YouTube is very popular these days and even the stunning tennis icon, Ana Ivanovic, really wants it?

There’s only one answer to that. The creative minds behind YouTube have tickled the mass audience through the use of viral videos of any kinds. For this, anyone can say YouTube might have created the most unbeaten viral marketing campaign in the world. Who knows? They will create a YouTube search engine later on.

Fact is, creating buzz marketing for your online campaign is not too complicated but expect a lot of work. First, you must make sure your niche attracts all types of people worldwide. Like YouTube, their niche centers on videos and as of I’m writing this article, YouTube has gone widescreen for better watching.

Aside from watching videos, YouTube allows you to put keywords, title, embed options, and descriptions on the sidebar. Below the video, there are bookmarking options and you can also put comments when you register on the site.

Now, online marketing is like YouTube. All you need is some creative marketing ideas and once, you’ve got the hammer to nail your niche into the public eye, you’re earning money like a pro. There are various low cost advertising techniques you should be doing in order to attract people, readers, customers and prospects worldwide. Let’s start with…

Article Marketing

Creating a blog is a good start to start an online campaign. And every now and then, you need to update your blog with above-average quality articles related to your niche. Not everybody likes to write articles and you can always outsource someone to do the writing for you.

To make things easier, write your articles in story-telling technique. People love to read stories. Stories entertain readers and if they got hook with the plot, these people might give you a buzz.

Just be sure to add those important keywords you have researched in Google Adwords. For example, if your topic is about dogs and the additional keywords listed in Adwords are dog health, dog food, dog training techniques etc, thinks of ways to include these in your story.

After writing stories, never forget to post images. Images add spice to your story, right?

Branding

A while ago, I read this interesting article titled “5 Tips to Brand Your Business Through Word of Mouth Marketing.” This article is written by Andrew Carlson and these are his branding techniques.

First,

“Be a positive influence – If you are a bad influence, even a superb brand in your hand would not sell. You need to know that by being a trustworthy and positive person, your word would speak volumes to those around you.”

Second,

“Be specific in your target group – You should know who are your main customers, don’t try selling weight lost pills to underweight people, unless you have that gift of tongue. Remember that by promoting your product to the correct audience would also influence their friends who are more like them. The product would therefore be used by the correct people and pass around by the correct group.”

Third,

“Don’t be too friendly – Yup, that’s right; most people don’t recognize where to draw the line between selling a product and making a relationship. If you are selling a product, be a promoter, if you are building a friendship, be a friend. You cannot be both at the same time, it just doesn’t works. Of course, provided you are not a friend already.”

Fourth,

“Use the media – I know this is about Womm (abbreviation for Word-of-Mouth-Marketing) but who says weapons cannot work together? If you have won any awards and reported by the papers, it would boost your credential. Fully optimizing each weapon’s strength can work wonders.”

Lastly,

“Pass on the positive attitude- By using your employee to promote things the way you do would help create a positive circle of influences, thereby increasing sales. It also helps to bring your ideas across that everyone within your company are on the same boat, they live by the survival of each and everyone. This would in turn bring about greater womm among your clients.”

Remember folks: Brand marketing is about making an identity. This is the stage of searching yourself in the crowd of marketers and in order for the people to recognize you, make sure you understand their wants and needs.

(End of Part 1)

For the next series, I will further discuss the other components used in viral marketing campaign. These components are viral marketing software, direct mail advertising, sales strategies, ambient marketing, music marketing, event marketing, mobile marketing and pay per click campaign management.

Like I said in the first part of the article, there are numerous techniques in creating an effective viral marketing campaign and as a marketer; it is mainly up to you which type of technique you are going to use. In Part 1, I have already discussed the significance of article marketing and branding.

Now, let us focus on another viral seeding techniques known as direct mail advertising, viral softwares and pay per click campaign.

Direct Mail Advertising

The inception of email has been a huge blessing to all online marketers out there. Apart from its for free, the use of emails is cheap, affordable and environment-friendly. Once you send the mail to your customers, you can assure that the message has reached its inbox.

What great with email advertising, you have the power to send the messages in various forms. People don’t want to read sales-pitch letters on a regular basis. Sales letters annoy them and in some ways, sales letter is a form of coercion especially when the reader is not interested in buying your product.

One of the most convincing types of direct mail advertising is product review. Product reviews are like informational articles that communicate with the readers on how your product is of beneficial to them. Here, you will write a short description of the product, it advantageous specifications and benefits. A good product review doesn’t only focus on how great your product is. Your review also needs to include the weaknesses.

Every product has its own strengths and weaknesses and these are the information readers want to read in your review. If you hate writing, you can create a video in YouTube and in your email advertisement, you simply put a link to which your readers can watch the product review.

Another type of mail advertising is newsletters. Janice Jenkins wrote in her article entitled How to Make People Appreciate Your Newsletter, “Newsletters are meant to be a window into your company. People read newsletters because they want to know how well your company is doing and what is going on.”

Writing newsletters is quite similar to a review. A newsletter includes your opinions, facts, statistics and ideas on variety of matters. For quick read, the message should be clear, snappy (about two to four pages only) and the writing style is conversational.

Newsletters may be written in a form of story-telling or in bullets form. If you are going to write your newsletters in bullets, you can assure that readers can read it in one seating and the information can be easily digested inside their head.

Perhaps, the most important part of a newsletter is the Subject Line. The subject line is what the readers will read first. For this reason, the subject line needs not only to be convincing but entertaining to them. For instance, if your message is about introducing someone who is your marketing consultant and her name is Rafael Thomas. You can write “You Must Help Rafael!” in your subject line and once people read your message, they might think of Rafael Nadal, the great tennis player from Spain or someone they can associate with the name.

When these people click the subject line, immediately strike your readers with a mind-blowing headline. The headline may be in a form of a statement, a question, or a famous quote.

After the headline is the content. The content further explains your headline. It elaborates the question why. Why should the people buy the product?

Of course, give your readers an unforgettable closing remark. Don’t forget to include your full name, your address and other contact details.

Viral Softwares

As an online marketer, you should know what kind of softwares you will use to spread your campaign worldwide. When you input “list of viral softwares” in Google, you will see a lot of websites offering you with affordable viral products that surely make your life easier.

In one site, I found this viral marketing software used to create PDF for only $67.

As I see it, choosing the software for your viral marketing campaign depends on your goals and needs. For example, if your niche centers on article writing, you need to find an article spinner software that allows you to spin article in multiple versions. It will be also great if this article spinner software can automatically submit the spun articles into different social community sites like MySpace and Hubpages.

Pay-Per-Click Campaign Management

You might have heard the term PPC but you don’t exactly what it means. Pay-Per-Click or PPC for short is an affiliate program online and once, people will click on this viral ad or text link, you will earn money.

For instance, if you join a PPC program that offers you twenty cents per click, you can earn two thousand dollars per ten thousand clicks.

According to Kristi Ambrose, an expert author in EzineArticles,

“There are two types of PPC affiliate programs; those who pay commissions based on the number of clicks and those who pay on sales. Pay per click is much more popular than pay per lead because you get paid for something as simple as a click regardless if the user buys the product or not.”

Learning the secret behind PPC can be advantageous on your part. If you don’t want to read articles about PPC, you can purchase a tutorial product online. These products will teach you the real-life strategies on how you can be successful in your viral campaign.

According to Wikipedia, Google AdWords is probably the most successful PPC affiliate program, followed by Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter.

(End of Part 2)

Hope you enjoy reading this article and use mail advertising and pay-per-click programs to your viral marketing campaign. For the next article, I will discuss the other seeding techniques such as ambient marketing, music marketing, event marketing, mobile marketing.