Advertising

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.

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.