Graham McGregor: How to use viral marketing

The goal of viral marketing is simple. To get large numbers of people positively recommending your business. Photo / 123RF

COMMENT: Over the last few weeks I've had dozens of successful business owners around the world share with me their secrets to get massive amounts of free media publicity.

And I'll be sharing some of these secrets in my marketing column next week.

In this weeks message I want to mention a helpful marketing strategy that can quickly get your business positively promoted to thousands of potential customers.

The strategy is viral marketing.

The goal of viral marketing is simple. To get large numbers of people positively recommending your business.

There are many ways you could put Viral Marketing into practice:

1. You might create a helpful short video that solves a common problem that potential clients for your business might have.

Example:

I was helping my elderly father in law fold his washing a few days ago and we both complained about trying to fold a fitted sheet as it always looked untidy when we folded it.

So I did a Google search on folding a fitted sheet.

To my surprise the first video I saw on folding a fitted sheet has now been watched by over 19 million people!

This video was uploaded to YouTube nine years ago by a lady who has a business called Living on A Dime which is all about frugal living.

This short video solves a common problem that millions of people have and has been watched and shared by a huge number of people.

And everytime someone watches the video the business that created it is being promoted.

2. You might write something that thousands of people read and then happily share.

I often come across helpful online articles that I love to share with my clients and subscribers.

I read one a while ago by Daniel Burrus that I particularly liked.

Daniel is the author the wonderful book 'Flash foresight' and is a leading futurist and technology forecaster.

The article he wrote was on how to think ten times bigger and I loved it.

(And here I am telling you about it today.)

In my own marketing business I share a number of helpful messages with my subscribers and clients every week.

Every month a number of my subscribers will tell me how much they enjoyed a particular message and explain that they have shared this message with a lot of people that they know.

3. You might share something that inspires people and that they happily share with other people.

I saw a video a few years called The Worlds Strongest Dad.

It's all about a dad who does triathlons with his physically disabled son.

I really liked the video and shared it with everyone I knew.

And its been watched by hundreds of thousands of other people as well.

There are many other ways to use viral marketing in a business.

The main goal is to do something that a lot of people will want to share with the people they know and have contact with.

It's a great marketing strategy and well worth trying.

"Word of mouth is the best medium of all" - William Bernbach.

Action exercise:

How could you put Viral Marketing to work in your own business?

- Graham McGregor is The Added Value Marketing Expert™. Register at his website www.addedvaluemarketing.com and Graham will give you a free copy of his brand new free guide 'Easy Sales with Added Value Marketing'. (This guide contains ten time tested strategies that any business can use right now to create easy sales and delighted clients and is with Graham's compliments.)