A viral marketing campaign is one of today’s best (and most cost-effective) ways to let people know about your business. It can take on many forms, like videos, pictures, interactive Flash games, e-books, and even text messages. If done properly and executed creatively, your viral marketing campaign can excite immediate word-of-mouth enthusiasm from people. It can be viewed, read, “liked”, and bookmarked countless times, spark memes, remixes, and spoofs, generate tons of links, and shared on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, etc. With viral marketing, your campaigns will suddenly get a life of its own – and you won’t have to spend so much money for advertising placements. But how do you do it properly? Is there a formula to achieving a million hits on YouTube? How do you make sure your viral content gets passed around by friends and strangers on Facebook? Because of the wide variety of viral campaigns found on the Internet these days, – Read the full article
Do you know that Lady Gaga has the most viewed YouTube video of all time? Yup – her “Bad Romance” music video is right on top of the list, beating hugely successful viral clips like “Charlie Bit My Finger” and Justin Bieber’s “Baby”. One can only dream of getting half as much as – or even a quarter of – the 212 million views that she has so far notched. And why not? Companies, brands, retailers, aspiring artists, ad agencies, and Internet marketers know very well how viral marketing – and YouTube – can spell instant success and bring new opportunities to their business. So let’s take a look at what Lady Gaga is doing right. Her barely three-months-old video, “Telephone”, already has close to 50 million views, so it might be a good idea to break that down a little bit and see for ourselves how we can make our own online video content more viral. Use the power – Read the full article
The Internet has definitely changed the way we interact with both friends and family and with businesses and consumers, with the Web becoming an important way for companies to target and advertise their products and services to customers. And if you’re looking for great ways to reach out to potential consumers, then the latest raft of current Internet technology could help you. The Internet has become our first port of call when it comes to accessing information, mainly thanks to its speed and ease of use. And with more homes, schools, and businesses making use of online services, online advertising is now big business. Gone are the days of mass print runs and expensive magazine and newspaper spreads. Now, with cable Internet providers offering fast connection speeds, E-mailing and mobile phones have become the new way to communicate. And the advertising and online marketing professionals have seen this change and made sure their campaigns follow suit. Advertising using the Internet has become – Read the full article
So, you’ve got a valued product or service, a clean, professional website with a strong domain name, and you’re ready to launch an online marketing campaign. Well, get in line because every day millions of business owners are doing the same. Thanks to the Internet, the old analogy of the little fish in the big pond no longer holds water. Today it’s more about a tiny grain of sand on a very large beach. But don’t get discouraged because when it comes to online marketing, most business owners are doing it badly. And being that all great business owners learn from the mistakes of others, here are 5 surefire ways to kill an online marketing campaign which should be avoided at all costs. 1. Start with a muddled marketing message: You know who you are and what you do. That’s why you started your business, because you recognized needs and realized that you could effectively meet them. The challenge is – Read the full article
We’ve probably all seen these captivating Old Spice ads. Male or female there’s a certain je ne sais quoi about Isaiah Mustafa, who appeared in these commercials in 2010 and became part of the fastest-ever growing viral media marketing campaign. Isaiah is depicted as the perfect boyfriend in a series of fantasy situations, all because he chose Old Spice products. The narrative of the original advert (the one which ends with “I’m on a horse”) is quirky and takes place in a single, CGI-assisted shot. Isaiah Mustafa’s graceful, smug patter and charismatic movements make for exciting viewing, and the slick nature of the “storyline” keeps the viewer wanting more – precisely what we want from a viral advertisement. There was a shorter, “stinger” ad released, and one which showed him in a rowing boat removing a fake moustache to reveal another fake moustache below. Finally, Isaiah Mustafa starred in a second long advert. This time, the transitions were far more – Read the full article
FourSquare is an emerging social network that specifically joins consumers with local businesses and local, regional and national brands. Consumers can determine what FourSquare providers are in their area and discover discount coupons, reward programs and heightened FS status, all of which lead to more discounts, rewards and status advancement. Local Businesses Let’s say you own a dry cleaning business. You advertise effectively in the terrestrial world with newspaper ads and even a billboard or two. You have sales regularly, and you are located in a very convenient section of town. You even have a terrific website through which you have a loyal email list to which you send periodic notices, information and yes, sales pitches. However, you want to do more. Enter: FourSquare. If a potential customer finds you among the local FourSquare businesses, and the discounts you post in your business profile presents a lower price than that customer’s usual cleaner or you offer a service the other – Read the full article
Blogging doesn’t involve just writing: it involves promoting your content and making it rank for relevant search terms, too. Don’t worry if you’re not a technical expert or SEO rock star: like in most areas of Internet marketing, there are tons of ways to improve your performance in SEO-focused blogging, and it sounds a lot easier than it actually is. If you’re not quite convinced that you should have anything to do with SEO when blogging, just remember that getting people to your site who are already interested is much easier than the kind of cold, hard sell tactic used by most traditional outbound marketers. So drive those visitors to your site. Here are 4 tips to improve your inbound Internet marketing tactics with a blog: Write Creative Headlines Write blog headlines that will drive clicks on Twitter. Think from a user perspective; there are 60 million tweets sent out each day. Getting people to click on your URL from – Read the full article
In lieu of the recent news about the Facebook smear campaign against Google, it seems that Google may be poised to remain the top dog in online ad spend this year. Last week, the story regarding Facebook hiring PR firm Burson Marsteller to spread lies about Google’s new “Social Circle” went viral. The war over the social graph, a data set of information about the social networks users are connected to, is in full force. However, Google isn’t even flinching. According to Fortune, Google’s Eric Schmidt insisted that Microsoft, not Facebook, was the true competitor to Google. He said, “Facebook users tend to use Google Search. Facebook’s ads business does not displace our advertising. I’m somewhat perplexed by the obsession because I don’t think the facts support it. Things are going great for Google.” The facts may support that businesses prefer to use Facebook and Google simultaneously; however, the percentage in which they invest their marketing budgets may be a – Read the full article
