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Five Monster Tactics for Demonic Viral Marketing.
By: More articles by jplazo Does marketing your startup company petrify your checkbook Trimedia advertising does wonders for corporate brand building but its not the only way to spread the good word. With non conventional promotion you avoid costly tri media expenses and create an almost demonic cultfollowing for your new product or service. All you need is a bit of unconventional thinking. Lets get down to brass tacks. Since 1999 Ive been launching successful startups. Most were pure online initiatives but two are clickandmortar hybrids. Today each business unit makes enough to pay the utility bills indulge in fancy dinners and fly off on exotic vacations. Just key my name in google and youll have an idea of my different passions. Skyrocketing my pursuits to niche dominance doesnt take a Ph.D degree. Allow me to bare my secrets: 1. ESTABLISH A PRODUCTCENTRIC ONLINE COMMUNITY. eGroups yahoogroups and google groups allow the establishment of virtual families where people of like minds converge. WIth just a group of twenty active participants you create a massive product buzz that eventually snowballs into unstoppable viral marketing. My earliest endeavor revolved around business NLP mind advancement and dating. Coaching was my passion and TV advertising would have cost a bleeding arm. I tackled the challenge by deploying an eGroup account and posting free selfhelp articles. At the 10th post curious websurfers began signing up and participating. They left comments added suggestions and invited other friends to jump in. The forum then grew exponentially and I witnessed a living organic group of 8000+ members. People traded stories joked passed on tips and even flirted outrageously. For me this meant a goldmine of targetted advertising: I would post one product announcement every quarter to a community already avid on the subject! 2. GIVE THEM FREE LUNCHES. Everybody loves a freebie; I snap up product samples at the mall or grocery store. When I get home and try that free shampoo sachet Id eventually come back and buy a bottle at a bloodcurdling $19.95. Mall owners were on to something! Free eBooks articles and mp3 recordings are hot downloads on the web. To target the army of freebie addicts I jumpstarted Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Audition. Every month saw me marching out armadas of pdfs and mp3s. They were my eager footsoldiers poised to strike at at freeware download sites. So how did this benefit me Each pdf and mp3 is armed with a resource segment containing my URLs and services. As these marketing warriors circulate the web they stir up a storm of awareness... and direct traffic to my sites. 3. GIVE LIFETIME MONEY BACK GUARANTEES. What would do if you saw a product that trumpted Unlimited Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee Of course you wouldnt think twice about buying it. Theres no risk on the part of the buyer... after all the product can be returned ten days or ten months after purchase. Let your confidence in your product show by backing it up with unconditional guarantees. 4. TREAT CUSTOMERS LIKE FAMILY. Avoid canned responses. Reply immediately. Offer solutions not qualified excuses. Throw in valueadding surprises such as unannounced freebies and 24/7 tech support. Friendly gestures might cost a bit of money but it goes a long way in building warm customer relationships. You want to create friends out of your clients. 5.PRAISE THE COMPETITION. You may be the best at what you do but if you bad mouth the competition you cast a pall upon your reputation. Share the glory with others by giving praise and credit where theyre due. In my businesses I prominently advertise the competition on my websites. I empower my clients with CHOICE. Dont worry about lost sales; customers will naturally appreciate your impartiality and quickly realize that youre after their welfare.
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