There is one thing that will bring more sales for a website: buzz. This has also been called viral marketing or passive marketing, but unfortunately both of those phrases have been used so much that they lack their own buzz-power, and as a result we often look away when someone mentions viral marketing.
There is no real secret to viral marketing - the secret is to do just what the name says: create a buzz. You want people to talk about your website, to let others in on their secret which is your website. You want those that learn about you to have a sense of excitement, a sense of privilege, a sense that only you can offer what they are seeing. This is the way they will market your website for you.
And that is just what viral marketing is - it is the process of getting others to market your website for you. From this scarcity - and the extreme demand for this product, buzz was born.
Viral Videos
A development in the past few years as Internet connection speeds have increased is the advent of viral videos. We have all seen viral videos so I don't think this point needs to be made too much - if you watch these videos, chances are pretty good that you will forward one on to your friends, family, or associates if you have not yet seen it. These videos are funny, amazing, useful, or simply awe-inspiring enough that we want to share them with others.
Anatomy of Viral Marketing
Those videos are just one example of viral marketing in action - any time you learn about a website by word of mouth, through a blog entry, or through a genuine link on another website, you are participating in viral marketing. With all these examples of viral marketing, it becomes fairly easy to breakdown several aspects that seem to make web pages 'buzz-worthy'.
Buzz-worthy Sites Stroke People's Egos
Everyone likes to be 'in the know', to be a first adopter of a product that everyone eventually comes to love. If you know some of the first adopters of Apple's iTunes system, you know what it is like to know a first. Being one of the first to discover something that everyone will enjoy or find useful, or being one of the first to be invited to an invitation-only club, is an honor. It strokes our ego, and if you want to get people interested in you, stroking their ego is a great start.
Buzz-worthy Sites Promise to Amaze
If you want to create an initial buzz about your website, you need to get people excited enough to talk about your website. The only way you can do this is to promise real amazement, real insight, real controversy, real humor, or any mix of these attributes. Viral videos promise to show you something that you have never seen before, and that will either make you laugh, cringe, or shake your head in amazement. Buzz worthy sites need to stand out from the crowd of competing sites. There are millions of websites all asking for our attention, but those that get the attention are able to create a message that is unique, useful, appealing, and attractive.
Buzz-worthy Sites are Original
In order to be buzz-worthy, you must first create something that people are going to feel as if they 'discovered'. No one is going to talk about something which has already been discovered or which everyone knows about. People talk about things which they have never seen before, things which are particularly useful, particularly funny, or particularly insightful.
Buzz requires that people see something for the first time, are promised amazement, are amazed, and get the ego-stroking feeling that they have just discovered something great.
Considering Buzz for Your Business
Practically applying buzz to your website is not easy. Although viral marketing is by far the most powerful form of marketing available to website owners, it is not an easy thing to create. Even if you devise the most buzz-worthy creation, you may find that in practice it just does not seem to resonate with the general public. You may also decide that viral marketing is not the best thing for your business.
Viral marketing, unlike other marketing which is fairly easy to control, can quickly grow out of control. If you happen to be successful with viral marketing, you may find that you are not able to meet the new demand that you see for your products or services. Viral marketing, once released, becomes its own beast outside of your control.
Those concerns aside, most businesses would love to have a viral aspect to their website.Consider today what you could create that would create a buzz in your industry. Is there a tool that you could offer for free that no one else is offering? Is there an opinion that you have that is original and insightful? Is there a free service that you are willing to offer? Viral marketing is, ultimately, the greatest form of marketing. Not only does it produce incredible results, it is also an affirmation that what you are doing is worthy of praise - enough praise that people are willing to talk about you to others.
Source: Excerpts from an article writtn by Mark Daoust (2007)