How To Use Viral "Refer-A-Friend" Promotions To Increase Traffic And Sales

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"Viral Publicity" and "Viral Marketing" are really just new buzzwords for the oldest form of publicity in the world..."Referral" or "Word of Mouth."The Internet takes this ancient form of "buzz" and p...
"Viral Publicity" and "Viral Marketing" are really just new buzzwords for the oldest form of publicity in the world..."Referral" or "Word of Mouth."The Internet takes this ancient form of "buzz" and promotion andamplifies it with a global network of people connected digitally."Word of mouth" now has an Internet version called "word of mouse"(word of computer mouse). With greatly increased speeds, peoplerefer things to their friends and families spreading the wordthrough the Internet and to the far-reaching corners of theworld.Many smart marketers and publicity people have learned to harnessthe power of viral publicity with Internet "Refer-A-Friend"promotional techniques and tools.Examples of Viral "Refer-A-Friend" Promotions:Viral "Refer-A-Friend" techniques can be used to promote justabout anything under the sun.For example, Audri Lanford conducted a giveaway contest at hernew www.wz.com website where she gave away 4 Sony PS2's beforeChristmas as a website promotion.
According to Audri, she gavepeople who had entered the Giveaway the opportunity to getadditional entries and additional chances to win by tellinga few of their friends on the Thank You page...WZ.com Giveaway Promotion Thank You Pagehttp://wz.com/ps2/indexw.htmlOn the Thank You page, every giveaway entrant received thefollowing message: "Tell your friends about WZ.com, and get anadditional entry for each friend you email." They are then giventhe opportunity to tell their friends about the giveaway at the"Tell-A-Friend" page...WZ.com "Refer-A-Friend" Pagehttp://wz.com ellafriend/index.htmlIn return for the favor, they receive an additional chance towin for every friend they refer. This simple addition increasedTell-a-Friend results by 96 times (9600%)!, said Audri.This is an amazing (and inexpensive) way to increase traffic andsales!Another example of the "Refer-A-Friend" technique at work can beseen at Internet marketing guru Seth Godin's new IdeaVirus.comwebsite."Unleashing The Ideavirus" by Seth Godinhttp://www.ideavirus.com/"Unleashing The Ideavirus" is Seth Godin's excellent new bookabout viral marketing.
Seth is promoting his hard copy book byoffering the book in its entirety - FOR FREE! You can downloadthe "eBook" version at his www.ideavirus.com website.Why would Seth give it away for free?Because offering something of high perceived value for free isan excellent way to promote something on the Internet. Peopleare excited that they can get the complete book for free, sothey naturally tell their friends.
In fact, Seth Godin uses aviral "Refer-A-Friend" tool on this website as well...IdeaVirus Send Ithttp://www.ideavirus.com/sendit.htmlTo see real-time data on how people are spreading the word withthis viral "Refer-A-Friend' system, you can watch it spread atSeth's "Watch It Spread" page:http://ideavirus.gazooba.com/servlets/IVStatusReport2This viral tool has helped Seth receive more than 100,000downloads on website and more than 400,000 readers in just 30days time. According to the website, IdeaVirus is "The Most ReadFull-Length eBook Of All Time."Yet another amazing example of viral marketing in action.How To Use Viral "Refer-A-Friend" Promotions:So how do you use this technique to leverage and increase yourtraffic, sales, and "word of mouse" publicity? It's simple, just"Tell-A-Friend" or "Refer-A-Friend" about everything! You canadd Viral "Refer-A-Friend" forms to all of your...
> Articles > Contests > eBooks > Freebies > Giveaways > Information > Sweepstakes > Thank you pages > Etc.Constantly think of ways that you can use a "Refer-A-Friend"pages to leverage each visitor into many more visitors (andsales).Viral "Refer-A-Friend" tools are available for a wide range ofneeds and budgets.For example:BirdCasthttp://bignosebird.com/carchive/birdcast.shtmlBigNoseBird.com offers an excellent "Refer-A-Friend" script foryour website that is totally free called BirdCast. BirdCast willeven log each referral so you can measure how often it is used.You may even want to have a programmer customize it to fit yourown needs.qbiquity.comhttp://www.qbiquity.com/qbiquity is a "relationship marketing company" that offers "Wordof Mouth" solutions to increase online sales, boost siteregistrations, or extend your brand's reach.
qbiquity is asolution for highly trafficked websites who want all the"bells an whistles" such as real-time tracking and convergenceto other communications mediums like pagers, telephones, faxes,and direct mail.qbiquity is considered a "high-end" solution and has a largeprice tag in the thousands of dollars per month. Consider onlinemarketing guru Seth Godin's experiences with qbiquity which heused with tremenous success for this IdeaVirus book..."When you send junk mail to 100 people, on average one persondoes what you ask.
Using qbiquity, 50% of the people who get arecommendation from a friend visit my site, and almost everyonedownloads the book. That's astonishing!", said Seth Godin.It sure is.Action Step:All of the viral "Refer-A-Friend" programs that are availableare based on the same simple concept.
They use the power ofreferrals and "word of mouse" publicity to multiply how manypeople see your message. I suggest that you add "Refer-A-Friend"and other viral techniques into your marketing mix before someonerefers your competition to this powerful marketing technique...
Article Tags: Increase Traffic, Viral Marketing, Viral Refer-a-friend, Seth Godin's Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .