To many amateur marketers, viral marketing is seen as something that should be prepared as a product launches to capitalize on the direct potential sales. The thinking is that after someone sees a Youtube video or funny meme page, they’ll click through, hand over their credit card details, and walk away with a new product. While this occasionally happens, the click through rate is never particularly good, the bounce rate upon credit card entry is huge, and the total payoff is generally very little for the amount of effort that’s put in.

Why? Because viral content isn’t often associated with spending. People typically go on Youtube not to look for new things to buy, but to escape them. After being inundated with marketing messages throughout their day, the last thing anyone wants is to be marketed to when they’re at home watching viral videos.

This sounds like a death sentence for online marketers, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, it’s not, and it’s simple to see how it can actually be incredibly effective. As people use Youtube to escape direct marketing, they remain open to indirect marketing, brand building and reputation development. With trust being the primary currency of any marketer, online or not, a viral video gives you the chance to develop that trust without having to directly market anything. It’s a long-term strategy, and one that can pay off dearly with the right execution.

So what should you use your videos for? Start by introducing your product, although not with a hard sell. Marketers are incredibly aware of pre-selling products, capturing user data on landing pages, and using testimonials to increase their brand profile, but they rarely see the opportunity in using viral content to achieve this. Instead of going straight from a viral video to a sales opportunity, ease your potential customers into a sale by providing partial awareness of a product. Link to information that’s relevant but not persuasive, and let them move forward at their own pace.

This is awareness building at its finest, and it’s incredibly important that you use it as a long-term strategy. If you prefer a harder sell, direct viewers towards a landing page or lead capture page, and use that information to ease them into a sale later on down the line. Sure, you’ll lose some visitors, but you’ll gain some potential sales that would have undoubtedly bounced on a direct sales page link.

This kind of awareness building isn’t a direct strategy, and it will undoubtedly prove worthless for marketers that are only interested in short-term results. It’s hard to see why it’s so valuable until you understand viral content deeply and personally. When people try to escape marketing, they’re completely uninterested in your proposal, however juicy and interesting it might be. When you reduce those barriers, ease them into the sale, and build that trust, you open yourself up to a world of possibilities and a mountain of potential sales.

Andrea Kalli
Certified Internet and Social Marketing VA

WishList – Wordpress Membership Sites and Retention Strategies

MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

Tags and Categories: Online Business, Promotion and Marketing, video, viral marketing, youtube

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