Viral marketing is one of the most challenging ways to get traffic to your site, but when it works, it’s amazing.

A good viral product can bring you massive traffic, newsletter subscriptions and income. It gets forwarded by people to their friends through email. Once well launched, it almost runs itself.

One trouble with viral marketing is that many marketers don’t know quite what it is. They decide they want a product to be viral without any idea how it is to reach that goal. Viral is not always deliberate; sometimes it’s accidental.

Making a deliberately viral product is difficult. You can’t be certain that something you designed to be viral will actually work out.

It all starts with an idea. Maybe it’s a funny movie. Maybe it’s a useful tool no one else has thought of yet. Maybe it’s like nothing I’ve mentioned here. Keep in mind the kinds of things that people are likely to forward in email - jokes, inspirational stories and extremely useful online tools. The online tool is probably the hardest of these to develop, at least in my opinion, and the hardest “sell” as well.

You may or may not be able to develop the idea fully on your own. It may cost you money to hire someone to create the movie, write the program, whatever it is you need.

With the idea come to life and ready to draw visitors, subscribers, and whatever else you hope it will do for your business, it’s time to promote. Send it out to your current subscribers. Put a link in your forum signatures. Share it with family and friends.

Keep an eye on how it’s doing. If it isn’t achieving your goals, such as too few subscribers or sales, start tweaking. Start by working on whatever it is that you want visitors to do. If you aren’t getting the newsletter subscribers, work on how you ask for the subscription. If you aren’t getting sales, work on your sales page.

Now, if you aren’t getting the viral effects you hoped for, take an honest look at what you’re offering. Where is it falling flat? You may have to start just about from scratch, but do what it takes to make the product better.

Lots of people try viral marketing and most fail. It is incredibly difficult to predict what will work virally. But if you succeed the effort will be well worth the trouble.

Technorati Tags: , ,