Many people may have heard the term “viral” associated with different styles of marketing and wonder what some of them are, but specifically what is viral marketing?  Well, the simple answer to the question is that this type of product promotion is a form of advertising, which deals mainly with the infiltration of the Internet, with advertisements, logos, and critical product placement in a manner that will most easily entice people to buy their products.

The idea behind viral marketing is that if you can get the product up in multiple places on the web and in front of as many eyes as possible for as little money as possible, you are doing some really good marketing on a budget. Most of the companies behind this style of promotion are smaller businesses that just want to get the word out about their product but don’t have the money to hire a public relations firm or spend money on advertising.

Viral Marketing Examples

One of the more effective methods of viral marketing is to form a Joint Venture with another business. While you have the product, your JV partner may bring his customer content list of thousands and his marketing skills to the project. In most cases a JV will benefit both parties involved with an equal split of the profits and possibly the work.

Another form of getting your product, to race around the internet world, is to set up an affiliate program with 100s of individuals and business promoting your product. The difference between a JV and an affiliate, is the affiliate will only get paid a percentage of each individual sale personally made by them.

More viral marketing examples and ideas include sending out chain letters with information about your product buried within a story that urges people to continue resending the letter to all of their friends. This is a decent idea, but if you use the chain letter to try and collect money for something that doesn’t exist or run a scam for a business, then that is fraud and is a crime. You have to be careful and make sure that you aren’t breaking any laws.

If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of what is viral marketing, then you should realize that it is something anyone with a computer and a little bit of technological savvy can do.  First of all, using social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace is a fairly ingenious way of getting your product or service out to the public.  You can set up a site, get all of the relevant information listed on your homepage, and then add friends.

Theoretically, just adding whoever to your profile isn’t going to do you any good as they are likely looking to connect with friends and won’t be interested in your product.  The best way to market yourself is to look through the MySpace groups and find those with similar interests.  Say that you are a writer marketing a new book.  Adding other writers isn’t going to get you a whole lot of customers, but adding people who are fans of your genre, well, that’s a different story.

You should also know that using viral marketing plans too much can cause some problems.  If people feel they are being slammed by the product, then you are going to find many of your potential clients turned off by your aggressiveness.

Just remember that you’re trying to get the word out and tell people about your idea without being too pushy and you should be just fine.

You may of got and email or heard of some about course on marketing or making money online. Or maybe you just searched google for internet marketing courses. Always try to find out more information before you go out and spend any money on any marketing course.

Research the Course on Google

First type the name of the course in google search. Click the show options on the top left of the search results page. Now you have more search options to use. Click Discussions, this will show results from various forums and discussion sites. Look for any reviews, or comments on the product. Look any positive comments, preferably more than one, and recent ones as well.

Look for results on sites like www.scam.com to find out if the course or person is listed here. You want to find out if there are any bad reviews.

Also try the blogs link, as well. Look for fake reviews being made by affiliates that are just promoting the product.

Where to find Affiliate Marketing  Courses

A lot of the more popular affiliate  marketing courses are sold through clickbank. One place to start looking would be the clickbank marketplace, at www.clickbank.com

The clickbank site lists to its affiliates, various downloadable products software and courses. But you dont have to be an affiliate to use the site. You can see what are the top selling courses, and thus probably the best ones.

Go to Clickbank,com, then go to the E-business & E-marketing categories. This should give you a good list of marketing ebooks and courses. Look for a course with high popularity. Make note of the Gravity of the product. The higher the gravity, the chances are it is a good selling product. If a product has a 0 gravity and no sales it is either new or not a good selling product. Also try searching for affiliate or CPA.
If you decide that you want to sell some of the click bank products, then join as an affiliate.

Other places to look online would be internet forums and discussions. Uses the Google search with the “Show options” as mentioned earlier in this article.

Watch out for the up sell offers

If your finally decide on a marketing course or product, be prepared to see  additional offers  when you actually make the purchase. Many internet marketing offers have this type of “back end” up sell.  They try to sell additional offers immediately after you make your initial purchase. You can simply scroll to the bottom of the page and click no thanks and continue on.

The last course that I purchased had about 4 or 5 pop up windows trying to sell additional products before I could finally check out. Just be aware that these things will happen when you purchase a affiliate marketing course on the internet.

Cost effective marketing plays a vital role in the success of a business enterprise. You can put your product out there without depleting your financial resources but still make a big impact in increasing awareness for your products. Most businesses are now dubious about the merits of traditional marketing because of the Internet Age. We beg to disagree. I am going to discuss the key points on why offline marketing is just as important as before.

IT’S A TRIED AND TESTED FORMULA
One good trick is to put ads in places more frequented by people. Handing out flyers and business cards in public places, or putting stickers on public transportation vehicles, creating bookmarks that show your product information and handing them out to your local library are all great ideas to increase your range. Doing freelance work also provides an opportunity to plug into your ad.

If you are a writer, you can write articles for magazine publications and newspapers and use the opportunity to include your website’s information. Using the art of sublimation to promote your URL is also a great trick to increase awareness. Printing your URL on birthday and holiday cards before you send them out is one good way of “sneaking in” your website information via casual correspondence. Overall, the trick is being receptive to avenues that can make the most impact upon marketing your products and services.

MARKET TARGETING IS EASY
Promoting your product to a wrong demographic is a waste of time and resources. It’s like parking your hotdog stand in a vegetarian convention. Your products and services should spark interest to certain clubs and organizations, so know your target market and assimilate yourself into them. A great deal of interaction with these groups can open up a world of opportunities to spread product information like a viral effect SUPPLEMENTING COVERAGE Even with the amount of internet users today, there are still people who would rather do their business in the real world.

That’s where offline marketing plays a major role – to make sure that your information is accessible to everybody. When you make sure that no leaves are unturned, your influence becomes more far reaching, and should spread like wildfire into all types of demographics.

OFFLINE ADS ARE PERPETUAL
The driving tool of what makes offline marketing work is its perpetuity. Your printed ad can be taken home, and rediscovered without the customer’s intent. They don’t have to sit in front of a computer and visit a website to be reminded of your product. An ad sticker will never be ignored when you put them in public bathrooms. Ads are all around you even when you just go through the normal routine of the day, so there’s no shortage of people that will take notice if you roll out ads in frequently visited locations.

IT’S THE REAL THING
Let’s admit it, online marketing is very efficient and has a broader reach in the whole spectrum of the market, but let’s not forget that people still go for things that are more tangible and personalized. After all, what you see on the computer screen are just light particles, and nothing beats the simple pleasure of getting convinced by an advertisement material in its purest form.