Spreading the Viral Marketing

Many of you have no doubt heard of Viral Marketing otherwise you probably would not have found this post.  When I look up the term in the pulp fiction of the all powerful and all knowing Wikipedia they provide the following description:

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.

Basically viral marketing is word of mouth advertising spread by your consumers to their peers in an environment that allows that message to spread at an exponential rate. 

Lets say for example you are an online poker affiliate and your looking for ways to increase your revenue.  You have a fairly good sized roster of players, but your signups are down and your players are not playing as much as you would like, how can you use viral marketing techniques to improve your signup numbers and increase play?  According to Dr. Ralph F. Wilson there are 6 elements required for a successful viral marketing campaign to work:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others’ resources

So from these 6 elements how can we develop a marketing model for poker affiliates? It would probably be best to list the 6 elements and then identify how they translate into the online poker world.

Gives away products or services:  As affiliates you can provide many incentives for your players to signup to a particular website, from free swag and deposit bonuses to rake back and freeroll tourneys.  However I think these ideas are all played out and lack the ability to create buzz which is what you are trying to do.  How about something different like for example, on your web page when you are trying to push signups you advertise that you will give all new signups at poker site X a free $10 transfer as soon as they signup.  This gets the player playing and you are earning a rev share from the rake that $10 produces anyways so it represents an investment on your part, but it is one that should pay you back 10 fold.  Ok so we have identified the product you will be giving away which is a free $10 for signing up.

Provides for effortless transfer to others:  The buzz you create from giving away free money is a message so now that message needs to be spread, but using banners and text links are the norm and we are thinking outside the box.  Instead of posting something on your site why not send a mass mail to all of your players saying something to the effect of, “As a loyal member of Affiliate site X we want to reward you by giving you a free $10 deposit when you signup at poker site Y”.  At the end of the email say something like, “This is a limited time offer and we will only grant the $10 free to the first X amount of signups so please do not share this email with your friends.”  The last part of that may seem unnecessary, but what you are doing is basically daring them to forward the email to their friends to share in the promotion. Which may very well attract new players to your site and then not only have you gained a new player at 1 poker room, but you can now also recruit him to join all the rooms you advertise thus increasing the potential earnings from that new player.

Scales easily from small to very large:  Providing free money to new sign ups is a very simple model, you read your reports and for every new sign up you have to do 1 transfer, it stays the same no matter how many new signups you have, in other words the success and size of the campaign will not require you to change your business model to accomodate it.

Exploits common motivations and behaviors:  We are in the online poker industry and our product evokes emotion, therefore our clients are unique to other service/product industries.  This is actually really easy because the word FREE is perhaps the most powerful word in the marketing vocabulary so grabbing someones attention with our model is fairly easy and if your reaching someone with your message then theres a good chance that they are already interested in the product which is poker.  Everyone is motivated by free money and for online poker players especially it is in their nature to take advantage of free offers.

Utilizes existing communication networks: This is relatively easy if you have a forum that your players regularly visit and participate in then your message is instantly available to view and sparks conversation amongst potential new signups.  If you don’t have a forum then build a social networking site and join the various interest groups that already exist and are tailored to attract the type of people you are targeting.  You would then distribute your message accordingly.  Blogs Blogs Blogs!!! Start searching the web for existing blogs with high page rankings on Google that are poker related and request link exchanges or better yet write your own blog and distribute it to various blogosphere directories with the title of your posts identifying exactly what your message is, “Free $10 when signing up at site X”.  Blog directories are invaluable when spreading information to people with the same interest.  You should also include the blog URL in your emails to existing clients.

Takes advantage of others’ resources:  For our model we are taking advantage of social networking sites as well as blog directories and your own members through email forwarding.  The sheer exposure to potential clients is the resource we are taking advantage of without costly advertising.

So now you have a viral marketing model that would serve the online poker affiliate with the goal of attracting new signups and increased revenue.  Please feel free to leave comments or suggestions, I know this is a crude model so no need to point out the obvious, but any comments or links you send will be answered and only increase my google juice, hahaha viral marketing strikes again…  

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