Why you need to be using Viral Marketing techniques
by Steve Smith
The best thing about viral marketing is that you get a lot of awareness of your product or company. It generates a consistent flow of potential customers. With a little forethought and imagination you can reach out to high numbers of people, sometimes employing incentives or prizes along the way. Viral marketing avoids being linked with spam because of the willingness of one person to pass the information along and using the familiarity of that person to engender trust in the recipient.
Almost every company and website has caught on to the miraculous effects of viral marketing and advertising, even Microsoft with Hotmail for instance. If you don’t catch on too, it could leave your internet business dead in the water. If used in conjunction with other promotion types like SEO (Search Engine Optimisiation), viral marketing could easily push you ahead of the competition.
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They use viral marketing by e-mail as a marketing tool… what did you think I meant? Viral marketing can work well for B2B providers, as long as the following is true:
1. The product or service has to add value for the sender, as well as, the receiver.
2. The offer has to be deliverable. You don’t want to offer a product that you can’t deliver if demand grows rapidly.
3. The offer has to be easily transferable to others. E-mail and Web pages provide the best medium to facilitate this.
4. The vest viral marketing campaigns use existing networks to move the message along.
The basis of viral marketing has been around for a long time. The idea is that you incite your customers or referral sources to pass on something about your business to their network of colleagues and friends. Those that pass on your information get something in return. The something might be a gift or service related to your business.
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I have recently heard a sales manager saying, “the sales person’s job is to bring in customers. If product quality is bad, management will take care of it. Sales people should spend less time commenting on product quality.”
If a sales person is doing many other things other than selling, you can say that the sales person is not doing his job. However, if many sales people are doing so, then perhaps you need more investigation.
While it is true that sales people should commit their time and effort generating sales revenue, that may not be how customers perceive things. Customers want sales people to be “accountable for results”.
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I feel this is a question that many average performing sales people neglect to ask themselves on a continuing basis. It amazes me how many salespeople believe they know what their prospect is thinking without any real attempt at fact finding or for that matter, any basic questioning!
So with this in mind, let’s start with your purpose as a salesperson – to assist your customers in solving a problem they have. Contrary to what you feel about this statement, there is enough evidence and research now available that suggests customers want to buy products and services, not be sold to. So initially, your prospect will want to know your answers to the following questions -
1. Do you fully understand the problem/s I have?
2. Do you have a solution to these problem/s?
You may laugh at how basic these questions are; however, so many salespeople get this so wrong and make very broad assumptions about prospects. Remember, every prospect will have a different set of needs and requirements. Another bugbear of customers is the complete lack of detailed questioning with a prospect. I recently saw this first hand at a car dealership I visited. It was a Saturday morning and next to me was a family of around 5 in total. The salesperson went up to the prospect and asked what sort of car the family were looking at. The father then proudly announced he was looking at the new estate (Station wagon for those of us in Australia and New Zealand). Then the salesperson went off on a complete tangent about a range of features without asking any questions. (more…)
