by David Badurina
I 'm all for using statistics to promote my businesses.
I think it's a great way to impact people who think
technically or tend to use more logic in their own
purchasing decisions. That being said, I try to use
statistics that I have either compiled, or obtained from a
credible publication. I refuse to use Guesstistics.
You know what guesstistics are as you've no doubt
seen them before. Look up Repetition Marketing
online and you'll likely see many different sources
describing how many times your marketing message
needs to appear before someone recognizes you. Some
say 5, some 9, some 7, some 15. Most often that
statistic is prefaced by the phrase, Recent studies
show . I guess there've been a lot of recent studies.
Every once in awhile, I see a guesstistic that really
catches my eye. I ran across one of these the other day.
It said, Over 92% of web pages are visited because
someone referred the visitor there.
Every time I see it, I believe it less and less. What
irks me about this particular guesstistic is that it
was touted by a business selling refer-a-friend scripts.
Well, it irks me, but it doesn't surprise me ...
It also explained that referral scripts are Viral
Marketing techniques.
Not quite.
Refer-a-friend scripts have the potential to be Viral
Marketing techniques; but in and of itself, it does
nothing. Slip on that labcoat and start adding some
bizarre bubbling liquids to the mix and you can have
something quite powerful on your hands. If you instead
opt to stick them on every page of your site and give
your visitor absolutely no motivation to use it, then you
shouldn't expect much in return.
Likewise if you stick it at the top of pages talking about
how great your product is, you shouldn't expect much
out of it either-a very low percentage at best. Why
would I refer a friend of mine to a page that's going to
sell to him? This technique banks on the fact that your
visitor knows somebody who has an absolute immediate
need for what you can provide at that very moment.
The window of opportunity becomes extremely small.
Use Refer-A-Friend scripts on your article pages, or
direct people to those pages that change frequently
and make sure that your referral box is prominent.
Allow your visitor to input their own message into a
field and send the referral along with their own words
instead of what you write filling up their friend's
inbox.
Have a look at the referral box on the last page of
issue 1 of The New Strain
( http://www.viralmarketingtool.com/newstrain.php ).
There are a few reasons I opted for this as a form
of Viral Marketing in The New Strain.
Mainly, it takes advantage of technology that
is rolling out right now. If you're using Adobe
Acrobat Reader 6.0 (the latest version as of this
writing), you can actually fill that information out and
send it directly from this file even if you aren't
looking at this publication online (obviously, an
internet connection is required-telepathic email still
has a few kinks to work out). If you're using a prior
version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can send it
straight from the PDF file if you're looking at it
within a web browser.
This is a pretty powerful tool. Imagine it in your PDF
free reports or eBooks. Can you see the benefit of
allowing people to pass the eBook to someone else-
from within the eBook that they are reading ?
This technique takes only a slight amount of Effort on
your reader's part. They don't have to zip the file,
attach it to an email, compose the message and send.
Email doesn't have anything to do with it anymore.
They stay in the same file, leave the current programs
open just the way they are, type in your email and a
quick note and off it goes!
Many people don't know that PDFs can do such
things. Just remember-if you don't have the full
version of Adobe Acrobat, you can't do it. Free PDF
creators work because they are free, but you do get
what you pay for. You need to be slightly familiar
with installing scripts and editing a little bit of
code to do it, but it's overall a very simple thing
to create with Adobe Acrobat.
All in all, referral scripts are a good bet. Just
remember to mix them up a little bit, put them in an
unconventional place or add some Potency to what
you're passing around to make it really
worthwhile!
*********************************************
David Badurina
http://www.ViralMarketingTool.com
Being Infected Was Never This Cool!
Viral Marketing for the Internet Marketer
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