Viral marketing is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic to your website with little effort on your part. With viral marketing, you can send your marketing message to selected recipients who then pass on that message to others. Viral marketing is easy and affordable, so anyone can do it.

If you have high quality products, your marketing message will be passed on to many people. Internet marketers want to pass on high quality products or services to their own lists. So the more appealing your products are, the quicker your marketing message will get spread all over the internet, and this will generate huge volumes of traffic to your website.

You can carry out your viral marketing campaign by creating e-books, reports or articles and distribute them to targeted recipients, giving them for free.  Any internet marketer can do this; since it simply involves creating the product, pass it on and let other people pass it on further for you.

Here are some great examples of you you can put viral marketing to work with you:

• Offer high quality products that spread your marketing message. Write well-researched reports and e-books on your niche and add your URL on these reports. Many people like getting free reports and e-books. These e-books will provide very powerful information on your topic, and people who read them will visit your website. Further distribution of your reports and e-book will result in more traffic to your website as well as increased awareness of your business or brand.

• You can also offer a free service or product on your web site that spreads your message to an increasing number of people who hear about it. Send out news releases concerning the free service or product available on your site. This in turn will generate huge volumes of traffic to your website.

• Setting up an affiliate program that encourages links to your products can also be helpful. If you can afford it, provide attractive financial incentive for other sites to pass on your marketing message. You can also install a ‘Recommend it” referral system on your website so that other internet marketers will pass on your website address to their lists. By having your own affiliates promoting your website, you drive a lot of traffic to your website.

• Use traffic exchange programs where you exchange website links with other internet marketers. When you add your website link to another site, some people may be interested in it, and they may bookmark it or pass it on to other people who may be interested in your niche.

• Write good quality articles and encourage other webmasters to post them for free as content on their sites. If you’re an expert in a niche, write an article on that niche and give it away for free to complementary sites to post on their site as free content, so long as the article contains links to your site. Write high quality articles and distribute them online for free with reprinting rights. More directories, newsletters and e-zines will publish your article with your resource box and URL. With little effort, your URL will be distributed all over the internet, and this will lead to a huge flow of traffic to your website.

Use the power of viral marketing to spread your marketing message all over the internet and drive high volumes of traffic to your website.

I found a great, older post and video at the Wall Street Journal that exposes the ways that smart businesses are using the power of YouTube to build their business.

The great thing about this particular online article, is that it doesn’t talk about some techno-geek guy using video to sell a techno-geek online product.  Instead it shows how a franchise that specializes in concrete crack repair (with a mascot called ’Mr. Happy Crack’ if you could believe it) is now using a “viral video” to help expand their business. 

I bring this concept up because, unfortunately, many internet marketers fall into the trap that the only products or services that will sell online are … well … high tech or online based products or services.  

That is just not true!

Any brick and mortar business can make use of the same tools that the internet based marketers use – like video, email capture opt in lists, blogging, podcasting and web marketing - to find customers in their own local markets OR even to EXPAND their markets ouside of a local area.  This is the case clearly mentioned in this article.

So before you think that internet marketing is just for “internet things” or “online based businesses only” – take a look at this article and video on the Wall Street Journal and think about how you could use some creativity and these cheap or free tools to help you expand your business or even start a new business using the power of what I call “the online marketing machine”!