InterNetwork Marketing 101 - Using Viral Advertising to Generate Leads

I can't tell you why I chose to look at this particular website on that day in Mid-March of '08. But what I read, blew me away. The idea was familiar and profound. People telling people telling people about a great idea is as old as time. As the people they tell like the idea and SPREAD the good news, it GROWS. EXPONENTIALLY. LIKE A VIRUS. Now some may think of this as "old school" but it has it's place.

You know the numbers. Two people tell two people who tell two people and it grows EXPONENTIALLY. LEADS which further converts into sales. Never ending stream of LEAD GENERATION. Heaven!

That is what is so brilliant about the website I found one day. There is a 10 second window of TIME that the customer CHOOSES to view YOUR website to get a "code" from. Then, the customer pastes the code onto a sheet of 6 codes. After they complete all 6 codes, the customer GETS THEIR ADVERTISEMENT ON THE SAME SHEET AS YOU. Quick and easy.

So, the customer takes slot number 1 while YOU, the first one, move to the second slot and the sixth one falls off. This then allows the customer/advertiser to be viewed for their 20 seconds while another customer is waiting for their codes to come up to be pasted in the six slots. And on and on this goes - EXPONENTIALLY! Again, this is all FREE, mind you. And again, brilliant.

I don't know about you but I would love to have LARGE NUMBERS of POTENTIAL LEADS sitting there with nothing to do but look at my landing page for 10 seconds while they're waiting for their turn. A LOT OF INFORMATION gets conveyed in 10 seconds, believe me!

So, you, the advertiser, want to be seen for these 10 seconds by lots and lots and lots of people, so you TELL A FEW FRIENDS ABOUT THIS FREE ADVERTISING YOU'VE FOUND. Your friends want the same thing and their friends want the same thing and behold - an advertising virus is born and spreading EXPONENTIALLY with nothing to stop it. Why? BECAUSE ITS A GOOD IDEA AND A TRUE BENEFIT TO THE USER.

So what do we have here? A LEAD GENERATION SYSTEM OF MEGA PROPORTIONS bringing hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of traffic to YOUR WEBSITE, BLOG, COMPANY, OR LANDING PAGE. How much of that traffic will convert you think into sales? 1%? 10%? What if just .5% of tens of thousands of hits converted to real LEADS? That's untold numbers of really interested people who have given you their lead information like phone numbers, email addresses and names! And remember, VIRUSES SPREAD. And keep spreading. And keep spreading, and well - you get the picture.

This is an ENDLESS SUPPLY OF LEADS for your business. I predict you'll have to turn off the spigott you'll have so many people to handle. What a problem - too much traffic!! That's a problem I would like to have - how about you???

Now it takes a while to get the ball rolling. How long is up to you as to how many people you tell and how enthused they are to participate. But what if it took you 3 months to see the leads start rolling in? What if it was 6 months? Who cares?

Viral advertising works because people like to talk to people about a really good idea they've found that WORKS.