Home | List of Articles | Submit an Article | Contact Us

Viral Marketing Tips: Tell A Friend

You want to get people to come to your web site, right? Well, once you
gotten listed in the search engines, submitted your site to the big
directories, and created link exchanges - then you'd be wise to spend a
little time doing some viral marketing.

What's viral marketing? Simply put, it is using various means to get other
people to refer your site to their friends and acquaintances. Why is this
important? Simply put, the most powerful technique for getting visitors and
sales is a personal referral.

I'm sure you have run into this phenomenon in your life. I know I have. One
day years ago when my back was killing me, I asked the receptionist for the
name of a good chiropractor. She gave me the name of Dr. Tam - and I've been
seeing him now for over seven years (and have exceeded a hundred visits).

When I needed to go to a medical specialist to get something checked out, I
went to the place suggested by my doctor. I trust Dr. Frischer, so naturally
I trust that he will not recommend a quack.

When my car needed to be fixed, I asked one of my mechanic friends if he
knew of a good place to get it fixed. He sent me to a little shop in the
hills - it was a bit of a drive, but the car was fixed correctly and at a
reasonable price.

I can go on and on about this phenomenon, and I'm sure you can also find
hundreds of examples from your own life. The point is simple. When people
trust someone, they tend to trust their referrals as well.

That's why it is absolutely critical to include a "tell-a-friend" form on
your site. If someone likes your site, you want to be sure that you've made
it easy and convenient.

What is a tell-a-friend form? Simply out, you provide a simple for to allow
your visitors to send your web site URL to their friends. You can include a
link to a page with a form, or better yet, you can include the form directly
on your pages.

Ideally, you should provide this capability on every single page in your
site. This should be a standard feature of your navigation. It's as
important as including links to your home page, guestbook, privacy policy
and contact information.

Some sites with good "tell-a-friend" scripts are listed below.

- http://www.sitegadgets.com/ - Remotely hosted script usable by any web
site.

- http://www.dtp-aus.com - Hosted locally on your own server, requires CGI
access.

For an example of a tell-a-friend script, check out:

http://www.internet-tips.net ellafriend.htm

This is the copthis script from http://www.dtp-aus.com. It requires that
you have access to CGI on your host. However, the remotely hosted versions
(which can be used from any HTML page) basically look the same and perform
the same functions.

So what does a tell-a-friend script do? At the very least, it accepts your
email address and the email address of a friend. Once that information has
been entered, the friend is sent an email which states that you have
recommended the site to him. That's a very critical piece of information - a
person is recommending the site, and it's a person who is known (presumably)
to the friend.

The better scripts also allow your visitors (and you) to enter their name.
The very best scripts allow more than one name and email address to be
entered at a time, and your visitors can even include a comment such as
"check out this site - it's great". I also like those scripts which provide
for an email to be sent to me when someone refers my site - this way, I know
if people are taking advantage of this feature.

You will get more results if you include the form itself on each and every
page of your site. You will find this on many sites such as zdnet - they
have a form which allows you to enter a persons email address and name. This
sends them a quick email saying that you recommend the site to them.

You will not see an incredible burst in traffic due to these forms. What you
will see is people referring your site to their friends, which will cause
more (and higher quality) traffic. I've noticed that when someone receives a
referral they stay longer and, if you sell something, they are more likely
to buy something.

About the Author

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This
website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet
profits, enjoyment and knowledge.
Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net
Weekly newsletter: http://www.internet-tips.net/joinlist.htm
Daily Tips: mailto:internet-tips@GetResponse.com

Related Articles:

How To Use Viral Marketing To Grow Your Opt In Email List - If you have read my article called "What is Viral Marketing" you should already have a fairly good idea of it's potential. In this article I'm going to discuss how it can be used to grow your all essential, opt in mailing list. As you already know, Viral Marketing is a great way to get the word out about your product or service, so yo ...

Get More Links With a Viral Marketing Campaign - So you want to setup a viral marketing campaign, but where do you start? A viral marketing campaign is simply a strategy that you can use to get people who like your website and web materials to consciously or unconsciously promote your site while they’re going about their business online. 1. What to promote - The first step in your viral m ...

Viral Marketing has Left the Building - Viral Marketing - as a forward-thinking "buzzword" - is missing. Gone are the days of catchy buzz-marketing that you could just let loose upon the world and watch take off. Now, with users getting more knowledgeable and opportunities getting slim, you need to take advantage of using your know-how as part of the reason Viral Marketing campaigns work ...

How To Use Viral Marketing Tools To Explode Your Ezine List! by Bret Forster - How To Use Viral Marketing Tools To Explode Your Ezine Subscriber List! By Bret Forster / ...

Backend Profit Secrets and Viral Marketing - Once you truly understand the power of backend profits, you'll explode your marketing results and create an unstoppable viral machine. The techniques I will reveal to you have often been taught in many marketing courses and articles...but they are still underutilized because of two words -- "tunnel vision." Backend profits means the ...

Top 3 Viral Marketing Techniques - Interested in finding a way to literally draw new customers to your website without doing anything? Have your visitors feel exited about telling other people about your website? Then don’t stop reading here! #1. Community Everyone is looking for ways to draw unique visitors to there website, fact is many people spent a vast amount of there pr ...

For a Complete list of Articles with summaries Click Here