Why are ebooks an effective viral marketing tool
Here's how viral marketing with ebooks works. First of all, it is essential that your ebook contains interesting information. It's pointless to market something that is of no use to anyone. Readers of your ebook should learn something from the ebook. In this sense it is very similar to a physical book. A reader would throw away a book after reading a page or two if she finds it to be boring and dull. The same is the case for ebooks. No one would want to download your ebook if it is not rich in practical content. In other words, your ebook should have some useful information that the reader wants.
To use ebooks effectively as a viral marketing tool they should be offered to visitors of your website for free. The production and distribution costs of an ebook are generally very small. This is what makes it an effective tool for viral marketing. As you can see by reading my "Dotcomology" ebook, viral ebook marketing is not just something I talk about. It's something I practice in my own business.
Your ebook should have the layout and feel of your business service or product, which would familiarize readers with your brand. Do you see how I've done this for my Plug-In Profit Site service throughout this ebook? The ebook you create would have a message promoting your website and a link to it. This will bring back the reader to your website and create an opportunity to generate business. Thus, ebooks can contain advertisements or links to your website that would persuade the reader to visit your website. For example, a footer on every alternate page can have some message about your business and a link to your website that would interest the reader and encourage him to visit your website by clicking on that link. It's simple really. Like this: Click here to visit my website. ;-)
How does viral marketing come into the picture here? How do you ensure that ebooks can be given to more and more readers and in turn generate traffic for your website? A very simple way of doing this is to allow other visitors to your website to download your ebook for free and allow them to give away the ebook for free to others. Be sure to include hyperlinks to your website throughout the ebook. Also, you can include brief advertisements and all kinds of other things if you want. Your customer can either upload the ebook on their own website or offer it to their friends through email in the form of an attachment.
To make the ebook even more appealing to your customers you can offer them incentives. For example you could give your customer the ability to brand your ebook with their own affiliate ID for your product so that they earn a commission every time a person visits your website (through their branded version of your ebook) and buys a product. Affiliate program software (discussed earlier) can be integrated with your website that would give you a detailed analysis of all your visitors and track the affiliate who referred them.
Now your affiliate can give away your ebook to others, which makes them look good for giving something valuable away for free.
Plus, every time your affiliate brings in traffic to your website through their branded version of your ebook, they earn a commission. This gives your affiliates a reason to be excited and tell others about your ebook. Imagine this scenario duplicated by hundreds and potentially thousands of people passing around your ebook and you'll get a sense for how quickly your marketing message can be spread across the Net. This is exactly what is being done with the "Dotcomology" ebook right now. I could have turned this information in this ebook into a paid product if I wanted to, but I know the benefit of viral ebook marketing far outweighs the profits I could earn selling this information online.
To further benefit from ebooks, you can allow your customers to copy, change, and co-brand the ebook, which would contain a few ads and links about their own sites in addition to your own links. This will also help your customers to generate traffic for their websites. Think about it... The more incentives you add to your ebook that inspire other people to pass your marketing messages around, the more you will benefit from viral ebook marketing. It's that simple.
Ebooks are one of the best promotional tools online. With its vast variety of uses, just one quality ebook development and distribution can produce an on going viral marketing tool that will work 24 hours a
© Stone Evans day, seven days a week spreading your marketing messages around the world exponentially.
Continue reading here: Using Ebooks for Affiliate Marketing
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