Viral marketing is one of the most creative ways of promoting a business. It can work wonders for any business although there are certain principles that play a lead role in making viral marketing for business websites so effective. Different businesses use different techniques while applying viral marketing to enhance their visibility and here are some of the best and time-proven techniques that can help your business too.

WOM Recommendations

WOM or word-of-mouth is still one of the best ways of promoting business and finding new clients. The very fact that it is unsolicited makes WOM one of the best advertising vehicles. If you can combine word-of-mouth with strong networking then it can reap long-term benefits for you. There are different ways you can do it and one of them includes asking your friend to recommend your business on his/her networking message board. The internet is a quick way of reaching across geographical boundaries and information regarding your business can pass from one message board to another in a short period of time.

You can also encourage your friends to send emails. You can design good e-mailers and provide information about your business and a link for your website. These e-mailers can be mailed by your friends to their friends and so on. Although it sounds a little primitive but this kind of campaign is highly effective and can create a lot of hits for any online business.

Enhance Linking

Linking is one of the most important aspects of enhancing search engine positioning and the visibility of any online business. There are different ways by which you can use your website links to get more traffic to your website. One of the ways is through reciprocal linking, which you can do by registering with some of the top directories and other non competitive sites (these reciprocal linking methods are quickly becoming less relevant and obsolete). The second method is through posting articles with links at various article submission websites. This is fast becoming one of the most popular methods of back-linking and subtle advertising. There are many article submission websites, directories or ezines that will allow you to submit your article free of cost.

The third method will be to set up different types of affiliate programs that will contribute to the increase in the number of links to your services or products. Affiliate marketing has become popular off late because it offers financial incentive to every other website who wants to link with your website.

Contests are another way of promoting your website services or products and can help visitors to use the link the contests to reach your website. People enter contests to win and if you prepare a contest where they have to visit your website using the link within the contest, then it will increase the number of hits and also bring meaningful traffic.

Free Services or Products

The last but not the least is advertising or promoting your website by offering free services or products. There are many companies who encourage 7-day free memberships, or free product trials. The word free has a lot of impact especially when you have launched a business that you would want to see as a successful venture. You can have a section that offers free Christmas cards or other greeting cards that can be mailed.

You can have sections where people can get free coupons for some of your specialized services or even discount coupons for some of your products. This will ensure that people use them and as a result, your business will gain a lot of visibility.

These are some of the best ways of viral marketing and has reaped success for many a business. These time-proven formulas are good but they need a little creativity and improvisation from time to time.