6.6 Getting Viral With Free Reports

Viral marketing is any form of marketing that induces the public at large to market your product for you. And giving away free reports is one of the best ways to inspire others to perform the viral marketing for you. This strategy is often called "getting viral with free reports."

Getting viral with free reports can be quite easy. All you have to do is perform research on a given topic and then compile a report on a very specific, hot topic. You will want to compile it in PDF format, which you can do for free by either downloading Open Office or by using one of numerous free PDF creators available.

When getting viral with free reports, you will want to carefully build in some type of back-end lead capture or sales capture system. While simply giving away a free report may induce referrals to your site, it wont guarantee sales, repeat visits, or subscriptions.

How can you build in a back-end mechanism when getting viral with free reports? You can do this in two ways: you can either require site visitors to subscribe in order to get your report or you can include a back-end mechanism in the report itself.

If you wish to require site visitors to subscribe, you can do this with something called a Name Squeeze page. This is essentially a form page that requires a visitor to fill in her email address and name to receive a free newsletter before she can receive the report. Once they sign up, you will be able to send them periodical advertisements to earn commissions. If you use an autoresponder and a follow-up mailing series, you can make additional sales without creating a newsletter each week.

The other method of getting viral with free reports involves building your back-end mechanism into your book. You can do this by building an overwhelming case for something specific - and inspiring curiosity - and then requiring them to follow a link to where you can either make a related sale or sign them up for a free newsletter.