Marketing Your Flea Market Business Course

Marketing Your Flea Market Business Course Lesson 3: Viral Marketing Strategies

In this lesson you will learn what viral marketing is and how to use it to create word of mouth buzz for your flea market business. Viral marketing is a cool term for word of mouth on the Internet. It is where people hear about your business or products through other people.

Viral Marketing sounds like something bad but it is actually something very good. What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands and then to millions. The idea is to get everyone to spread your marketing message around because they want to.

The best way to get people to talk about and recommend your business is to over-deliver to your customers. Examples of providing good customer service can include providing tips for how to use your product, product safety tips, discounts for complimentary products or tips about what other products they may need. By providing your customers with information related to your products, you increase their trust in you and allow them to make better purchasing decisions. A customer that receives more than they expect is a happy customer. And a happy customer will spread the word about your business.

Other ways to build buzz about your flea market business include:

-Email Newsletters: Staying in contact with your customers, keeps your business name in their mind. You can use a newsletter to offer your customers discounts, specials, or other offers. You can provide them with information about your products. Through your newsletter, your customers get to know you better and will be more comfortable recommending your business to their friends and family. We will cover more about newsletters in lesson 5.

-Blogging: You could also build buzz and relationships with your customers with a blog. Blogs are very popular. You can use your blog the same way you would a newsletter. Some people prefer reading blogs, than having to sign up for a newsletter.

-Video Clips: You can produce video clips of how to use products, promotional videos of the products you sell (a video tour of your flea market booth), funny videos of people using your products, etc. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. Videos are very viral, especially if they are funny or controversial.

-Games, Software, Scripts: Offering fun games or useful software can be good. You can find many free games and other freebies online. Put them on a disc, include an advertisement about your business, and then give them away to your flea market customers.

-Ebooks: Create ebooks about product care tips, product use tips, how to guides (make a craft project), product safety tips, discounts/coupons for complementary items, etc. and allow people to share them with others. Ebooks can be very viral if they contain valuable information.

-Articles: Write articles about the above topics and submit them to article directories or allow other people to post them on their website or in their newsletters.

-Contests/Giveaways/Prize Drawings: We have already discussed this in a previous lesson but I wanted to mention it again because people will tell others about contests. If you offer them on a continual basis you can generate a lot of repeat traffic to your booth.

Action Step: Choose one of the methods above and put them to use for your flea market business.

In the next lesson you will learn some website marketing strategies.

Lesson 1 Lesson 2 Lesson 3 Lesson 4 Lesson 5

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