A lot of marketers, business owners, and webmasters are looking for that great viral element for their marketing campaigns.  I've highlighted several case studies that illustrate the benefit of a viral marketing effort.  Remember the personalized video that Opel created?  Or the telephone invitation  from a local NBA celebrity that the Memphis Grizzlies used?  Both of those campaigns proved to be wildly successful in part to their viral elements.

But what if you don't have the money to create the complex video/telemarketing/email combination that Open did?  What if you don't have a local celebrity to use as an inviter?  In an article at Search Engine Guide, Jennifer Laycock looks at an affordable and easy viral element that can added to any marketing campaign of any size and in virtually any medium.

Laycock refers to the practice as "refer a friend", and although that name might not ring a bell, I'm sure you've seen this before.  The practice Laycock is referring to involves engaging customers to pass word along about your website or business.  And as she points out, these referrals can be just as successful offline as they are on.

With a website, it's easy to implement.  In fact, there are probably dozens of ways to create a referral option at your site.  It can be as simple as a place for visitors to enter email addresses of people that might be interested in the site.  It could even include incentives like the ones Laycock discusses in her article.  The company in her article offers customers the chance to send $5 coupons to friends after the completion of a sale.  In return for referring the company to others, the referrer also receives a $5 coupon for their next purchase.

What if you don't sell anything online?  You can still use referral elements.  Send referred customers printable coupons by email that can be redeemed in your store.  And, to entice visitors to participate, send the referrer a coupon too.  Or, as Laycock suggests, hand coupons out in the store.  There really are a ton of ways to make this viral element part of your advertising and marketing efforts.

Two suggestions I'll make to help the success of any such program:  try to work a tracking system of some kind in to gauge the ROI of your effort and make sure customers have some sort of incentive to participate.  Sure, you'll have people volunteer to spread the word about your website or business without getting anything in return.  But you'll have a lot more people trade you referrals for some benefit in return.

So now that the hamster wheels up there are turning, what are you thinking?  How can you implement a referral aspect to your existing marketing endeavors?