I have been around this earth for quite some time now. I am not old, but I have seen enough to realize what works and what doesnt. Now in the twenty first century we get bombarded with advertising every day of our lives. You cant drive down the road, listen to the radio, watch television or browse the Internet without seeing hundreds, if not thousands of ads of products you couldnt care less about. But as soon as your best friend, wife, neighbor, cousin, or second cousin in law mentions their favorite restaurant or a great movie at the theater you jump up off your seat and run to confirm their recommendations.

Word of mouth works! The reason for this is that perhaps in a self defense response to capitalism, we have developed ad-blindness. We tend to ignore as many advertisements as humanly possible in order to carry out a semi-normal life. But when someone you know tells you about a product or event, your defense mechanism does not trigger an alarm. You joyfully take their suggestions at heart and do what consumers do best buy.

Dont get too pessimistic. If you are trying to promote a product or service, all is not lost. You just have to adapt to the modern consumer and use what you know to your advantage. As an Internet marketer, I highly rely on word of mouth to get traffic to my website. But since I am a little bit on the impatient side, I have adopted a technique that some may refer to as word of mouth on steroids!

The are programs on the Internet that can act as the mouth that would spread the word all over the world. This handy little tools allow me to write an email, sales letter or web page, as beefed up with graphics, forms, tables as I want it. After I am done creating whatever is I want to say, I just email it to a few of my friends, and to a few hundred of my newsletter subscribers. This is where the magic begins. They will receive this message, but before being able to read all of their contents they are asked to send this information to some of their friends. Before I know it, there are hundreds of people getting my sales letter from their best friend, mother, cousin or teacher. It is beautiful.

Go out there and find your viral marketing tools, it is a sure way to get that word of mouth promotion that will bring quality traffic to your website.

Copyright 2006 Guillermo Puyol