Viral Marketing Is A Marketing Technique To Create Buzz And Hype Through Online And Offline Methods

Definition of viral marketing

Viral marketing refers to a specific business strategy that is mainly used for promoting a specific product in the existing social media. As the name suggests that, this type of marketing is based mainly on the consumers of that product as people are directly associated with the spreading of the information regarding the product through their own social media accounts or pages as well.  The main reason of giving such name to the specific business strategy is that the technique is very much similar with the spreading strategy of the virus.  Virus are also spread from one person to another and this marketing strategy is almost same like that as well. Therefore, it is observed that, in most of the cases, this viral marketing is conducted by the words of the mouth of the consumers as well. The term viral marketing was got popular as an advertisement strategy during the 1990s and in the pre-digital marketing era, this concept was first used in the year of 1995 by a strategy team in LA and that team was led by the person named Lorraine Ketch and Fred Satler. Therefore, this strategy was first used for the play station of Sony Computer Entertainment.

Techniques of viral marketing

There are various viral marketing techniques that have high potential to be successful.  Firstly, the brand personality campaigns by using the videos can be mentioned as a technique of viral marketing. In this technique, a video is made to make the people aware about the particular product and simultaneously this technique can make more number of people curious about the product due to the presence of its viral nature. Another important viral marketing technique can be the use of animation as well. Animated videos can attract spectators attention and permit the particular brands to spread their principles in a modest and graphic way. Working with animation instead of actual images allows a lot of options to adjust the style to the brand, from the type of drawing to the colours. But before getting lost in the stylistic details, it should not forgotten to plan the most important part of the marketing part.

Define types of viral marketing

In recent business scenario the viral marketing strategy is very crucial. In the business market, there are different type of viral marketing strategy in the business market. One of the most common viral marketing strategy is the pass-along strategy in which the users are encouraged to pass through the information from one person to another.  Another viral marketing strategy is the undercover marketing that is appearance of viral message in an unusual page and in some cases it may also include the activity or piece of news, without any provocation to link or forward it to others. Buzz marketing is another important viral marketing strategies that is used in businesses. This strategy includes ads or messages that generate controversies that lead to gossip or a topic of discussion. For example, an actor leaking controversial or isolated information just before a new movie is released. Gossip spreads like wildfire; incredibly fast from one person to another and often to another corner of the globe, too. Build a strategy that can create some controversy to become hot gossip, and spread it from one corner of the country to the other.

Advantages & Disadvantages of viral marketing

The advantages of viral marketing service are high credibility, great reach, high efficiency, low costs, and the opportunity to continuous promotion adjustments. The main reasons for the wide popularity of viral marketing are:

Socializing and interacting has now made very closer to the people. So families and friends are simply reachable over the net.

Viral marketing is one of the cost-free methods for promoting a business transaction.

On the other hand, there are a few disadvantages as well in applying the viral marketing strategy in the business.   The main disadvantages of the viral marketing in the business processes are as follows.

• The strength of viral marketing relies on the transmission of messages from one person to another person. During this procedure, it may influence someone you would rather not be related with.
• Keep away from making merely financial-based offer

Principles of viral marketing

The concept of viral marketing is completely based on the use of the internet. Viral marketing makes use of each and every strategy that encourages persons to pass on marketing messages between one another, thus developing the potential for exposure and influence of the message. With rapid multiplication of the message, it will succeed in spreading to thousands and millions all across the world.

There are numerous classic web-based e-mail service providers who give away viral marketing through free e-mail addresses and services. Rather than traditional campaigns, messages through the web reach more and more visitors quickly, similar to a biological virus. The concept of viral marketing is primarily based on a few principles and they are –

• Endorse products or services using definite influential words in a marketer’s language like free, cheap, inexpensive, and so on.
• Deliver an easy intermediate for effortless transmission of your communication like website, e-mail, graphic and software download.
• Derive benefits from mutual human inspirations such as conveying messages from one person to another, thus generating web traffic.
• Utilize every possible communication network on the Internet.
• Make use of other marketing resources like posting free articles and blogs on other web pages.

Viral marketing makes use of every tactic that inspires persons to pass on marketing messages in between one another, thus evolving the potential for exposure and effect of the message.

Examples of viral marketing

One of the most common examples of viral marketing is conducted by the Dove, Unilever along with its advertisements and this was conducted by the advertisement agency named Ogilvy & Mather Brazil as they came out with Dove Real Beauty Sketches movement to permit women regarding how they look. The campaign was a short film introducing an FBI-trained sketch artist Gil Zamora. He was publicized drawing two portraits of women based on the account given by them and on how they were perceived by strangers. Neither did the artist himself look at the appearance of the women, nor were the women aware of the social experiment.