Viral Marketing

Contents What is Viral marketing? How does it work ? Examples..

Advantages and Disadvantages of Viral Marketing

What is Viral Marketing ?

Any form of advertising or marketing techniques that "spreads" like a virus by getting passed from consumer to consumer and market to market.

It increases in brand awareness, through selfreplicating viral processes

What is Viral Marketing ?

A promotional method that is of the customers, by customers, and for customers

Like viruses, take advantage of the rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands or even to millions

History
viral marketing was popularized by Rayport in the 1996 Fast Company article "The Virus of Marketing,

After that various companies frequently use this technique in their campaigns.
Some believe that viral marketing is new and does not have much history, but it is actually just over 10 years old now.

Contd..

The old form of viral marketing used to be referred as word of mouth,. An individual tells another individual something and it spreads around to many people

Positive word of mouth can have a tremendous impact on a brand.

Functioning
To make viral marketing work, three basic criteria must be met, i.e., Giving the right message To the right messengers In the right environment
01-Messenger: Three specific types of messengers are required for the transformation of message into a viral one. Market mavens Social hubs, Salespeople.

Contd..
Market mavens: Information specialists First to get exposed to the message Transmit it to social network Social hubs: Have large number of social connections. They know hundreds of different people and have the ability to serve as connectors or bridges between different subcultures.

Contd..
Sales people: Receive message from the market maven. Transmit it to the social hub for further distribution 02-Message: Messages that are memorable and interesting can spread easily and become viral messages.. 03-Environment: Environment is crucial in the rise of successful viral marketing Small changes in the environment lead to huge results.

 Items being promoted by a viral means includes:

Games (which are usually made in Flash). Informative, humorous, or entertaining articles. Video clips.

Images.
Brand able software etc..

Where Can Viral Marketing Be Found?

Viral marketing can be found on social media sites such as:

01-Hotmail:

Most of Hotmails success was due to viral marketing, The plan was to provide free e-mail addresses to anyone . In December 1996 Hotmail had 500,000 registered users. less than a year later they had over 12,000,000 users.

02-Will it Blend: Blendtecs will it blend video series shows scientists testing.

various household items blend in their super-powerful blender.

The videos generated millions of views and became an Internet sensation.

03-Evian Babies:

Evian Roller Babies, broke the world record for the most viewed online advertisement in history . Evian's wildly successful viral campaign has passed to 100 million total views.

The video, which jokingly illustrates the youthful effect Evian mineral water has on the body.
bunch of babies freestyle roller-skating, received a 102 million views, 130,000 comments and 500,000 Face book fans across a number of Roller Baby fan pages. .

04- virgin Blue tweets:

On the 9th anniversary , Virgin Blue gave away 1000 plane tickets for $9 each through their Twitter. This vastly raised the profile of the Virgin Blue.

05- the obama Campaign:

During presidential election rolled around in 2008, and 2010 Obama goes for viral campaign.

create Face book pages in the early stages of the campaign. reach out to all corners of social media to recruit and energize followers.

06-Subservient chicken:

The Subservient Chicken was a promotion for Burger Kings Burger Kings Chicken Tender Crisp sandwich. The campaign was wildly successful, .

Advantages of Viral Marketing

Cheap and low cost

Extensive reach
caters the exact target market of the product .

Disadvantages of Viral Marketing

Brand Dilution
competitors understand marketing techniques and steal the market Focuses more on short term success. Negative buzz.

References
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing Viral Marketing Blog: http://viralmarketing4290.blogspot.com David Meerman Scot, The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly, 3ed (2011)

Thank you!