Viral marketing is a popular and widely used marketing strategy today that relies heavily on people rather than traditional campaigns to get a message across to others. Basically, viral marketing and viral advertising use pre-existing social networks to generate exponential improvements in brand awareness along with the help of self-replicating viral processes, corresponding to the spread of a computer virus. The term “viral advertising” itself means that the idea behind this marketing speaks of transmitting and sharing interesting and entertaining content, which is usually sponsored by a brand that seeks to generate awareness of a product or service. These viral commercials are usually some funny video clips or interactive Flash games, images and even text.
Viral marketing received tremendous recognition among internet marketers after the unlikely success of Hotmail or ICQ. And now almost all internet marketers like to promote their product through viral concept. Therefore, we could say that viral marketing gained popularity in a very short time due to the ease of executing the marketing campaign, great affordability, good targeting, and incredibly fast response rate. However, the ability to get a large number of interested people on an extremely cheap budget remains its most powerful attribute.
Acquiring and then retaining a large customer base is the hardest job for a business. Fortunately, the good use of the Internet and the excellent results of email advertising have been very beneficial for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. Through viral marketing, one can not only send messages, but also avoid the hassle of spam that most customers hate to witness. Let us now analyze some of the most used viral marketing campaigns.
- Pass through: This is often referred to as the crudest form as it encourages the user to send messages to others. It usually tries to form a thread where a message placed at the bottom of the email asks the reader to forward the message.
- viral incentivized: In this type of marketing, you secure a gift or reward for passing on a message or providing someone else’s address. This significantly increases referrals and becomes more effective when the offer calls for someone else to take action.
- Cutting Edge Gossip/Buzz Marketing: Nervous gossip is basically advertisements and messages capable of creating controversy by defying restrictions of taste or appropriateness. Talking about given controversy often generates buzz and word of mouth publicity. Like for example, before a movie is released, the beginnings mostly create controversies like getting engaged or getting arrested, or getting involved in some controversy which draws the attention of the conversation towards them. A slightly more refined and subtle form of this marketing campaign is called a covert viral marketing campaign.
- User Managed Database: With this type of viral marketing campaign, users create and manage their own contact lists through a database provided by an online service provider. They invite other members to participate in their community and thus create a viral. It’s basically a self-propagating chain of contacts that grows and convinces others to sign up as well.
