Viral Marketing

Overview

Viral marketing is an advertising technique that uses social networks to increase brand awareness and visibility of a company's product or service. Viral advertising is a marketing plan that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others. It is done by creating messages that contain concepts that are compelling enough for people pass them on to others. Different forms of viral promotions include video clips, games, eBooks, text messages, interactive Flash games, and images. This marketing technique relies on people to spread information by word of mouth or though an electronic message.

Viral marketing depends on the pass rate from person to person. If a large number of recipients forward the message to an equally large number of friends and relatives, then the overall publicity increases very quickly. The low investment and high reach of viral marketing has made this technique very popular among companies. Various types of viral marketing include pass along, incentivized viral, undercover, buzz marketing, and user managed database.

Viral marketing costs depend on the medium and manpower. Online marketing methods are relatively cheaper than offline techniques.

Benefits

A major benefit of viral marketing is that it is very powerful advertising tool and reaches a large number of people in a short amount of time. Another advantage of viral advertising is that it is very cost effective. It is a simple marketing method that is easy to implement and can quickly increase the visibility of your website. It enhances online sales and generates buzz and traffic to your website. Name recognition and increased web traffic are other advantages of viral marketing techniques.

How It Works

Viral marketing is based on the concept that people pass and share interesting and entertaining content. If you plan to advertise your product or company using viral marketing, you should formulate a plan and execute a strategy. Then, generate coverage for your campaign. Finally, study the end result and feedback received to find out how successful your campaign has been.

Viral marketing can be done by encouraging links to your sites and writing articles on your products and services. Welcome comments and posts from people who visit your company's website. Set up an affiliate program and send out news releases concerning a free service or product available on your site. Encourage word of mouth recommendation, invite users to send mails and faxes to their friends, and enable visitors to send postcards cards from your website. You can also offer visitors a free download of a program that carries your marketing message.

Viral marketing should have a self propagating marketing plan. When you send a message to a particular number of people, they should pass on the message to other people to maximize the number of people who see the message.

Companies/Brands

Viral Buzz and Eleven Marketing offer viral marketing solutions.