An Introduction To Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a fairly new phenomenon that uses pre-existing social networks to produce rapid increases in brand awareness and is a marketing strategy that suits multiple businesses.

Viral marketing was intially kick-started by word-of-mouth via MySpace messages or Bebo comments, but as new media pushes the boundaries, viral marketing has adapted into video clips, interactive flash games, eye-catching images or even text messages. The idea is that someone shares something entertaining and this is passed on to the receiver’s friends and so on until it snowballs to thousands of users who all share it.

The goal of viral marketing is to create a quick buzz through media channels that receive a lot of exposure. Viral marketing is also much cheaper than traditional means. For example, you may pay thousands to get a half page ad in a newspaper once but you can spend less than £1,000 making a hilarious video that is online forever and receives millions of views.

Unfortunately, viral marketing is heavily exposed to spam. For example, you can buy “Stumbles” that will see your page/video given the “Thumbs Up” by users you have paid. This can help achieve a high number of visitors but it also means users are prone to irrelevant media that quite frankly, pisses them off.

As new media excels, I would strongly suggest companies begin to publish podcasts and videos that can be shared. Sometimes long blog posts can be boring and you have to try harder to entertain your customers, especially in saturated markets.

I love viral marketing