Viral Marketing

Posted in Viral Media by admin on July 30th, 2008

Viral marketing refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes. It is a social media marketing method and is used widely these days. It can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly. Often the goal of viral marketing campaigns is to generate media coverage via “offbeat” stories worth many times more than the campaigning company’s advertising budget.

Viral marketing is popular because of the ease of executing the marketing campaign, relative low-cost (compared to direct mail), good targeting, and the high and rapid response rate. The main strength of viral marketing is its ability to obtain a large number of interested people at a low cost.

Types of Viral Marketing

Pass-along. This is the most common type of viral marketing. Web sites that ask their users to tell-a-friend about their products and services is an example of pass-along messaging

Incentivised viral: A reward is offered for either passing a message along or providing someone else’s address. This can dramatically increase referrals.

Online marketing is growing faster than other types of media. However it has some limitations also abd biggest is the inability of shoppers to touch, smell, taste or try-on tangible goods before making an online purchase.