What is Viral Marketing?

Viral Marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing."

The strategy may also include video clips, interactive forums, newsletters, ebooks and images accompanied by dedicated test messages.


Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

A viral marketing strategy including 6 elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral mareting strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors

5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantages of others' resources

Sources:

The Six Simple Principle of Viral Marketing by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles.htm

Advantages of Viral Marketing

The word-of-mouth concept ripples on to peer-to-peer recommendation of the product or service. It also enables the business to generate revenue from local interest in the venture. In McDonald case, most of the web banners posted on the popular website like yahoo, msn, tvb.com and some popular games websites. It can create peer-to-peer recommendation and impression of McDonald 24 hours delivery service.

To promote more businesss transactions of McDonald 24 hours delivery service, it can create high credibility, high efficiency, low cost throughout viral marketing. Such as McDonald receiving the unparallel attention of the massive crowd at a relatively low cost throughout Internet advertisements like web banners, pop-up ads.

And it is probably a way more effective way to create brand awareness and to get the world out to consumers.

Disadvantages of Viral Marketing

Brand Dilution
It depends upon people not versed in your brand to do the "selling" for you. It is important to carefully bring a message that makes your communication brandness.

Association with unknown groups
Viral marketing's strength is its potential to spread exponentially from person to person. During this process, it is possible that the message could wind up in the hands of and passed on by someone who would rather not be associated with. The only way to partially counter this is to ahead of time define an dlimit what information to make available for viral marketing.

Spam Threats
Viral marketing is done poorly, it can lead to large-scale spam issues. Flames may result, leading to damage to the advetiser's reputation. If friend's receiving an unsolicited commercial email can weaken his or her replationship with the person who sent it. This can lead to the recipient of the email dropping a friend and becoming angry with the marketer for sending an unsolicited message. In McDonald case, there are many pop-up ads on the yahoo, msn etc websites. It will lead to the recipient becoming angry and trouble with the marketer for some unsolicited message.

What is Viral Marketing?

"Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence."

I am using a simple example to explain how viral marketing works effectively.

Consider when you check your email, you see a mail from a friend which is a buy one get one free e-coupon offered by Levi's, you will always open it because of your trusting relationship with your friend. When you choose to forward this message to the other friends, you have already endorsed it and given credibility to Levi's product.

In this way, you become a brand advocate every time you transfer the message to others and the others will do the same to his own social network. Like viruses, the message will be replicated rapidly and reached thousands of people.


Key Points:
1.Viral marketing is a new way to reach your target audience.
2.For viral marketing to work, you must understand what will motivate your target audience to pass on a message to someone with similar interests.
3.Viral marketing is word-of-mouth marketing via a digital platform that can spread exponentially.

Source:"The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing" by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
Source:"Viral Marketing:Get your audience to do your marketing for you" by Russell Goldsmith

Advantages and Disadvantage of Viral Marketing

Taking the example of IKEA Facebook Showroom, the main advantage of using Facebook to create viral marketing buzz is that its message can reach a larger number of Facebook users within seconds in a cost-effective way.

The vital of successful viral marketing is that message are forwarded on to friends, family and social group who know the sender. Unlike junk mail, the receivers are happy to receive and forward any message among their friends. The positive word-of-mouth will allows marketers to tap into the community’s existing networks and spread not only the marketing message but also increase their purchase intention.

The main disadvantage of viral marketing on this case is that IKEA limited their marketing communications within the social networks of Facebook only. I believe some of their target audience or brand loyalists are not in the Facebook networks yet, they definitely miss out the opportunities to reach them.

The other problem is that IKEA cannot control the users’ comment posted at the Facebook, it can be either positive appraisal or negative sentiment about their company.

Source: http://09832994s.blogspot.com

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral Marketing can be defined as an electronic form of word of mouth marketing. It is sometimes called online viral marketing or buzz marketing [1]. Word of mouth is a marketing technique that encourages people to talk about products and services [2].

Key elements can be seen in viral marketing are

1. Information
2. People
3. Value
4. Go viral
5. Digital Channels

INFORMATION - The information can be about a company, product, news or sharing own views on an issue.

PEOPLE usually have two similarity: like to talk and spend time online regularly.

VALUE - Usually if the information is informational, fun, creative, with incentives or inviting for views tends to attract people’s attention and encourage people to spread, to share and to respond to it.

GO VIRAL - When someone comes across a piece of worthwhile information and spread it to friends/peers on digital channels. These friends/peers continue spreading the information to their friends/peers and so on which this spreading activity is called “go viral”.

DIGITAL CHANNELS - With the popularity of web 2.0 technologies [3], more channels are available and the communications become more dynamic and interactive. People can share text, graphics, videos, photos by emails, mobile applications, social network media and readers can respond online simultaneously.

To companies, viral marketing can be the most powerful marketing tool and deliver some unexpected achievements.

Interested to read how my teammates define viral marketing, please click the Viral Marketing tab on top of the screen or the links below.

Priscilla Poon,
Wallace Fung
Celia Chan
Wallace Cheng

References:

[1] Textbook 1 - Internet Marketing Strategy Implementation and Practice 4th Edition, Chaffey and others, page 556.

[2] www.womma.org

[3] Web 2.0 is a collection of web services that facilitate interaction of web users with a site to create user-generated content and encouraging certain behaviours online such as community or social network participation and user-generated content, mashups, content rating, use of widgets and tagging.

[4] viral marketing model - http://leneberlin.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/viral-marketing/ and edited

What so good about Viral Marketing

In an article written by Ben Bold of Brandrepublic and my own findings, the results of the Cadbury eyebrows dancing TVC can be summarised:

Out of GBP3.7m ad spend to broadcast the TVC in the UK, the TVC received

• Viewing rate over 50% vs last year
• 6 million hits in Youtube worldwide
• Recommended by celebrities such as Kanye West [1], Perez Hilton [2], Stephen Fry [3] and countless netizens
• Partner with mobile operator Orange to offer ringtones and records 125,000 times download in 11 days
• Publicities from BBC news, Brandrepublic and awards
• and for sure there are more which are not covered here
  

We can easily see the power and advantages of viral marketing.

1 Minimise ad avoidance
As the information is passed around among peers and friends, trust exists and people tends to open and to remember what has been seen/heard.

2 High reach
With the web 2.0 and internet technologies, message can be transmitted to a large number of recipients in almost no time.

3 Cost and Time Effective
Because of the viral effect, same amount of budget used in new age media can reach audience in wider span than the traditional media and a lot faster.

4 Reach the unreachable
As the information got pass along and recommended by people with special background and rating, these can attract new segments of potential customers which the company has not considered.

5 Free publicity
If you can create an interesting, breakthrough or creative message, it is possible to get media, bloggers, columnists to comment on your story and reach their readers.

6 Identity product and market expansion opportunities
Again, with the help of web 2.0, communications are more interactive and dynamic. By closely monitoring the communications, you may identify what are the future needs of your customers; how to reach them and the competitive advantages of your competitors.

7 Can be seeding
Viral marketing can be planned. Have a good knowledge of the technologies and netizens’ behaviours, companies can develop creative message to surprise and inspire customers.

Interested to read more, please click the Viral Marketing tab on the top of the screen or visit Priscilla's, Wallace Fung's, Wallace Cheng's and Celia's blogs.

References:
[1] Kayne West is a Grammy award rapper; singer and record producer.
[2] Perez Hilton is an American blogger and TV personality. His blog is known for posts covering gossip items about musicians, actors and celebrities.
[3] Stephen Fry is an English actor, writer, journalist, comedian, television presenter and film director.

What are the downside of Viral Marketing

Well, viral marketing also has its downside.

1 Little control over the outcome

Although I have mentioned we can seed a viral marketing campaign, no one can guarantee if the outcome is what we planned. People in the online community are so diversified.

2 Negative feedbacks lead to crisis

Just like word of mouth, the feedback can be negative. Companies can stop a campaign but the feedback can continue to go viral. This may lead to a crisis for companies and competitors may beneficial from this potential crisis.

Hong Kong Broadcasting Authority received complaints from parents over the Cadbury eyebrows dancing TVC and the commercial was banned [1].

3 Successful campaign may not be a sales generator

The viral marketing can be successful itself but does not mean revenue will be generated in proportion.

Going back to the Cadbury eyebrows dancing TVC, I personally like it very much, I passed it around but I have not bought even one bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate due to my preference taste and alternatives available!

Interested to read more, please click the Viral Marketing tab on top of the screen or visit Priscilla's, Wallace Fung's, Wallace Cheng's and Celia's blogs.


References:
[1] http://hk.news.yahoo.com/article/100428/4/hqit.html

Viral Marketing? What is this term?

Someone call it Viral, buzz or “word of mouse” marketing.
Most of the Viral happened in internet. The main purpose of viral marketing
is to have other people tell your story drives action.
According to MarketingTerms.com #1, the definition of Viral Marketing is the
phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.

E=MC^2

So what is the formula of Viral?
It’s very simple.

Media + Content + People + link

1. Choose the media

Just some great and free web content (which can be a video, blog, e-book)
By taking the advantage of information technology, now internet users can
create their own site within a short period. You don’t need to study any computer language.

2. . Special content

Groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity
People intended to watch funny video, explosive news or something they have never seen

3. Network of people to light the fire

As the traditional viral marketing case “Mentos and Diet Coke”,
something to viral when the marketer didn’t start it.
If you found the people are interested your product,
service or idea. Please do not hesitate tell them.

4. All link that make it very easy to share.

Just like the bottom of this post, people can be very easy to share the whole
content by a click icon. After clicking the share button, this post will be shown
in their social network page.

Source: 1, The new rules of marketing and PR




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Any advantages of viral marketing?

There are 4 pros of viral marketing.

Cheap and low cost (there's no printing involved!)

The cost is very low and even free!!!
It is because viral marketing make uses of digital media.
No printed material will be involved. Marketers just register
 a free account, then you can promote their campaign.

High efficiency

Scales easily from small to very large
When people watch a funny video, they can simply click the
share button. Then the whole video will appear on their site
instantly. It is because the Information Technology increases
the speed of circulation.

High credibility

It is because the funny thing is shared by their friend,
so the receiver may reduce the resistance of reading.
They will not associate that is an advertisement. Most
people trust their friends rather than marketers.

Extensive reach

When someone pass the information over his friends and
their friends pass it again. Many people will get the
information. People will not concern the receiver’s
nature or personal preference. They just want to share the fun.
So Viral Marketing can be the extend the reach of campaign even
an fail campaign.

Source: 1, 2







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So what are the disadvantages of using viral marketing

Large-scale spam issues

Lose Control
Especially in Hong Kong, there is only few successful viral buzz.
Most of the buzz are created by net users instead of the marketer.
Some people in Hong Kong would like to re-write new lyrics for song
in the advertising, modify the photos or even make a “new version”
of the video. The traditional example is BaWang shampoo.





and the latest case is Lion Toothbrush (Andy Hui)

Brand Dilution

Nobody care about your product (except you)
It is because people only care about themselves and the ways
to solve their problems. Also people like to be entertained
and to share in something remarkable.

Avoid making purely financial-based offer

If we use money as an incentive to encourage people to make
the campaign viral, it will result 2 outcomes.
1) People will spam the offer across the web and the cost
of the campaign will be increased
2) People will perceive the offer as “too good to be true”
and no one will trust the information

Association with unknown groups

It is because viral marketing has the potential to spread
exponentially from person to person.
There are so many social media on the internet, so marketers
are not easy to know what people passed the message. So the
only thing can do is to ahead of time define and limit what
information we make available for our viral marketing.


Source: 1, 2: Text book -The new rules of marketing and PR





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What is Viral Marketing

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

The goal of a viral marketer is to create "buzz" about a product or idea, so that the idea spreads widely. If effective, viral marketing may require very little effort on the part of the propagandist, as the recipients of the message become the primary agents who spread it to other people. Initially viral marketers identify individuals with high social networking potential and create viral messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being passed

Key points
1) Viral marketing is a word-of-mouth marketing but in digitally
2) Effortless to transfer to others people
3) Scales easily from small to very large

Source: The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing by Dr. Ralph F Wilson, E-commerce consultant, Web Marketing Today, Febraury 1, 2005http://www.viralmarketingwiki.com/

Advantages of Viral Marketing

Surfing the internet is almost daily habit to everyone. Therefore, viral marketing has a lot of benefit.

1) Over 1 billion people has seen see Bad Romance mv on youtube, it effectively helps promote the song all over the world in cost effective way. Also nowadays, people like to watch audio plus video, it surely draw people's attention

2) People are easily to see the video on youtube, no matter people are out-of-home, they can still use mobile phone to see the video. On the other hand, there is no time constraints on youtube, that means whenever you want or wherever you are, you can still see the video on youtube. Promotion power is definitely deepened

3) When we see the mv on youtube, we also can post message on the text box, marketing specialist can know or understand the people views or even they can interact with people

Disadvantages of Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing seems the best promotion method in 21st century, particularly in digital world, but it still has the drawbacks

1) If the trend becomes more and more usual, people would expect all songs should be uploaded on youtube. They may not even spend $1 on music product since they may regard music as a freebee. It won't help records company in long run

2) Youtube is welcome everyone to upload their own video , in this case Lady Gaga's records company has uploaded an official MV on youtube, the MV picture, story, edition is perfect but what if uploaded by someone and post some unappealing picture or motion graphics, it may destroy the song.