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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