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.