According to Seth Godin, viral marketing is an idea that spreads and while it is spreading, it helps market business or cause. There are two types of viral marketing. First, the marketing is the product and there is a self-amplifying cycle such as YouTube and Hotmail. Second, it is a marketing campaign that spreads (Godin, 2008).
Viral marketing is very effective and powerful form of online marketing. In viral marketing, people pass on a piece of marketing message around, from one person to the others. It spreads the message around very fast. It is an online word-of-mouth advertising. Viral marketing helps business advertise and promote their products and services without spending large amount of money. Marketers just need to update their video or image advertisements on the free websites such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace. Viral marketing can generate more traffic, attract more customers and increase their interest about the products and services. For instance, according to O’Neill, referral is one popular form of viral marketing on Facebook (O’Neill, 2007). The referrals tactic is an effective way to encourage applications users to market application for the company. The application users market the application on their blogs, websites, forums and Facebook walls. They pass the message to their friends. The application users are highly involved in the marketing but not the company.
When using viral marketing, it should be well planned and organized. The product or service should be interesting and attractive for people spread around. When the message spreads, it should create benefits for the business such as enhance their brand image, reputation and profits. Moreover, when using viral marketing, creating good first impression is very important. It will lead people spend more time to do further investigation. For example, Honda-the Accord “Cogs” advertising is one of the best viral marketing campaigns. The advertising is very detailed and sophisticated. It grabs people’s attention from the first moment when the small cog starts the first move. People concentrated on the next moves. The advertising implied the high quality product with lots of details. People spread the message around the world on the internet. The viral marketing created big buzz for Honda Accord. It helped the company to enhance their reputation and continue to build the brand loyalty as well.
To sum up, viral marketing is very important for marketers to promote their business with less expense but higher profit. It also builds brand awareness and enriches the brand reputation.
Bibliography
Godin, S. (2008) What is Viral Marketing? [Internet], Seth Godin’s Blog. Available from: <http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/12/what-is-viral-m.html > [Accessed 26 October 2009].
O’Neill, N. (2007) The Top 5 Viral Facebook Techniques [Internet]. Available from: <http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/07/the-top-5-viral-facebook-techniques/>[Accessed 28 October 2009].
