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Viral marketing and '''viral advertising''' refer to Marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing Social Network s to produce exponential increases in Brand awareness, through Viral processes similar to the spread of an Epidemic . It is Word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it harnesses the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly. Viral marketing is sometimes used to describe some sorts of Internet -based Stealth Marketing campaigns, including the use of Blog s, seemingly amateur web sites, and other forms of Astroturfing to create Word Of Mouth for a new product or service. Often the ultimate goal of viral marketing campaigns is to generate media coverage via "offbeat" stories worth many times more than the campaigning company's advertising budget. The term "viral advertising" refers to the idea that people will pass on and share interesting and entertaining content; this is often sponsored by a brand, which is looking to build awareness of a product or service. These viral commercials often take the form of funny video clips, or interactive Flash games, images, and even text. 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. The main weakness is that sometimes messages can look like E-mail Spam and this creates the risk of damaging the brand. The 'from' and 'subject' lines then become very important in order to remedy this problem (Tell-A-Friend principle); for example, when sending a link or webpage, sometimes the subject line is "(Name of person here) thought you would like this page". The receiver will then recognize the name and know that it is not unsolicited. The most difficult task for any company is to acquire and retain a large customer base. Through the use of the internet and the effects of e-mail advertising, the business-to-consumer (B2C) efforts have a greater impact than many other tools of marketing. Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail; it encourages users of a specific product or service to tell a friend. This would be a positive word-of-mouth recommendation. One of the most successful perspectives found to achieve this customer base is the integrated marketing communication IMC perspective. HISTORY Some argue the term ''viral marketing'' was originally coined by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's Email practice of appending Advertising for themselves to outgoing mail from their users. The first to write about viral marketing was media critic Douglas Rushkoff in his 1994 book "Media Virus." The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user will become "infected" (i.e., sign up for an account) and can then go on to infect other susceptible users. As long as each infected user sends mail to more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the Basic Reproductive Rate is greater than one), standard results in Epidemiology imply that the number of infected users will grow according to a Logistic Curve , whose initial segment appears exponential. If each user sends mail to more than one susceptible user then the campaign will in theory continue forever, or at least until all susceptible users have already received the message. Even if the message is not forwarded quite that often, the message might still be forwarded many more times than it was initially sent. For example, consider a campaign that starts out by mailing 100 users. Not all of them will forward the email, but some of them might. This 'some' would be tested using market research; say, for example, that it turns out to be 80% and that each forwards it to only one friend. In this case, 80 people would receive a "first generation" forwarded message. From there it would decline roughly exponentially, so that each generation would be smaller than the next, as 80, 64, 51.2, 40.96, 32.768, 26.214, 20.971, 16.777, 13.421, 10.737. Eventually the campaign would fade out. Research must be carried out on the life expectancy of such a campaign. More complicated formulas can be generated, but this would be the easiest for most marketing departments to work out. So the final campaign would cost the original amount of funds needed to send the email to 100 users and the rest (357, in this case) would be users marketed by viral methods and normally for free. TYPES, METHODS, AND BARRIERS Types of viral messages
Methods of transmission Transmission of viral marketing can occur in various ways:
Barriers to viral marketing
NOTABLE EXAMPLES OF VIRAL MARKETING
SEE ALSO
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