"Viral" Word itself so Communicable that it must create a buzz. In marketing we called it "Buzz" marketing or "Viral Marketing" or "Word of mouth Marketing".
What is Viral Marketing?
Viral marketing or viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. Other way some define it as "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. "
The goal behind creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create Viral Messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being taken by another competitor.
Why Viral Marketing?
1) Ease of executing the marketing campaign, relative low-cost (compared to direct mail), good targeting,
2) 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.
3) 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.
Few Types of Viral Marketing:
1) Pass-along: A message which encourages the user to send the message to others. The crudest form of this is chain letters where a message at the bottom of the e-mail prompts the reader to forward the message
2) Incentivised viral: A reward is offered for either passing a message along or providing someone else's address. This can dramatically increase referrals. However, this is most effective when the offer requires another person to take action.
3) Undercover: A viral message presented as a cool or unusual page, activity, or piece of news, without obvious incitements to link or pass along. In Undercover Marketing, it is not immediately apparent that anything is being marketed
4)"Edgy Gossip/Buzz marketing" ads or messages that create controversy by challenging the borders of taste or appropriateness. Discussion of the resulting controversy can be considered to generate buzz and word of mouth advertising. Prior to releasing a movie, some Hollywood movie stars get married, get divorced, or get arrested, or become involved in some controversy that directs conversational attention to them.
5) User-managed database: Users create and manage their own lists of contacts using a database provided by an online service provider. By inviting other members to participate in their community, users create a viral, self-propagating chain of contacts that naturally grows and encourages others to sign up as well.
Some examples of Viral Marketing:
1) Cadbury's Dairy Milk 2007 Gorilla advertising campaign was heavily popularised on YouTube and Facebook.
2) In 2007, Portuguese football club Sporting Portugal integrated a viral feature in their campaign for season seats. In their website, a video required the user to input his name and phone number before playback started, which then featured the coach Paulo Bento and the players waiting at the locker room while he makes a phone call to the user telling him that they just can't start the season until the user buys his season ticket. Flawless video and phone call synchronization and the fact that it was a totally new experience for the user led to nearly 200,000 pageviews phone calls in less than 24 hours.
Viral expansion loop
A viral expansion loop is similar to viral marketing with one notable difference: viral marketing can't be replicated indefinitely, while a viral expansion loop must be in order for it to exist. When properly conceived and implemented, a viral loop almost guarantees self-replicating growth. Companies that have attempted to utilize viral loops to their advantage include social networking engine Ning, and viral loops power many Web 2.0 icons, including Twitter, 4chan ,Orkut, PayPal, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Digg and Flickr.
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