Hi all participants,

Few days back when I was browsing through a magazine I came across a term called ‘ VIRAL MARKETING’. This term was something new to me and so I did a little so called research on it.. :p and it’s a really interesting way of marketing your product. I would really like to share a few important points about it with u..

What does a virus have to do with 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.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing." While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won't try. The term "viral marketing" has stuck.

The Classic Hotmail.com Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

Give away free e-mail addresses and services,

Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,

Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,

Who see the message,

Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then

Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Similar strategies were used by social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook as well.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

Gives away products or services

Provides for effortless transfer to others

Scales easily from small to very large

Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Utilizes existing communication networks

Takes advantage of others' resources

Participant,

Tushar Mehta

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

About this blog

A one stop destination for the batch-mates to share their insights on diverse topics related to marketing.The blog will share whatever has been discussed in class.All of you can contribute and make this place engaging and something to look forward to.

Followers

My Blog List

Total Pageviews

Blog Archive

Powered by Blogger.