Viral Marketing in Digital Marketing

1. (VIRAL MARKETING)

2. WHAT IS VIRAL MARKETING ?
 Viral marketing seeks to spread information about a product or
service from person to person by word of mouth or sharing via the
internet or email.
 The goal of viral marketing is to inspire individuals to share
a marketing message to friends, family, and other individuals to
create exponential growth in the number of its recipients.

3. Understanding Viral Marketing
 In the case of viral marketing, "viral" refers to something that spreads quickly and
widely across its audience. Viral marketing is a deliberate enterprise, though the
distribution of a message happens organically. As such, social media provides
the perfect ecosystem for viral marketing, though it has its roots in
traditional word-of-mouth marketing.
 While the practice was much more widely used in the early to mid-2000s, as new
internet businesses were being created in extreme numbers, it is still common
among internet-based business-to-consumer (B-to-C) companies. The
widespread adoption of social media networks—including YouTube, Twitter,
Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook—has enabled modern viral marketing efforts
and increased their efficacy.

4. Viral marketing example
Zoom had come up with a Virtual Background Competition in
March 2020. It had introduced the monthly competition for remote
workers. They could share videos or pictures using zoom’s virtual
background feature. A monthly competition with three prizes per
month.

5. People have started sharing the Shot on iPhone images and video.
The campaign became a great hit because of the memes. Apple
had successfully portrayed itself as the best camera phone for all
camera lovers

6. Uber's Launch Campaign
Another great example of viral marketing that incidentally took place in Austin,
Texas.
Uber became a social sensation at the South by South West festival. They
offered free rides to attendees during the conference and festival. This created a
sensation during the event and people started discussing it on social media.
Wouldn’t you? Everyone wants to experience free service and that too in such
style!

7. Viral Marketing Characteristics
 All viral marketing examples—deliberate or accidental—have three things in
common: the message, messenger, and environment. Each part must be
leveraged to create a successful viral marketing campaign. Viral marketing
campaigns may be created by any size business and can stand alone or be a part
of a larger traditional campaign.
 These campaigns may use several tools (e.g., videos, games, images, email, text
messaging, and free products) to appeal to the emotions of users or viewers, raise
awareness of a worthy cause, and make it easier to consume and share. Viral
marketing often relies on the help of an influencer, who has a large network of
followers.
 With the help of social networks as a "force multiplier," viral marketing is quicker
than traditional marketing campaigns, as well as less expensive. Since it can
receive so much traffic in a short time, it can also lead to mainstream media
attention. Social media can also cause viral marketing efforts to misfire, as
messages are altered, misconstrued, considered spam, or called out for missing
the mark. Viral marketing success can also be hard to measure.

8. Advantages & Disadvantages of Viral Marketing
 Viral marketing allows companies to better market their products by reaching
consumers that ordinarily would not be targeted by its traditional marketing
campaigns. This expanded reach allows the company to enter new markets and
potentially expand its customer base.
 Viral marketing costs are a fraction of traditional advertising campaigns. And
advertising is essentially free when consumers infectiously share their positive
experiences with a company's products and services with others
 Because the internet allows content to be shared easily and quickly, viral
marketing can also trigger exponential and rapid growth. However, it is important
to note that how quickly and easily content is shared is largely dependent on
whether the company uses the right tools that make this possible.

9. Advantages & Disadvantages of Viral Marketing
 Sometimes, viral marketing sparks a response counter to what was
intended. Consumers tend to share negative news more often than
positive news, and studies show that people have a stronger
emotional response to negative news
 The effects of viral marketing are hard to measure as it is difficult to
determine if a lead or sale resulted from it. And there is no
consensus among businesses on how to measure its success.
 If customers believe the viral campaign will compromise their
privacy and security, they will likely not share. As a result, the
company's marketing mission fails, and its reputation may be
tarnished.

10. KEY TAKEAWAYS
 Viral marketing is a sales technique that involves organic or word-of-mouth
information about a product or service to spread at an ever-increasing
rate.
 The internet and the advent of social media have greatly increased the
number of viral messages in the form of memes, shares, likes, and
forwards.
 Some marketing campaigns try to trigger virality, however many times just
exactly what goes viral remains a mystery.
 Once something goes viral, it is an easy and cheap way for a message to
gain popularity.
 Viral marketing can increase a company's reach and, ultimately, its
customer base.