Brand Your Products At The speed Of A virus!
Viral advertising is a form of buzz marketing, or word of mouth marketing, which captures the attention of consumers and the media to the point where talking about your brand or company becomes entertaining, fascinating, and newsworthy. Buzz starts conversations. This type of advertising utilizes pre-existing social networks to create furor over certain brands. The idea is to exponentially increase brand awareness through processes similar to the spread of an epidemic, or virus. Non-conventional means of spreading the brand’s message are used. Very often it can be done on a shoestring budget. One of the best ad campaigns that used this form of marketing was during the Cola Wars of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
Viral is today's electronic equivalent of old-fashioned word of mouth. It's a marketing strategy that involves creating an online message that's controversial or taboo which is what prompts consumers to pass it on to others. Spreading the message across the web like a virus happens at no cost to the advertiser. The key to effective viral advertising is to create and exploit an idea that's captivating enough to get consumers to interact.
The crudest form of viral message is the chain letter. One of the more notable examples is Hotmail’s use of promoting links at the bottoms of emails sent by its users. The spread of text messaging is another example. If you see a movie that’s either good or bad, you can text countless friends who will then tell other people and so on. Services that depend on a huge network of users, such as email services, benefit the most. The downside to this however, is that if it is done too often it begins to look like spam and will be ignored.
Viral Marketing doesn’t need to be entirely focused on email or text messaging. It’s moving forward in the form of videos, games or just web pages which are strategically “seeded” on websites, blogs and mailing lists around the Internet. When users start forwarding the link to their friends, it’s gone “viral” and it will continue to spread across the web, potentially reaching audiences of millions.
Viral advertising doesn’t always work. It won’t work if using a video clip that is too large to transfer or depending on firewall settings, it will be rejected by some mail systems. Another important thing to remember is that not all links or files work well in this environment. Sites like Link Brander found at will aid in the use of viral marketing if links are created in a way conducive to web-surfing.
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If the link is unreadable, it won’t get any hits. If it’s readable and creates curiosity, people will hit and follow it. Well-executed email campaigns can benefit tremendously from it, as can website traffic. The message needs to be clear in order for it to have a chance.
http://www.thesecondtier.com/90percent/thesecondtier
