Blog » Taking it Viral – Marketing and the Modern Internet
Taking it Viral – Marketing and the Modern Internet
The internet has forever changed the ways in which business is done. The traditional paradigms of business that have stood firm for a century or more have, in the span of a single decade, found themselves falling by the wayside in favour of the new and innovative ways of reaching customers and transacting business that have become the foundation of online commerce. Any business that ignores the new realities of the digital marketplace does so at its peril. Perhaps no form of online marketing departs from the traditional models quite as much as the new trend of viral marketing. In this post we will examine the viral marketing phenomenon with particular consideration given to how businesses unfamiliar with this technique can learn to apply viral marketing principles.
The word “viral” is quite an apt description for this particular brand of marketing. Just as one single viral particle can spread to every cell in the body, and from there to every individual in the community, one single piece of viral marketing can take on a life of its own, multiplying and travelling to all corners of the internet. A properly constructed viral advertisement can reach countless consumers without any work at all by the marketing company after the initial creation and launch.
So what separates a viral advertisement from all other online marketing techniques? In the first place, it must be easily transferrable from person to person. In other words, it should either be something that can be emailed, such as an ebook, podcast, or video with a link, or something that can be quickly found via internet searching. Secondly, viral marketing messages rely on consumers to propagate and distribute their content, so they must consist of information that is entertaining or interesting enough to inspire consumers to distribute the viral message to their friends. However, the most successful viral advertisement in terms of distributions and views is worthless if it does not also contain the marketing message. The best examples of viral advertising straddle a very thin line between entertainment value and marketing content.
The traditional, if anything about viral marketing can be considered tradition, vehicle of viral advertisements has been the video clip. Videos are easily distributed either via email or, more commonly, via embedded links in email messages. However, marketers have started to discover that all different kinds of content can be successfully employed in a viral marketing strategy. For example, joke pages, tutorials, sponsored message boards, and other web content can also carry a marketing message.
Viral marketing, while fundamentally different from traditional heavy handed print, radio, and television advertising, can be employed along with traditional marketing types to provide multiple marketing channels. For example, television and print advertisements often contain links to online content that is potentially viral. By presenting the content to a wide user base, it is often possible to significantly decrease the amount of time it takes for the viral content to reach the critical distribution mass necessary to make it viable.
Viral marketing uses non-traditional techniques to pursue very traditional goals—increased market penetration. Viral marketing is particularly suited to the distributed, non local nature of the internet, but also meshes well with traditional marketing methodologies.
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