Viral Marketing
CONTENTSIntroductionWhy Viral MarketingViral MarketingEffective MediumTypes of Viral MarketingTypes of Mediums for Viral MarketingBarriers/Issues of Viral CampaignsIntroduction: Why Viral MarketingEvery company faces are a challenge on how do they market their product or services so that it has a huge impact on their top line. There are various decisions which need to be taken with respect to their advertising mix, for example what all medium of marketing should be used to reach the maximum target customers, what elements should be part of these mediums etc. And with the advent of internet and other technologies, various new and innovative ways are emerging to reach the target customers effectively. Companies need to adapt these new innovative ways in this ever changing world. Also with the increase in the fierce competition for the market share, companies require cheap and effective means to convey to their customers. They also need to consider customers not just as the end user of these advertising but as a intermediate node to share and spread it further. In recent advancement in internet, mobile devices and the way interact with devices has improved on delivering content and services in easy and interactive way. With this more and more people using networks like twitter, Facebook, Blogs, You tube. By 2012, nearly 850 million are users of Face book and 250 million are registered on twitter.  One such form of advertising which has become very popular is “Viral Marketing”.
Because of the increasing competition, managers need to make sure that their brand stands out. With no so old concept of viral marketing which managers want to use for their brand, but they have various dilemmas regarding the effectiveness of such advertisements. Before they make decision to go ahead with viral marketing they need to know what is the impact of such ads on my brand popularity/acknowledgement. They are curious to know which segments of customer can be targeted by this viral marketing or does any segment will have a negative impact because of such advertisement. So to answers some of these managers’ dilemmas they  will do market research on some aspects of viral marketing.   During recent past, we all have witness the very famous ALS ice-bucket challenge which was all over the internet video websites like YouTube. Such video just started with the intention to make people aware, all over the world, about the disease ALS and to make people contribute for the people who are suffering from it. This is one of the examples of successful viral marketing. Similar to ALS, many brands are turning towards the viral marketing form of advertising their product/services with all the other traditional form of marketing. As viral marketing is a relatively new way of marketing, companies are still struggling to get a hang on it and make it successful for their brand. They are still trying to figure out what characteristics should be the part of viral ads. And above all they need to know if such viral ads made a brand more recognizable and increase their revenues.