More+on+Viral+Marketing


 * Viral marketing ** is the fairly recent phenomenon made cost effective by the rise of the social networks and the internet to allow a rise in brand awareness. It uses various different types of media such as videos, texts and images to create a 'buzz' about a certain product. The idea is that some of these media clips can be very short and are intended to provoke a response from the consumers that watch them and they then go and spread the word about what they have seen. Though not all viral marketing is the same, some of the most effective types are where the clips or images show a teaser of what's to come, to create a buzz whereby consumers want to see the whole project on completion. This is where the 'viral' aspect comes in: much like a computer virus, the idea is to spread the clips and ideas through a network of people like a virus, to get as many people interested as possible. Arguably its most notable use is in the promotion of films or of media projects and in the form of short messages and quirky adverts, to get potential consumers intrigued by the content and share it on.

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**Origin **
Viral marketing is a very new marketing tool. However, it bases its techniques on the age-old adage of 'word of mouth'. Word of mouth is one of the most basic and effective ways of marketing. Simply put, it is provoking such an interest that people go and tell their friends and work colleagues about the product. This sort of marketing has been a backbone of advertising for centuries, as it is potentially the most cost-effective method because the marketing is relying on people who spread the idea to do most of the work; the marketers merely plant the seed which then sprouts into more seeds (Lang, 2012). This idea was boosted with the advent of newspapers and television, allowing for a much wider target audience, and therefore a greater chance of word of mouth. The internet then changed the possibilities completely. For the first time in the mid 90s, marketing gurus now had millions of people to target, and unlike advertising on television or a national newspaper, the cost of setting up a website to market their product was comparatively small (Howard, 2005). Also around this time, perhaps due to the Y2K idea and the concept of computer viruses in general, marketing chiefs and analysts found that an idea is akin to a computer virus. Effectively, an idea is planted in someone's mind, they go and tell someone else, and then the idea is transferred, much like a computer virus infects another computer. This then carries on with the ideas 'infecting' other people, creating a whole host of 'infected' consumers. These ideas were coined by Harvard graduates Drayper and Rayport (Rayport, 1996). Being the late 90s, social networks had not really appeared in the form we see them today. Therefore the main companies that took advantage of the idea were email companies such as Hotmail. In attaching a message on the bottom of every outgoing message from one of their accounts saying 'why not grab a Hotmail?', they successfully managed to increase their email accounts to 66 million, with 256,000 new accounts a day (Montgomery, 2011). This also shows the effectiveness of a small message in a viral marketing campaign.

Unlike some other forms of marketing, the message may only need to be small to enter a consumer’s mind; it is all about the accessibility and appeal of that message. An example of viral marketing from this period that was not computer based would be that of the Ponzi and Pyramid schemes of the time (US Securities, 2013). These schemes gave principal investors interest from the initial deposits of later investors. The early investors in these schemes then recruited their friends or families to invest, effectively leading them to gain money from their own family in some cases, and then the scheme collapsed. Again this is an effective idea of viral marketing, just not a morally just and legal one. As the internet and social networks grew, viral marketing became even more accessible and successful. It utilised tools like Facebook, allowing for mass marketing across a range of demographics, which means that consumers would then tell their friends or family about what they have seen and since some people on Facebook may have over a 1000 'friends', this word of mouth process is significantly increased.

** Theoretical Basis **
The basic theoretical principles of viral marketing according to marketing professors Kaplan and Haenlein (Kaplan 2011) is that viral marketing is all about giving off the correct message to the correct carriers in the correct market. Without these three aspects viral marketing may not be a success.

Carriers:
According to the professors there are three types of these:
 * ** Information specialists ** who are always on top of the latest fad in the technology world and who then tell people about this latest idea they have found.
 * People who have a lot of social connections who can otherwise be described as ** social hubs **.
 * Then the ** salesperson **, who takes the idea, and exaggerates its importance, its quality makes the message more pertinent and then puts it back in the middle with the social hubs, who then transmit it out again.

How the lines of communication work can be explained below:

The message has to be memorable and exciting for it to be passed on; if it is not then the likelihood of the campaign working is slim. A good example of this would be in 2007 when the football club Sporting Portugal launched a campaign where the user would input their name and phone number, and the manager would ring them up on a video and tell them they needed to buy a season ticket before the season started (Sporting Portugal, 2007). The nature of the message and interactivity of it led to a balloon in season ticket holders for that season.

The market has to provide the right conditions for your message to work. For example, the popularity of social networks is changing all the time; people also change, trends in sharing things on Facebook may be on the up. At the moment sharing photos on Facebook through Instagram would be a good method of viral marketing; however, simply sharing photos on Facebook itself, would not reach the same market. This is because of the different demographics of the two sites; a person on Instagram generally would be more arty and creative whereas on Facebook, the person could have any number of interests. Like anything in marketing, the right market needs to be selected for word of mouth to work. The message and the market are intrinsically linked.

Even though this model has been described as the ‘art’ of viral marketing, a simple mathematical equation can be used to sum it up:

(Message + Market) x Carriers = successfulness of the campaign. Obviously this is very simplified and there are numerous extrinsic factors that may alter this.

Criticism:
There are some criticisms of this model, as it does not give much credence to the role the marketers play; this model has been described as an 'art' as it is very much dependent on extrinsic factors that you may not be able to control, especially in the market area: in other words, it is not precise enough. Some other models, such as Marc Feldman’s, describe viral marketing as a science, using more scientific methods in which the marketer has to aim for a certain demographic and the way in which the message is broadcast as in targeting the market much more, allowing for a much more precise way of viral marketing (Neurborne, 2001). However, it has been argued in relation to Marc Feldman’s model that there can be no precise way of viral marketing, as it does rely on whether an audience takes to something or not.

** Modern techniques: **
Within these parameters, carriers, market and message, there needs to be research done on the types of people that would be interested in the message of the content being marketed. For example, some viral marketing campaigns are much more complex than others. This is evidenced in the campaign that surfaced for the Dark Knight film in 2008. The film company produced a series of websites that laid clues in the coding of the websites to allow users to reveal videos relating to the upcoming film (Warner Bros, 2008). The film company’s research obviously yielded the fact that big fans of franchises such as Batman may be more of a 'nerdy' demographic so to speak and so aimed this part of their viral marketing campaign at them. What followed was a concerted effort by many fellow coders to decode the website and find the videos. This was completed and then the videos were shared with the general public. The sequel to this film involved a campaign where graffiti was sprayed throughout the world, and it tasked people to find this graffiti, in a 'scavenger hunt'- again a very clever and outside the box method of viral marketing (The Week, 2012). These are examples of information specialists that are specifically targeted then transmit their information to the general social hubs. Therefore this is more of a targeted viral marketing campaign, whereas some campaigns such as simply uploading a video to YouTube, may be targeted at a broader market, this was very targeted, but relied on the information specialists transmitting their information, which they did.

Companies that produce clever campaigns are generally commended by consumers for saying it’s ‘clever’, and this simple promotion and appraisal of its marketing efforts then makes people simply share what they have seen, however these more complex campaigns tend to be more costly. The reason for this appraisal is not for how interested in the product they are, but for the cleverness of the campaign itself. This can be evidenced most recently from a personal example by a link up with Google and Lego in which anyone can build in Lego in full 3D on their web browser as long as it’s Google Chrome (Lego, 2014). This feature popped up on Facebook, and was immediately shared by several news outlets and ‘friends’, creating a buzz around this. This is not only fun but also very clever, and in this tech-obsessed world, consumers appreciate this.

With the advent of social media, the traditional techniques above can now be made much larger by sharing on Facebook or Twitter. This is simply because there is a massive pool of consumers in the immediate online world, and once something goes viral on Facebook or Twitter, it can then get picked up by national newspapers and the larger media, creating publicity, again for very little cost. Another recent way of doing this is uploading a video clip to YouTube, such as the Cadbury’s Gorilla advert, which created a storm in 2007 (Sherwood, 2007). Because the premise of the advert is so memorable and so unusual, people remember it and share it; this certainly had all the aspects of the message and market criteria. This advert was one of the first to take advantage of You Tube and social networking (Sherwood). Being so unusual it immediately appealed to old and young alike, and the choice of song will have appealed to the slightly older market, therefore aiming for both market segments at once, which is in line with the Dairy Milk brand. The advert revived Cadbury’s lagging public relations, showing the immediate benefit of viral marketing (Chahal, 2007). media type="custom" key="25296748"

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There are different techniques depending on the type of media that is being broadcast on. For example, on social networks, there tends to be a much larger audience, who may share or a ‘like’, but out of this audience, a relatively small percentage may click on the link, depending on how intriguing it is. On the flip-side, viral marketing through emails is a much more personal affair: if a person emails their friends or family, then there tends to be a much larger <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">percentage of readership. Again it comes down to targeting the message in the right place, and whether it is a more targeted style of marketing or a more general type. However, more and more, with the continued rise of social networks, the use of these media is increasing, simply because of the massive potential market and cost effectiveness.

Viral Marketing and Modern Techniques used by Non-profit Organisations
As previously mentioned viral marketing has been adopted by social media. Non-profit organisations are using social media and viral marketing in order to reach a higher number of potential donors or supporters. Viral marketing is a technique that is being used in order to achieve this. This is a new trend in viral marketing!

Non-profit organisations are businesses that do not aim to make profit. In turn they aim to promote a cause or benefit society as a whole (Hopkins, 2012).

Buchanan and Luck (2006) have founded that viral marketing is a strategy that non-profits can implement in order to become more well-known and successful. In turn, using modern marketing techniques such as viral marketing could persuade people to invest in them or follow a cause. When a non-profit organisation implements the correct mix of strategic content when using social media, engagement is increased (Ruteledge, 2008). The strategy that can be employed is based around viral marketing (Ruteledge, 2008).

This can lead to a powerful campaign that can increase donations and support on a small budget. Viral marketing is vital to a non-profit organisation as marketing budgets are smaller than those in the corporate sector, demonstrating its importance. The notion that viral marketing is beneficial for non-profit organisations because of the low cost associated with it is supported by Hartnett and Mattan (2011). Social media is the driving force behind viral marketing, and the use of this method can be a beneficial for non-profit organisations due to the inexpensive nature (Hartnett and Mattan, 2011). This has demonstrated the benefit and importance of viral marketing for non-profit organisations.

Furthermore, social networks create a community based on engagement that allows relationships to develop (Dayton, undated). This relationship aids viral marketing success as videos or images can be distributed and shared amongst followers and friends. Moreover, viral marketing can raise brand awareness for charities (Carn, 2013). In turn, this suggests that viral marketing can increase the support for a non-profit organisation that can lead to an increase in donations. This is confirmed by Lassila (2010) who states that viral marketing can lead to an increase in the amount of visitors to a non-profit organisation’s website, which can lead to a higher amount of donations. This has identified a clear ben efit of using viral marketing in charity sector. The Redcross have successfully implemented a viral marketing campaign that has shown that it can lead to higher donations (Lassila, 2010). The reason for this success is due to the large audience that the Redcross where reaching through the vital marketing campaign that associated with social media. The campaign which focused on Haiti and used a variety of methods to create relationships with the target audience. This included hashtags and promoting on social media.

Social media offers a new avenue that can be exploited by non-profit organisations to initiate viral marketing techniques that have discussed within this wiki entry. Plethean (2010) states that non-profit organisations are using viral marketing to promote sustained engagement. Viral marketing is linked to word and mouth and therefore social media allows sustained engagement to take place. Followers on social networking sites are highly involved which suggests it is an ideal platform for viral marketing to thrive on. Furthermore, Lindgreen and Vanhamme (2005) shows that viral marketing can take place on social media when charity events and information are shared. The study founded that participants are likely to share charity events or causes on social media, in turn, this can make campaigns for viral.

__Case Studies__


 * 1) nomakeupselfie

The #nomakeupselfie campaign was launched for Cancer Research. It can be said that this is a recent viral marketing campaign that has shown various benefits for non-profit organisations. Cancer Research UK (2014) released an online statement that demonstrated that the viral campaign rose over £8 million in donations in only six days. This has shown how successful viral marketing campaigns can be for non-profit organisations. The campaign used social media such as Facebook and Twitter to share the viral campaign. This has shown that social media can aid viral marketing for non-profit organisations. This case study has underpinned the research stated above, showing that the relationship created by social media facilitates viral marketing.



As identified above Kaplan (2011) has identified a framework suggesting how lines of communication work within viral marketing. This will now be applied to the context of non-profit organisations. The case study that will be used in the KONY 2012 campaign. Invisible Children (2014), a non-profit organisation started a video based marketing campaign that focused on addressing issues relating to war criminals. The campaign was the fastest growing viral video of all time, as 3.7 million people registered their support (Invisible Children, 2014). When looking at the framework suggested by Kaplan (2011), it can be identified why the video was a success. Information specialists from Invisible Children used resources to understand the issues surrounding the KONY 2012 campaign. This was then projected into a social hub where sales people would address the issues by shaping and sharing the video. This is then shared to potential market on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, it can be said that the KONY 2012 viral campaign followed the structure suggested by Kaplan (2011), demonstrating why it was deemed as a successful viral marketing campaign for a non-profit organisation.



** How can viral messages be broadcast? **

 * Internet search engines such as the Google Pacman doodle, which gave a nostalgia trip for many older users but was also quite fun to play. This gave publicity to both Google and the Pacman app for Android, as well as causing significant damage to the economy because of the amount of people playing it at work (Telegraph, 2010).

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 * Integrating a personal message with a smartphone: the Sporting Portugal example below. This is very personal approach, which consumers seem to enjoy. However, this type of viral marketing needs to be done in such a way as to not alienate consumers because of the very personal nature of the marketing.

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 * More traditional mail and direct marketing: a more old fashioned way of simply sending consumers a message and assuming they will pass it on through word of mouth. This arguably has the worst success rate (Valpak, 2011). It is generally not suited to viral marketing so therefore it really needs to be something exciting and unique for consumers to share.


 * Email/websites: the Hotmail example works extremely well, due to the large number of users on the internet; pick a right message and aim it towards a market that would potentially be interested and the marketing campaign could become viral.

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 * Search engine customisation: This is where a certain product or keywords will come up on Google or Yahoo, and lead to a certain website. This allows people to be redirected straight to where the marketing people would want them to go. The number of users using Google is in the billions, therefore getting them to be directed towards your site or clip is an extremely useful way of gaining social hubs (Google, 2014). This type of marketing relies on information specialists to type the right words and tell people about it (Google, 2013).


 * Social media customisation: Google Chrome Lego example. This is a very popular way of getting the marketing campaign to work. Huge numbers of people and lots of social hubs mean clips or images will be shared very quickly. However, the market is saturated and the message that is created needs to be something different to attract the attention of users of social media.

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 * TV: again more traditional, strange adverts or quirky messages work best such as the Lego ITV adverts from earlier this year. (Sweney, 2014).

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Combinations of different aspects of these have been said by some marketing experts to work best, this can be seen in these examples by the LEGO ITV advert and the LEGO Google Chrome app. These two separate viral marketing campaigns were both created in an attempt to create a buzz out of the recent Lego Movie. The success of the movie has shown that this may have worked (Box Office Mojo, 2014).

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The success of viral marketing is dependent on the factors explained before. However, the overall concept of viral marketing appears to work. The concept of a person spreading an idea like a computer virus, especially in this online social media age has been proven to work by numerous campaigns. It's relatively small costs compared to other types of marketing means it is incredibly popular. A very recent example of the success of viral campaigns, though not a marketing campaign as such, is the questionable practice of nek-nominate, simply from tagging a person on Facebook. It has grown from 300 mentions on Twitter in the whole of 2013 to around 500,000 in the first two months of 2014 alone (Cooper, 2014). This simple but massive rise is what entices marketing executives to try viral marketing: it’s cost-effective, simple, and the potentially massive market and rewards can be very successful for a company. However, many viral marketing campaigns fail: they are not particularly interesting; they may not have been aimed at the right market, or simply because they have not been seen enough. Sometimes the difference between a campaign being successful or not, is simply down to luck. As Kaplan and Hanelein believe, it is very much an art rather than a science and therefore is extremely inconsistent with its results.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">Conclusion **
<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Viral marketing is relevant to the business world, as it is a prime example of how to take advantage of the growing online and social media landscape. Using principles based on computers themselves (viruses) viral marketing expands on this, and allows for a varied range of different media and techniques for which to market effectively and cheaply. In recent years due to this explosion of growth in social media, many businesses, small and large have had to take advantage of this otherwise they may have been left behind in terms of marketing (Ayyaduri, 2013). Viral marketing is potentially the most cost-effective way of targeting a big market, and also allows for creativity and an element of uniqueness (Zwilling, 2011). With social media like Facebook, or Twitter taking over many people's lives and making them more susceptible to advertisement, viral marketing has become an intrinsic part of this, and marketing agencies and organisations themselves have realised the potential to easily market their products/brands. It is most effective for generating a buzz which is what a successful viral marketing campaign does, and its usefulness is not just limited to brands and products but also to artistic creations and almost anything tangible that is marketable. The number of businesses and organisations that use viral marketing and the number of campaigns that the public is bombarded with show how relevant it is to the business world today.

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