Social network-related viral marketing

Social network-related viral marketing is one of the methods to generate viral marketing. Nowadays, food companies can influence perceptions about brands, products and suppliers through social networks, because people are willing to share their opinions about the feeling of the restaurant to the others. If the messages provided by companies or people are interesting, people are willing to create World-of-mouth around the internet.

 MySpace, Facebook, Second Life, YouTube, etc. These websites have rocketed to the top of the most visited website list in a very short time and continue to increase in popularity. The great advantage of social networks to marketing is their tendencies to propagate information virally.But social networks are not for everybody, and must be handled with care. The bulk of users on those websites are teens and young adults. And they are web savvy. Trying to take advantage of them with regular marketing techniques will not work, and may even backfire with a negative backlash.

What is Flash Game Viral?

What is Flash Game Viral?

It is not uncommon to see video viral are so prevalent all over the world. However, there are actually many others’ viral tools. One of them is called flash game viral marketing.

Have you guys ever heard about it? No? Hey guys, come on! You must have ever seen it, or even have played it already. Simply like the "THE COKE ZERO GAME", but you may just have no idea which is a kind of viral marketing tool used to capture your attention.

Flash game viral marketing refers to flash game that gains exponential growth and popularity by means of Internet sharing of this game via instant messages or email, blogs and other media sharing websites.  In catering industry,  flash game usually involves restaurants' products or services. The creative, interesting or humorous game would cause you to forward the link of the game to your friends, co-workers, colleagues and reach masses of random internet users.

Viral Video Marketing

Unlike traditional marketing, viral marketing is mostly free. One of the popular types of viral marketing is “viral video marketing”. It is a process of Internet sharing the video clip through video sharing sites, social media, e-mail and between the mobile phone by Bluetooth or MMS. 

To be "viral", the video needs to be appealing to the audiences, and it is usually unique, funny, witty and humorous. Thus, word-of-mouth can be created and end up viral-like phenomena in viral marketing. As a result, the video clips can generate a buzz on internet and its message can be spread out by a viral technique.

In order to meet the specific objectives such as increasing sales, promoting brand awareness and recognition. There are many restaurants, food or beverage companies created video clips through YouTube, Google video, MySpace and other video sharing sites. Therefore, the videos can achieve widespread distribution electronically.

Definition of Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing is a powerful tool

One type of viral marketing is guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing is unexpected and unconventional, potentially interactive, and consumers are targeted in unexpected places. It intended to get maximum results from minimal resources. The cost is relatively lower than advertising in mass media. It is because guerrilla marketing can be effective in reaching a large number of people rapidly. It is what we call “viral marketing”.

The goal of guerrilla marketing is to create a unique, engagement and thought-provoking concept to generate buzz, and consequently turn viral. This always happens in our daily live such as our food and beverage promotion.

When people see something interesting or get their attention, they may take a picture and share with friends on Facebook. Then, more and more people know and discuss this campaign. This picture becomes a viral which share among friends.

This video introduces some examples of guerrilla marketing.

Viral marketing – via email

Viral E-mail Marketing

This article is about viral emails, (also known as a "pass-along email") is a certain kind of email which spread rapidly from person to person. It’s like viruses via emails to infect readers. The contents can include texts, videos, links etc. that related to a company’s business campaign. And try to motivate receiver to take an action by incentives.

The process is relatively simple, an individual receives an email and the contents have value add to them or friends, ultimately receiver would forward the email to their friends. 

The pass-along process repeat and repeat, people do the same, and thus they rapidly spread the email, in a worldwide proportion.

A common commercial application for viral email marketing is the viral advertising campaigns or promotional emails. Receivers take action to forward the email is base on the contents is valuable to themselves.

Viral Marketing - Incentivised Viral

What kind of benefits for you can be defined as an incentive? Discount? Special offer? Or just an enjoyment? Well, it depends on what you want.


Incentivised viral is a type of viral marketing by offering some rewards for providing someone else’s address, so that the marketers can dramatically increase referrals. This method encourages and facilitates you referring more friends in order to gain more rewards.


On the other hand, the network effect of the Internet and can be effective in reaching a large number of people rapidly by the message is being transmitted more and more.


Viral marketing works best when a valuable and tangible incentive is offered, encouraging individuals to forward an email or message to their friends. Incentive can add value for you, so that you are willing to forward and transmit the message. However, marketers should cap the incentive to a specific quantity to avoid spam-like distribution of the message.

Definition of Viral Marketing

Definition of Viral Marketing:

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques, using pre-existing social networks to produce brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses or computer viruses. It can be delivered by word-of-mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or text messages.

Viral marketing can be defined online viral marketing, or buzz marketing, is a form of electronic word-of-mouth marketing. Brands and promotions are discussed and awareness of them transmitted in two main forms, either as passalong e-mail or discussion in a social network.

References:

1.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

2.    Textbooks: Chaffey, Ellis-Chadwick, Mayer and Johnston. (2009). Internet Marketing – Strategy, Implementation, and Practice, 4^th edition, Prentice Hall, P. 556.