E-Commerce Trends: Viral Marketing
For years businesses have understood the power of word-of-mouth advertising; both positive and negative. Enough negative comments spread by unhappy customers can have a devastating impact, and it is obviously desirable to have people spreading the word about the positive attributes of a business's product or service. Yet until recently, although companies certainly have paid attention to popular buzz, marketing campaigns have not been planned based mostly, or entirely, on getting people to "spread the word." E-commerce has changed this. A form of word-of-mouth marketing known as viral marketing has proven to be an effective strategy in electronic commerce. The term "viral marketing" describes any tactic designed to encourage people to pass the word in ever-widening circles. This paper will explore this trend through the @ of an internet article entitled "The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing" (Wilson, 2000); and a look at how these principles were applied in a successful viral marketing plan by Hotmail.com.
The Six Principles
The six principles as outlined by Wilson (2001) are: "1) gives away products or services, 2) provides for effortless transfer, 3) scales easily from small to large, 4) exploits common motivations and behaviors, 5) utilizes existing communication networks and 6) takes advantage of others' resources." Hotmail.com utilized all of these and managed to establish itself as the largest independent e-mail provider on the Internet. One wondering what the point is may consider the large (seemingly unending) number of advertisements seen at the Hotmail.com website. The value of ad space grows with each new e-mail account Hotmail.com provides. As stated by Perreault and McC...
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...omputers already owned and used by the account holders. All Hotmail.com had to do was supply the mail servers and initiate the viral process by means of a small push to several thousand Internet users. After that it was simply a matter of waiting for the campaign to do its job.
Conclusion
Viral marketing is a strategy that can be used by almost all e-commerce businesses. They do not necessarily have to be an Internet based service such as Hotmail.com. Any website offering a free product or service, along with the caveat that the user must be willing accept a link or offer a recommendation, is likely to increase its site traffic manifold. This is comparable to what Perreault and McCarthy (1999) describe as pulling, which is using a promotion to get customers to ask for a product. An increase in traffic, and potential customers, would be beneficial to any business.
Viral marketing is essential for Post-it to increase brand awareness. Furthermore, viral marketing can be the result of the “Go ahead” campaign where people showed creative ways to use Post-it notes. However, Post-it should not aim at creating at the fastest viral videos, since all of the fasters viral videos come from music artists (Statista,
The year 1997-2000 marked the internet boom with dot com companies appearing on the scene every day. Internet changed the way we used to do business and reach out to the customers on day to day basis. The volume of spam had grown exponentially after internet boom. Spam marketing hackers would highjack the business sites and used them for sending the spam. The price of marketing email spam was much less than paper based or direct mail. With paper based marketing campaign, response from one buyer per 100 mailing was sufficient to even out the expenses whereas in email spam response from one buyer per 100,000 was enough to make profit (Fingerman, 2004). The cost was lower for the sender but it was much higher for receiver as they spend the valuable time r...
The key strategic marketing concepts which would be important for the implementation in this project are various. From the effective Clarification of business objectives to customers to greater a market segmentation. The ability to create viral marketing with lateral communication could increase market opportunities.
The lack of a standardized email system administered by the firm is concerning, as encryption of some standard email web browsers is not sufficient enough to ensure the proper safeguarding of email traffic. While it is possible that most web browsers utilize Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) for email encryption at the very least, without the standardization of email to one type of system, the firm is unable to ensure proper encryption. Furthermore, without the ability for someone in the firm to administer users email, we are unable to control email traffic to slow or reject spam or suspicious user attacks
Viral marketing is a form of word-of-mouth marketing that aims to result in a message spreading exponentially and campaigns work when a message is spread exponentially and it results in a desired outcome for a brand (Stokes, R., 2010). Viral marketing uses the internet to disclose and spread the company’s products or services. It harnesses the electronic connectivity of individuals to ensure marketing messages are referred from one person to another (Stokes, R., 2010). There are two types of viral marketing. Organic viral campaigns spread with no input from the company who wants to advertise. The message or product/ service being sold by the merchant are passed around in a viral nature without any intention from the marketer (Stokes, R., 2010). In organic viral marketing, no planning was done on how to broadcast the products or services and those who expose the products or services made a choice just to pass it around by word of mouth in the internet. Amplified viral marketing on the other hand have been strategically planned, have defined goals for the brand being marketed, and usually have a distinct method of passing on the message (that can be tracked and quantified by the marketer) (Stokes , R.,2010). To go viral, sellers or services provider have to define the aims of the campaign. Sellers or service providers have to decide if the company wants brand awareness, drive traffic or make sure customers avail of the products or services. Secondly, the company should plan the message it wants to go viral. The message has to be unique and easily noticeable by consumers. Third, the message you want to convey must be passed on to others efficiently. The company has to provide incentives for sharing. The greatest ince...
The online platforms such as websites and portals deployed by BMW often provide a registration form for customers or visitors to register. BMW then uses this information captured by the forms to facilitate direct sales, promotional campaigns, provision of information such as newsletters, etc. This ultimately facilitates brand awareness, customer retention, aside from enabling BMW to learn more about customers’ online behavior and potentially improve its customer relationship management practices. It is an effective strategy as it allows for a fast, secure, and personalized interaction between BMW and its audience. It is important, however to realize that even though it is effective, email marketing has got its limitations in the sense that e-mails may fail to be delivered to recipients, thereby decreasing the scope of its impact.
This paper will explore the e-Marketing strategy used by Dell Computer Company, evaluate the appropriateness of the Internet as a medium to market their products, and examine advertising and public relations alternatives.
Scott, D. M. (2010). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video, & viral marketing to reach buyers directly (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
The competition among the firms in the market is tremendously increasing. In order to sustain and improve their existence in the market, the companies strive hard in possible ways. The very old methods like Newspaper ads, Television ads, Radio ads etc. wouldn’t be the way to enlarge the market in today’s world. The period where the customers blindly relied on the advertisements were gone. People are smart enough and it is very difficult for the companies to match the customers’ needs and satisfy them. To make this easier, Viral marketing came into the picture. Viral marketing is considered as one of the best successful business strategies in the market. It uses different modes of network as a tool to promote the product. The following are the multiple kinds of marketing:
· Use of social media for promotion- word of mouth and social media help to get the message across and promote the product efficiently
In today’s world where technology is driven, social networking sites have become an avenue where retailers can outstretch their marketing campaigns to an expansive range of consumers. In social media, certain consumers have louder voices and reach either much niche or wider audiences than others. These people are called “digital influencers.” Influencers perform a growing and monumental part in word-of-mouth marketing. More and more marketers are involving and immersing them for different campaigns. One of the most popular advertising channels is Influencer marketing, and rightfully so, as 94% of those who used influencer marketing (Hein, 2016) believe it’s a potent strategy. It’s so popular
Previously, customers could not influence the affairs of a business. Hence, information was only transferred from management to the lower order staff in an organisation, thus allowing brands to have complete control of the information that was in the public domain. However, in the present society we live in today, customers can influence many aspects of a business. With the advent of social media, information about a business and its affairs can be transferred easily across a nation or even across borders. The type of information being communicated with the world can determine whether a business would be successful or a failure in the future. Knowing this, companies strive to implement procedures and mechanisms to ensure that good word of mouth is spread throughout the public. One such mechanism companies implement is the use of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program. Customer Relationship Management can be defined
Technologies are increasing rapidly and shaping not only the traditional marketing but internet marketing as well. That is why marketers are facing a great global competition in terms of modern marketing. Marketers should know this thing that new technologies can help them by making their work simple, so they should shift to latest technologies and some new things. Business gets success when it comes with something new and interesting. That is why marketers must change their strategies as the tradition, trend, and environment changes. When we talk about changes and technologies, we can’t forget viral marketing, which is a form of fresh marketing. Many advertisers and companies are moving towards it. (H.B Klopper, 2002)
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