Getting Word of Mouth – Online Viral Marketing Strategies
What is online viral marketing? It is basically a successful advertising campaign. The phrase was a creation of a business school graduate, popularized by the media and a media critic named Douglas Rushkoff. This simply refers to the potential to reach an thousands of people by starting out with only a small amount.
If you tell me something that I think is interesting, I will tell my friends about it. If they like it as well, you can guess that they will also tell their friends. They probably know people that I do not. So, the potential of growth is virtually limitless. It traditionally was called word of mouth advertising.
The main difference between word of mouth advertising and online viral marketing has to do with the sheer potential number of people that someone can or does speak to daily. Let’s use me as an example. In my personal life, I speak to my immediate family members daily. I might talk to my extended family members and my friends at least once a week.
Some, I haven’t talked to in years, “live”. I communicate to everyone at least once every day or so via e-mail and social networking sites. If I find something that I think is interesting or something that makes me laugh out loud, I will send it to a minimum of 30 people.
Surveys say that the average person shares this kind of thing with only 12 people. So, I may be a little outside of the curve. The point is that the 30 people that I know will share with others. With very little effort, the information moves through this mass of people. Will the free ride eventually end?
If you have an effective online viral marketing strategy, you may be able to generate numerous waves; when one crashes, another forms. There are countless different strategies, but all of the effective ones isolate one key element. There is a free item for people to share.
In some cases, it is simply a well-done commercial. Sony had one some time ago. It was posted on YouTube and people got it out there to people they knew. To date, it has had hundreds of thousands of views. How many people made a purchase? Who could be aware of?
The point is this. If you wanted to reach thousands or millions of people not so many years ago, your olny option would have been via television advertising. And, of course, you would have had to buy space on the most popular shows and the costs are prohibitive. With online viral marketing, you can reach that many people for next to nothing.
