Understanding The Strengths Of Viral Marketing

Understanding The Strengths Of Viral Marketing
Click Here For FREE Info On The Strengths Of Viral Marketing
The power of viral marketing can be seen in the answer you give to this question – Who would you rather believe – a movie star extolling the virtues of a toilet cleaner or your next door neighbor? The answer is very simple. In the over-advertised world of today, if people watch ads at all, it is for the production quality and the glamour. Trust them? I doubt. Everyone knows that an ad is all about someone trying to make a profit out of you.

The marketing world may try to hide the harsh truth behind ads by calling them info-tainment or consumer education. They may try and embed them in films or in TV programming. But the truth is known to most. 90% of what you watch is someone trying to condition your responses in a certain way.
Click Here For FREE Info On The Strengths Of Viral Marketing
We Trust Those We Know

Viral advertising is very different. You trust people whom you daily interact with. And if they tell you that a restaurant is good, you take it at face value.

As an advertiser, if you were to market your goods or services using viral marketing techniques, your efforts will be more credible and most likely to get far better results. A key aspect of viral marketing is the understanding that not every person is ideal to carry on this campaign. There are people who like to spread the word around and there are people who are not so inclined.

A viral marketing strategy therefore tries to identify those people who are naturally inclined to build social networks. Having done that, it tries and creates messages that these people will enjoy discussing. On an average, a well networked person will have a list of fifteen to twenty who he/she will communicate with. If even one third of these are as good at networking the first person, the message will have a higher chance of reaching upwards in just two or three iterations.
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Ethical Issues With Viral Marketing

Sure enough, there is no dearth of people crying foul. Viral marketing, they say is taking advantage of the trust people put in their friends and using it for devious gains and for personal advantage. This is especially so when marketing agencies collect e-mail addresses referred by people and then send promotional mail with the friend’s name in the subject line, thereby increasing the chances that the mail will be read.

While there are some aspects of viral marketing that still need to be debated and clarified, it is clear that it is a powerful marketing medium. A person needs to be selective in providing references because of the dangers of abuse. The industry will also have to regulate itself and bring in mechanisms that will ensure fair play and that will make the subject of the mail clear. Regardless, it is evident that viral marketing will play a major role in modern advertising campaigns.

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