What is Viral Marketing and can it Work for Your Business?

This post was published to Fashion Business Inc Weblog at 11:26:12 AM 8/14/2009

What is Viral Marketing and can it Work for Your Business?

 

 

Simply put, Viral marketing is a way to utilize existing social networks – mainly online or by word of mouth – to generate buzz for a business, product, person, event, etc.  Using video clips, text messages, blogs, images, games, promotional items and more, the goal of viral marketing is to reach a targeted market of consumers without having to spend money on standard marketing or advertising campaigns.  Seems like a good idea, right? Maybe.  It really depends on your customer and target audience.

Viral marketing can be very successful when launching a new product or brand to a carefully targeted audience.  Introducing a new energy drink?  Hip, trendy nightclubs may be a great place to promote it.  Saw a celebrity wearing your design at last week’s movie premiere or awards show?  Tweet, blog, post it on Facebook and email all of your clients and contacts a link to the video or image and tell them where to buy the product.  Sometimes you’re the beneficiary of someone else’s viral campaign and the next thing you know, you’ve got a best-selling item on your hands. 

I was talking to a colleague the other day about marketing her new product.  She mentioned to me that she was thinking of spending her advertising budget to remodel her office instead of buying ads in trade publications and magazines.  She was hoping to capitalize on viral marketing instead to maintain interest in her products and generate new customers.  Problem is – her products are basic apparel items targeted to the 45 – 60 year old female demographic.  Not necessarily the prime audience of a viral campaign.  Her response to me was “Well, Oprah Tweets!”  Yes, Oprah Winfrey “Tweets” and getting a product mentioned by Oprah is a fabulous example of viral marketing.  But don’t hold your breath hoping Oprah will mention your product on her program, magazine or next Twitter post. 

Take a page out of many retailers’ handbooks – spend your advertising dollars and energy wisely.  If your customers expect to see your ads in traditional print media, keep placing your ads there and create an online presence to help increase your market share.  Is your presence mostly online?  Keep your website up to date and make sure your home and product pages look fresh and exciting.  Launching a new brand or product line?  Figure out whom to target first and how best to reach them.   Just don’t expect your product to sell itself if you’re not out there selling to the right audience in the right place.

As for my colleague, she realized her customers probably didn’t know what Twitter was, let alone how to use it.  If Oprah was Tweeting about her product, most of her target audience would miss out on Oprah’s wisdom.  Her office remodel would have to wait.  Her traditional advertising works for a reason, that’s where her customers find her products.

Jill Mazur is an independent apparel business and technology consultant working with Fashion Business, Incorporated.  Email:  jill@fashionbizinc.org

Results from a Recent Twitter User Survey:

Alex Cheng and Mark Evans of Sysomos Inc. created a survey on how much (or how little) Twitter is currently being utilized.  Before placing all of your viral marketing eggs in the Twitter basket, think about this - after analyzing information from 11.5 million Twitters accounts, they discovered:

• Just 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity
• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update per day
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people

Read the full survey results on their blog.

Comments

[davidbaer]

Having been a part of the Online Universal Work Marketing team for 4 months now, I’m thankful for my fellow team members who have patiently shown me the ropes along the way and made me feel welcome

www.onlineuniversalwork.com

[MBT]

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