What/Why companies use Viral Marketing?

"Viral Marketing" has become a very trendy method to promote different brand products/services of a company or organization. Many companies are now using this strategy to get their message out. Through videos is one of the most effective methods of implementing a viral marketing campaign. Many major companies are using videos to attract wide audience. These videos can be seen on various social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc. Due to the evolution and success of viral videos as a marketing technique, this approach has been used more and more.

The below are listed out some major brands that using viral marketing videos.

Nike - Nike is one of the better users of using viral marketing videos.

Ray Ban - The video shows how two men can catch Ray Ban sunglasses perfectly on their faces when thrown at them, from all angles, so Ray Ban viral video is one of the successful example

Blendtec - is a viral marketing campaign consisting of a series of infomercials demonstrating the Blendtec line of blenders, especially the Total Blender.

G.O.D (Goods of desire) - To promote their new fashion collection - Delay No More, G.O.D use the social media youtube to promote their products.

Based on these examples, we can see that there are many benefits to making viral marketing videos and these companies obviously have capitalized. By using the internet to market, it can be less expensive than placing ads on TV.

Why there is a need that viral marketing tools need to mix with other traditional media.

Here is one of the examples that integrating viral marketing tools with traditional media like TV and magazine promote their event, When Polymuso want to promote their event : 'POLYMUSO annual performance', they used many viral marketing tools like a group in facebook, xanga and a promotion video which post on youtube.

In fact, it is very success to target the teenagers, who love band sound. As we know teenagers like using those social media to share their information. However, if they want to attract some one who never join this event before, it is hard to achieve this objective. Most of the group members only invite their friends, who also interested in band music, it is hard to extend and promote this activity to more people in Hong Kong.

Therefore, it also has an advertisement on 'milk' magazine and people can watch the show on TVB Music channel. Through this kind of media, they can let more people to aware this event and indie band in HK. Finally, they sold out all the tickets before the show.

Polymuso xanga
http://polymuso.xanga.com/

Polymuso Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/polymuso

Forms of Viral Marketing

There are many forms of Viral Marketing, mainly by e-mail forwarding or social network:

- E-mail forwarding is a common online activity. Passalong or forwarding has worked well for video clips, either they are attached to the e-mail or the e-mail contains a link to download the clip.

- Web-facilitated viral(e-mail prompt) is that the e-mail contains a link/graphic to a web page with "e-mail a friend".

- Incentivised viral offers some reward such as prize draw for providing someone else's address to increase referrals.

- Web-linked viral with links in discussion group postings or blogs which are from an individual are also popularly used.

- Social network-related viral marketing uses social networks such as Facebook to enable consumers to interact with or promote a brand as to influence perceptions about brands or products.

Either way, it is important when seeding the campaign to try to get as many targeted online and offline mentions of the viral agent as you can.

A viral marketing sample in hk

As we know, there are more and more people use viral marketing to promote their product and brands; here I would like to share one viral marketing sample in HK. G.O.D (Goods of desire) the famous furniture shop in HK, when they promote their new fashion collection: Delay No More, they did not use any tradition media to promote their products, but use the social media ‘Youtube’ to promote their product. As the raising of some new social media like YouTube and the advancing of build-in camera in the mobile phone, everyone can become a reporter, therefore more and more video posted on Youtube (bus uncle). As their market segment is teenagers, and they are very active in those social media, so G.O,D imitate the way that how those people shoot the video and set a attractive topic Finally it attracted many people to watch and talk about this video and it is more than 316,511 views for one video.

The first organization using viral marketing as promotion strategies

Do you know which organization using viral marketing as promotion strategies in the first?

Here's the result:

It's the cult film Blair Witch Project:

The makers of the film deliberately spread the Blair Witch urban myth two years before it is being announced. They cleverly chose college campus for initial screening because students are forever curious and have plenty of time for gossips. A web site was launched later and a discussion group was planted to generate interest and to keep the momentum going.

A fake "documentary" were also co-produced with the SciFi channel on the Blair Witch curse and was sired just days before the film was released.
In three years the film had grossed US$241mn at a cost of just $35,000, so this is a very sucessful sample in the viral marketing!

Power of Viral marketing - Prime Credit

This is one of the advertisements posted in YouTube.com by Prime Credit. Until now, it has over 20,000 hits. Apart from this, Prime Credit also host a group in Facebook, a popular social network in Hong Kong. The group has already attacted over 400 people to join them as a fans to keep themselves posted for the latest events / promotions of Prime Credit.

That is virual marketing! A message delivers as fast as the spread of virus. Apparently, viral marketing doesn't always need an incentive such as material goods to be effective. On the contary, the most successful viral campaigns are the ones that are created with emotion being involved. People that have been touched either by compassion, laughter, or shock are usually the most effective. If a person can have some type of profound experience by receiving a message, this can spark a huge viral campaign. We don’t have to look very far to find campaigns of this type online. With the advent of video being used so much in marketing these days, it has completely impacted the way in which viral campaigns are developing.