Benefits of Viral Marketing to Companies in the 21st Century

The use of social media marketing has become a standard way in which organizations advertise their products or services. Social media marketing allows consumers to have immediate access to other consumers reviews or to post a review about a product or service. There is engagement between the company and the consumer (Evans, Dave 2010). Social Media emerged in the late 1980’s when websites such as Prodigy, Compuserve and America Online. Prodigy was first of it’s kind and was known as a ”consumer online service”. Half of the page is devoted to advertising. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Hi5, Bebo and Orkut are all social media platforms that are utilized as platforms today.

Social media has become an influential ground for consumers to share their opinions about a company’s brand and products. In addition, it helps in having a strong brand that produces positive relations and distinguish the brand from competitors, is a critical component for effective marketing. According to Dahlén and Lange (2009) “the quality of the product is not the evident factor when it comes to purchasing a product, the deciding factor depends on how the brand is perceived” (Para. 1). This demonstrates the importance of incorporating social media as a tool to promote brands, allow for interactions, and customer satisfaction by engaging with customers more frequently for feedbacks or reviews. Thus create an opportunity for the company to show its devotion to their customers, and initiate good reputation, which can increase sales. In other words, social media has the ability to upsurge the awareness for businesses as well as the brand.

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.

In the is day and age, social media and word of mouth are the biggest advocates to reach the masses. Several methods to be

In today's society, social media rules the world and is one of the easiest marketing strategies for younger customers. As stated in The Shallows, when people are interrupted from social media communication they feel out of the loop. "We want to be interrupted, because each interruption brings us a valuable piece of information. To turn off these alerts is to risk feeling out of touch, or even socially isolated," (Carr). I will utilize the societies weakness to my advantage. By using marketing strategies like offering free items from a company if they follow a link through a social media application like Instagram or Facebook. Customers will feel socially isolated if all of their friends received a free item because they were on social media. This marketing strategy would be one of the least expensive types and reaches one of the largest networks of people. Using my skills in statistics I can analyze which social media application gets the most feedback and tell a company which application to put more money into advertising. This not only makes the customers maintain their feeling of being in the loop but increases the company's sales and potentially lowering their advertisement

People are connected more by social media and marketing executives have taken notice. The innovation in technology online and through television has increased. Today, people use the internet for shopping using various tools such as laptop and iPhones. We are in the new age of marketing where people are connected via social media and business is trended online. Thus, the innovation in interactive television and online services has expanded the strategies and tactics. This is so because more and more people are using internet for shopping, taking the purchase decisions via range of tools such as laptops, tablets, mobile phones, etc. Throughout

Social media is not new. Facebook has been around since 2004, YouTube since 2005, and Twitter in 2006. What is new is how social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are affecting the way businesses market their products and services. Never before in our history have consumers been able to communicate so effortlessly with each other and with the businesses they frequent. Never before have businesses been able to interact and react to customer feedback so quickly and efficiently. However, just because businesses have the ability to use social media for their marketing and advertising efforts, does not necessarily mean they should. This paper intends to

The rise of social media has been a global phenomenon since internet giant Facebook began, with one in seven people having a Facebook account (Hennig-Thurau, Hofacker & Bloching 2013). This has had an impact on the marketing environment in several ways, with the two most notable being increased active participation and a strong level of networked interconnectedness (Hennig-Thurau, Hofacker & Bloching 2013). These two changes have shifted the power from the marketer to the consumer, as the regular consumer now has access to vast amounts of information and has the ability to amplify their opinion globally (Labrecque et al. 2013). For this reason, it may be argued that in the 21st century, marketing occurs among consumers, and is no longer purely

The Facebook fan page had increased number of likes making them acquire their fixed goals. Conversely, The Limited had a mission of enhancing their marketing outreaches far beyond the standard approaches so as to develop its database. The objective was to find out the responsiveness of its current customers and use Dukky’s viral Peer Sharing to expand the customer database. The strategy in achieving this was to send an email with an offer of $10 off of a $25 purchase to its current customers. Clients were walked through an interactive process of sharing the offer with friends on 287 social networks. In so doing, 25,000 emails were sent to customers with 3,695 clicking on the link to get the offer. The campaign response stood at 24.75%. Poll results indicated that The Limited received information on how their customers preferred to receive the promotional material, where they shopped most and type of fashion they basically shop. Eventually, The Limited was able to capitalize on word of mouth marketing through its campaign. Additionally, the integration of Viral Peer Sharing proved extensive in 50 states and at the same time expanding the customer

The marketing industry is an elaborate network that links companies to their consumers, primarily through written communication. The main objective of marketing is to identify trends and patterns in consumer behavior, and utilize the data to influence consumers to purchase more goods. From a macroenviroment standpoint, the general conditions of a market are heavily dependent on global environmental factors. The most significant factor that influences the markets today is technological advancements. Since the release of Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, and Myspace in the early 2000s, the number of people using social media has increased to over sixty-five percent. The ever-growing dependency on social media platforms, has given marketers the tremendous opportunity to further market potential consumers. Social media marketing is a specific form of marketing that focuses on producing ad content that social media users will post on their own networks. This particular marketing technique is effective because ads and content are created, based on what personal information users post on social media. Firms and organizations that advertise their brands on social media are more likely to increase their customer base and annual revenue. By doing so, companies are able to increase exposure of their brand and widen previous hidden, customer bases. As a marketer, the fine line between right and wrong is often blurred. The amount and

Social Media is a forum that is heavily influenced by consumers and has become a very poplar way of doing business and expanding it and making people aware of your business. According to Oxford Dictionary social media is “Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.” (Oxford Dictionary, 2015)

Social media has taken off like a rocket throughout the years. The annoying sound of a modem connecting has turned into a soundless transaction. The wait time to connect is instant, opening a global world of interactions for people. You can now connect with anyone, anywhere at anytime at least once a day. Social media defined by Goyal is “Any platform,which provides the facility of sharing ideas, exchanging information and sending messages over an electronic medium, is considered as social media.” (Goyal,222). This is to include online magazines, Facebook, Twitter, Newspapers,Email, Blogs, YouTube and many more. Advertisers have taken notice to these platforms, utilizing social media to promote their brands, develop trust with the consumer,save money and target audiences faster than ever before.

Viral marketing utilises social networks to quite a large extent to create awareness and can be spread by word-of-mouth or through the internet.

Typically consumers do not like losses and they do not like to make any decision on matters related to purchasing under any uncertainties. As the uncertainties reduce, consumers feel more confident in making decision on purchasing and investing (Schubert & Ginsburg, 2000). In order to avoid uncertainties they look for information on products and services online like consumer rating and reviews (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006). Information available on social media and blogs are generated by users and have persuasive tendencies. We will review various papers that look at informative and persuasive effect of user generated content on the customers.

In an environment where there is a significat growth in the usage of the Social media, like facebook, twitter, what's app and so on. All these sources of social media involve the presence of the Word of mouth. Word of mouth plays an important role in marketing for a brand whether it is a good or a service.Word of mouth offers a way to obtain a significant competitive advantatge to a brand.