Literature review
Definition Viral Marketing
The term ‘Viral Marketing’ describes the phenomenon by which a marketing technique that uses preexisting social networking services and induces websites to pass on marketing message to other users and sites that creates a potential exponential growth in brand awareness and to achieve marketing objectives. It is a marketing strategy that focuses on broadcasting brand image and awareness hence motivating a buyer to purchase a product even though it might be more costly than other products. Kaplan and Heinlein (2011) further define it as an ‘electronic word of mouth’ whereby a form of marketing message is related to the company brand or product which is conveyed in an exponential growing way, mainly by the use of social media and websites.
Viral marketing has many different dimensions but only 4 of them appear to be the most relevant and dominant;
1. Solicitation
First of all viral marketing may be offered with or without solicitation and may or may not be sought. De Bruyn and Lilien (2008) and Phelps et al. (2004) all suggest that while consumers often find that unsolicited commercial messages coming from a company irritating, information about a company is not considered ‘junk’ if it comes from someone they already know an example Pepsi using Mohamed Salah in their commercials to attract their Egyptian customers. This is because the consumer assumes that the person passed along the message for a reason. East et al discovered
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 is different from more traditional marketing tactics as it offers a free platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. This allows for the increase communication for organizations to foster brand awareness and often, and
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.
Marketing is the action or business of promoting a product or service. Marketing through social media is posting an ad or statement about the product in hopes of receiving more buyers. The seller is not is not the only person that can market a product, there is also a such as Free marketing, this is when a person of higher social status wears promotes your product for free. An example of that would be if a well known basketball or football player is seen drinking Gatorade before a pick-up game in his or her home town, by that person being seen with that product it draws attention to that brand from that person’s fans. Social media marketing is a bigger and broader way of receiving free marketing. Some local stores can get global recognition because social media connects all around the world. Social media marketing has become such a big thing that Exhibitor magazine did a survey in 2014 on Social Media Marketing. This survey was taken to determine how exhibit and event marketers used social media to improve the sales of their product. According to the survey released by the company , social media as a marketing tool has exploded over the past four years(Exhibitormediapost). The percentage of companies using social media as an exhibit-marketing implement has more than doubled, from 31 percent in 2010 to 80 percent in 2014(E
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
The Pepsi Max public relations stunt is a good example of a fun event that can generate some viral marketing potential and also provides consumers in the area with something to tell their friends about. Still, it is challenging to come up with new ideas constantly and it is just as easy to have a viral marketing success as it is to have a failure. Hiring top creative talent and providing them with the resources to succeed is a big part of creating an atmosphere that will more likely breed successful marketing
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
| First, marketers must realize that they often do not control the content on social media sites. Second, the ability to share experiences quickly and with such large number of people amplifies the impact of word of mouth in a way that can eventually affect a company's bottom line. Third, social media allow marketers to listen. It is no longer one way communication. Marketers now can actually have conversation with customers and get feedbacks. Fourth, social media also provide more sophisticated methods of measuring how marketers meet and interact with consumers than
Businesses use platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as a modern tool to share information with their customers. Facebook offers the option for businesses to create a fan page for their company or product. Twitter allows the use of 140-character posts that users can follow, tweet, or retweet. Blogs are less commonly used, but allow businesses to write in journal type format. YouTube offers a video-library to its users with millions of viewers around the world. There are many other types of social media but most of them follow similar general communication capabilities. Utilizing these
Scarlett Johansson’s Sodastream ad fails on a number of levels in its bid to become a viral marketing sensation. The first major issue that occurs during the advertisement itself is Scarlett’s statement to the effect of “how do I make this go viral?” I believe that the use of this statement alone was enough to end the ads chances of going viral, as nobody feels comfortable sharing a video that doesn’t feel genuine in its attempt at reaching consumers. It similar to one of this generations major problems with advertisements that fail to feel like anything more than a hollow attempt to sell a product. The other examples given don’t explicitly ask to go viral (with the exception of the second most poorly received video, Jennifer Anniston’s Smartwater), and they all received millions of extra views and feel more authentic as a result. The message or goal should never feel forced in any advertisement, and Sodastream certainly failed in that regard.
There are thousands of companies around the world today, but only a few are successful in the competition of business. Top companies, every year, invest billions of dollars on advertising because it is an effective way to present their product or service. Advertisements are impactful because they are everywhere from the Internet, movies, books, magazines, and outdoors. Although most advertisements may look simple, its use has been effective for companies to deliver propaganda, persuasion, and subliminal messages to convince consumers to buy something they don’t need. The use of propaganda, and persuasion is evident in companies such as Camel, Pepsi, and Tesla Motor to convince viewers to engage in their
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
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.