Viral Advertising
Posted:Monday, June 26, 2006

Wikipedia describes viral marketing and viral advertising as marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through viral processes similar to the spread of an epidemic. It is word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it harnesses the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.

Viral marketing is sometimes used to describe some sorts of Internet-based stealt marketing campaigns, including the use of blogs, seemingly amateur web sites, and other forms of astroturfing to create word of mouth for a new product or service. Often the ultimate goal of viral marketing campaigns is to generate media coverage via "offbeat" stories worth many times more than the campaigning company's advertising budget.

The term "viral advertising" refers to the idea that people will pass on and share interesting and entertaining content; this is often sponsored by a brand, which is looking to build awareness of a product or service. These viral commercials often take the form of funny video clips, or interactive games, images, and even text.

Viral marketing is popular because of the ease of executing the marketing campaign, relative low-cost, good targeting, and the high and rapid response rate. The main strength of viral marketing is its ability to obtain a large number of interested people at a low cost. The main weakness is that sometimes messages can look like e-mail spam and this creates the risk of damaging the brand.

iMedia Connection's Media Strategies Editor Jim Meskauskas describes viral campaigns as online versions of word-of-mouth (WOM) advertising. In his view, good viral marketing campaigns need to include;

*  Entertainment: the marketing is entertaining
*  Utility: what is being marketed is something the reader can use.
*  Palpable reward: the marketing provides instant gratification.
*  Uniqueness: the marketing is like nothing the reader has ever seen.
*  Uniqueness: the marketing is like nothing the reader has ever seen.

Jim Meskauskas also describes the difference between frictionless and active viral marketing campaigns. Frictionless occurs when the audience spreads the good word via usage, such as Hotmail. Active viral marketing occurs when the audience spreads the word via actively recruiting non-audience members into the audience.

Hotmail the first Viral

Hotmail grew a subscriber base more rapidly than any company in the history of the online or offline publication ever.

Hotmail is the largest email provider in the world.  In its first 18 months, Hotmail signed up over 12 million subscribers. Hotmail signs up more than 150,000 subscribers every day, seven days a week.

It spent less than $500,000 on marketing, advertising and promotion compared to over $20 million spent on advertising and brand promotion by its closest competitor Juno.

Hotmail is used in over 220 countries, despite the limitation that it is only available in English.