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toegevoegd
op 07-03-2007oude datum:2007-03-07
Viral Marketing-Column The Times editie maart 2007(Engels)
Artikel_en_redactie
Editie maart 2007; The Times
Internet Marketing and the Viral Image
Hard thinking on your image in Internet marketing almost immediately brings you to the most exciting instrument in online marketing: ‘the viral.’ The digital form of word of mouth advertisement strengthens the fact that word of mouth has been the best kind of advertisement for years.
It starts with forwarding
You know them. Colleagues, friends and acquaintances who forward all kinds of stuff from their workplace. It is the nightmare of every network administrator. But then…YouTube came in. The source and the cradle of the viral commercial. Nice clips, funny commercials and extraordinary home videos are amply present at Google’s most expensive asset. In the old days, we had the barber, the general practitioner’s assistant, the lady-next-door or the gossiping secretary and now we have the Internet in all of its appearances.
The infectious form of online marketing
Viral marketing is the most infectious form of online marketing, which we will see more and more. Word of mouth advertising is a term used in the marketing industry when non-members of a company have a conversation about the company’s product or service. The eventual receiver also becomes the sender. This idea is contrary to the mass marketing theory applied by marketeers in the 1980s. The contemporary consumer is a lot more difficult to tempt and often changes his or her focus towards informal communication. Examples? The growth of web initiatives such as Google, Hotmail YouTube, Gratiz, Marktplaats and Geenstijl.nl. It is widely known that Marktplaats had a budget of several hundreds of euros per year for a ‘marketing campaign’. The Marktplaats concept was simply promoted word to mouth, which made all further advertisement unnecessary. The web introduction of Apple’s iPhone, exclusively for Apple fans, the trailer of the long-awaited, newest James Bond film placed on a weblog and the Transavia buzz mailings for €4.99 euro tickets. These campaigns are all set up by marketeers. Less marketing strategic but certainly viral are: the newest downloadable Star Wars film, naked pictures of Britney, the design of the newest Apple computer, which is placed somewhere on a forum ‘just like that’, and the videos of Saddam.
From mass to man
Through terms like ‘buzz marketing’, ‘hype’ or ‘viral marketing’, modern marketeers try to get this type of advertising up and running. Organisations see that this can be more effective than to push that ‘mass message’ through everybody’s throat again. In the US, we see initiatives such as Proctor & Gamble using a group of especially selected women to communicate with online.
Conditions to the buzz, hype or successful viral campaign
To sum up some important focus points for a successful viral campaign: give a satisfactory, simple and swift answer to needs; the message should have a credible format and offer if you want people to talk about it; an offer, a nice commercial, but also a joke, a good recipe or article should give both the receiver and the sender a good feeling.
Positive effects of this word of mouth campaign are that it gives a positive change to your image, that it shows that your well aware of current affairs and that you can be provided with the appropriate information from your target group.
Patrick Petersen is teacher/ coach and author on Internet marketing and the owner of AtMost.nl and CCIC.nl.
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| Patrick Petersen wie? |
- eigenaar AtMost.nl en CCIC.nl
- training, workshop en cursus op gebied van onder andere PHP, MySQL, CFML, SQL, JSP, ASP, ASP.net, VB, VBA, XML, XSLT,DHTML, HTML, CSS, JavaScript..
- trainer- consultant op gebied van online marketing, internetmarketing, internettechnieken, internetstrategie, internetcommunicatie, viral marketing en zoekmachinemarketing
- technisch en creatief schrijver en auteur op gebied van internettrends, online marketing en internettechnieken
- blogger
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