Blog Post #11: Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is the spreading of brand awareness using social networking. The term “Viral” comes from this marketing’s technique of virus-like self-replicating behavior to spread marketing objectives. This term is usually confused with the idea of something going viral on social media. The goal for creating viral marketing programs is to successfully reach individuals with high social networking potentials who could spread these marketing programs. This enables the program to reach a large population in a short time span. In order for the viral marketing technique to be successful, it must satisfy the three criteria: messenger, message, and environment. The three types of messengers are market mavens, social hubs, and salespeople. Market mavens are information specialists who spread these messages to their social network. Social hubs are individuals with a large amount of social connections who can act as a bridge to reach different groups of individuals. Salespeople make the message more appealing to their target audience and send it to social hubs so it can spread more. Messages need to be appealing and memorable for it to potentially become a successful viral marketing program. The environment in which the message is sent, is also very important. For a marketing program to be successful, it must be sent under the right timing and context. Viral marketing is a new piece of information I learned. Although, I was not familiar with this term, I was aware of this as a technique used in businesses. I also see it every day through ads on social media or sponsored videos on YouTube. The three criteria that needs to be met in order for a marketing program to be successful was new to me, and I found that it made complete sense. This allowed me to make a connection between what I already knew and what I did not understand.