P3 B

P3 – Explore commercial uses for social media websites, including b) Viral marketing

Viral Marketing is a useful marketing tool which can be used either ‘stand-alone’ or as part of a larger campaign that uses multiple kinds of marketing. It is especially attractive to smaller businesses or companies because viral marketing can be a cheaper alternative to traditional marketing efforts. Using Viral Marketing is a customer- focused approach, so the first step is to identify the target demographic for a product and what they value the most in products, requiring marketers to research and analyse demographic data. For instance, marketers who are designing social media accounts will look to the demographic of teens to young adults they are targeting, as well as exploring how the demographic will share their information.

Several companies have used various social media sites such as Facebook, as a way of advertising their products. This is a major marketing programme for such companies to increase the sales of their products and services. Online advertising plays a different role at different stages of the marketing process- helping to raise awareness of a product or service, generating leads for a sales force or selling directly. Companies with retail outlets use advertising to make consumers aware of product availability and increase sales through these outlet pages.

Here is shown a clear example of how a compa


ny has used their marketing skills on a social media site such as Facebook:

There are several promotional campaigns which are linked to and/ or passed around using Viral Marketing. For instance, using the following several techniques:

- Free online E- Books

- Free short reports

- Free ‘how to’ reports

 

The online mass message distribution includes the following:

• Hotmail adding promotional footing to bottom of all users’ email
• free online games highlighting products/service/news stories, access to TV adverts online, increased brand awareness

A clear example of a Viral Marketing Campaign is Metro Trains Melbourne Dumb Ways to Die. This was released in November 2012 and became largely well-known through the use of being shared constantly online and becoming a viral topic for people to know about. This marketing campaign was devised to pro


mote public safety although the characters created and the catchy music ended up becoming a public source for entertainment. This resulted in numerous sequels being made of the campaign video. The original video ended up gaining a successful 92.9Million views on YouTube and the campaign won numerous awards worldwide.