SPD4290 Viral Marketing - Wild 2010 is a group of students from The Hong Kong PolyU SPEED. Welcome to our SPD4290 Viral Marketing 2010's blog, let's share and discuss on a "viral marketing" for an educational purpose. We are appreciated you visit and share our SPD4290 "viral marketing" - viral among to your friends day-by-day. By SPD4290 Viral Marketing - Wild 2010.
The most outstanding advantage of viral marketing is low cost. Before the launched date of Sina Micro-Blog, Sina had invited 800 hundred people (including some artistes) to use the Micro-Blog. Through the word-of-month from these trial users, the registered blog users dramatically increased. Since Micro-Blog is an online public platform that users can post his/her messages, buzz spreads much more rapidly.
There is, however, one significance drawback of viral marketing. Once the message spreads, it cannot be controlled, especially some negative buzz. Many users feel dissatisfied with Sina as their messages are deleted and their accounts are removed when it thinks the contents include some sensitive political words. The voice of discontent widely spread via online and offline channels and that could not be stopped by Sina. There is no doubt that negative voice will affect people's desire to sign up to become a user.
The NEW Hotmail - Next generation in personal email
Hotmail is the best example of most successful viral marketing strategy over full life cycle. In 1996, a new product, free web based email was launched by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. 'Viral Marketing' catalyst was involved that would exponentially increase the rate of flow of information; nothing to do with virus but the growth is rapid like virus growth through word-of-mouth.
Impact and results of viral marketing strategy over hotmail growth can be summarized as: most important is that Hotmail grew a subscriber base more rapidly than any other company in the world.
Now, Hotmail is the largest email provider in the world. Exponential growth of subscribers; unprecedented source of personal information as almost subscribers filled up demographic and psychographic profile.
Also, with expense close to $500K spent on branding, marketing, advertising and promotion, very less was spent in comparison to nearly 12 million users. It is not just spending money, but spending money in a smart way will work. Hotmail became email king at reduced cost, less expense using viral marketing catalyst. Hotmail viral message (free email services) was involuntary and spread through word-of-mouth.
In Internet and online advertising viral marketing is a type of marketing technique that relies on and encourages people to pass along a marketing message by word-of-mouth (or word-of-e-mail) marketing. Viral marketing online uses blog and social networks to produce positive word-of-mouth brand awareness.
The advantages of viral marketing are low costs, great reach, high credibility, high efficiency and the possibility of continuous campaign adjustments.
The downfalls of viral marketing include the extent of the reach of failed campaigns, the lack of control, risks that the viral message is perceived as spam and the limited possibility for segmentation. One of the things you definitely want to avoid is people being so repulsed at the message (either the words are sick or the images are disgusting) that they do not pass it on, and in fact consider the topic negatively in the wrong way.
