Social Networking and Viral Marketing

Anybody that is remotely involved with marketing knows that the greatest form of marketing is viral marketing and the number one way for viral marketing to happen is through the use of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook. Why is it that only the larger companies are following this pattern and yet the small businesses and start up companies are completely ignoring the fact that viral marketing is what is required to grow?

First let’s look at marketing; the whole purpose of marketing is to spread the word about a product or service to other people. Now whether the object that you are trying to market is a new soft drink, a lawn mower, or a nice resort the methods used are the same. So naturally a medium that can share information to many people very quickly would serve as a good marketing medium. This brings us back to viral marketing.

Viral Marketing as defined by wikipedia is marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.^[1] Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.^[2] Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.

Now, you may have noticed that most of the forms of viral marketing are things that are targeted mostly towards the younger generation (my generation). Other businesses already use viral marketing as much as they can to get in touch with anyone aged 30 and under. I feel that this is a smart step for larger companies that want to move forward by keeping up with the younger generations.

As a small business, I’m sure that most of you don’t have a marketing person let alone a marketing team to help you capture the eyes of the younger generation. This is something that you can’t afford to miss out on and if you have any hopes of growing or even staying afloat to see tomorrow then now is the time to find somebody to help with marketing your company through use of viral marketing.

The more popular that MySpace and Facebook get the more aware that I’m finding my newer clients to be, many of them ask me about creating a myspace account for them, a few of which have seen first hand how amazing the social networking aspect of viral marketing can be. With the click of a button you can notify all of your friends on myspace and facebook of a new product. You can connect to people all over the world and open them up to your products or services.

I believe that viral marketing was mostly started by the development of the social networking websites that allow people to quickly share with others their feelings about products that they like or dislike. For companies that can’t afford to have somebody to help them with marketing then at the very least they can still manage by signing up for MySpace or Facebook and just connecting with people and taking a genuine interest in others. That is what makes social networking such a great thing and is more for businesses than it is for the average consumer. Sure, it is mostly consumers using it, but they have no way of benefiting from MySpace or Facebook like businesses do.

So go ahead, create an account and introduce yourself to the consumers online that are just waiting to hear about you and your great product.

For more information contact us and tell us how we can help you.