Viral Marketing

Viral marketing entails using marketing techniques within some of the most popular social media sites to produce increases in brand awareness and achieve product sales. The objective is to get a much higher demand for your company services through replicating viral processes in the form of posts on sites that get lots of views, likes, and comments. In fact, according to a number of experts, we are now in a conversation economy. Therefore, in addition to conventional marketing techniques, any company that wishes to compete on a level playing field, regardless of size, has to remain active in the most popular social network sites and be part of the conversation. It is imperative that any reader of this blog understand that this new form of marketing is not designed to replace conventional marketing techniques. On the contrary, it should be used as a way to complement whatever else your company is already doing. For example, if your company has a marketing plan that includes: Local cable TV, radio, a major newspaper, magazines, bulk and direct mail marketing, and guerrilla marketing – e.g., passing out company flyers at a social event – you should not start cutting back. To reiterate, you should not cut the marketing budget of any company and eliminate ads proven to work based on the number of responses generated from potential customers. Having your company on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Vine, and getting a Blog are simply ways and means to join the conversation through the sharing of posts, pics, and videos with a target audience. That sounds simple enough but the trick is to find the right platform for a conversation that interests some key players, groups, and friends of your company without being intrusive. When using conventional marketing techniques, the main goal is to translate responses generated by means of creative ads into sales. That rule also applies to viral marketing. Thus, what should you do if your Facebook post, your pin on Pinterest, or the YouTube video about your company goes viral inside the long tail of marketing? Well, you should translate those social media activities into sales and revenue while reaping the financial benefits from YouTube and Twitter for example. The first benefit is often accomplished by showing potential customers in your tweets, posts, and streams how to respond and order your products and services during the course of what appears to be a non-intrusive and intriguing conversation. Always make sure that your company has the right infrastructure in place, one that can accommodate large volumes of calls and subsequent orders …