Viral marketing

MÜNSTER UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES, GERMANY
* Faculty of Business Administration -

VIRAL MARKETING

written by:
Felipe Brieva Hernáez

Examiner:
Prof. Thorsten Kliewe

Münster, 31. Juni 2010
Table of Content

1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. Viral Marketing
3.1 Definition
3.2 History
3.3 Word-of-Mouth
3.4 Guerrilla Marketing
3.5 E-fluentials
3.6 Types of ViralMarketing
3.7 Viral Marketing Campaign
3.7.1 Requisites
3.7.2 Rules
3.7.3 Target and Target Groups
3.7.4 How to succeed at a Viral Marketing Campaign
3.8 Advantages and Disadvantages
4. Conclusion
5. References

Abstract
In the next pages the topic Viral Marketing and his predecessors will be defined and explained. Some important points of this marketing strategy, like therequisites to make a viral campaign, some rules to do it and tips to be successful will be also explained with more details to have a clearer idea of Viral Marketing. This text doesn’t explain in detail many points of viral marketing and there are some other points that are not mentioned, but it can be useful for someone who don’t know what viral marketing is and wants to know a bit more about thistopic.

Introduction
44,1% of the people agree that they will stop using a brand if they read a bad comment on a blog and 39,2% of the people says that they have buy a product after reading a good comment on a blog. If 17% of our conversation topics are related with companies, brands, product or services and 90% of the people trust in comments done by friends and family, it could be a good ideato use it.
Every day companies do advertising to increase their sales, but it is much better if they don’t need to do advertising, because their customers do it for them. That is how viral marketing works with the help of internet.
Today are a lot of different internet services that help us to share our experiences and make comments about everything. Reading those comments affect how people willmake decision and sometimes these comments also influence in taking a good or bad decision and companies are using it to make better products or services for us.

Viral Marketing

Definition
This kind of marketing makes an analogy to a virus, because it expands himself quickly, in all directions and it is hard to stop or control it.
“Think of a virus as the ultimate marketing program. Whenit comes to getting a message out with little time, minimal budgets, and maximum effect, nothing on earth beats a virus. Every marketer aims to have a dramatic impact on thinking and behavior in a target market; every successful virus does exactly that..” (Rayport, Jeffrey 1996)
There are a lot different definitions for this topic, some are:
Mauro Bampo, et al. in their paper called “The effectof the Social Structure of Digital Networks on Viral Marketing Performance” in the Vol. 9 of the Information System Research defined the Viral Marketing as “a form of peer-to-peer communication in which individuals are encouraged to pass on promotional messages within their social networks. Conventional wisdom holds that the viral marketing process is both random and unmanageable.”
The Dr. RalphF. Wilson, an E-commerce Consultant said that “Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence.”
Putting some of these ideas together with personal knowledge, a personal definition of Viral Marketing will be: Viral Marketing is a form of onlinecommunication in which the people make the marketing by communicating their perception of a product, service or brand to other customers or possible customers, in a exponential form, influencing the decisions of them through pre-existing social networks.
“We live in a world where consumers actively resist marketing. So it’s imperative to stop marketing at people. The idea is to create an environment...