What is Viral Marketing?

I’ll deduce the definition from the term “viral” making it a widespread in the marketing of a product or service to the either targeted or untargeted consumer. Viral Marketing plain definition would be the availing of a product or service through the various modes of delivery that which is the audio, video, graphical or pictorial so as to reach a prospect client. Most of the business tend to want to achieve these as if offers the fantasy bubble of great ROI when it’s’ merits do outweigh the demerits especially when narrowed down to the social media presence.

Merits of Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing is what most business in operation should focus on especially when they want to establish their presence online as the objective is mutual return in sales and even expound on its geographical presence in terms of prospect customer’s reach.

1.?????? Robust Brand Awareness

When a company is introducing a new good or service in the market viral marketing should form a core foundation of their marketing strategy as it ensures their easy adaptation and reach to a larger audience.

2.?????? Raises Brand Credibility and Trust

On the internet sphere the viral marketing strategy ensures that the brand’s outreach is wide hence the referral reciprocity due to the social media avenue presence of the brand ensures customers could easily rely on it to either purchase their service or good.

3.?????? Leverage against competitors

On an existing campaign a leverage is gained through a viral marketing campaign this could either be through the posters, video ads and even audio ads or just graphic demonstration. As for this to occur creative marketing must implemented so as to ensure that the edge that comes out of it is actual as it is what is being sold to the customers.

4.?????? Creates an avenue for user-generated contents

These marketing strategy boosts even the marketing avenues used a great example is the use of Tiktok videos in generating brand themed contents. A good example that has worked in Kenya is the NRG Radio and Safaricom Tunukiwa/M-Pesa Campaigns. This explores the already existing brand influencers from the respective social media in promoting of the relative company product or service. These outreach though not a guarantee but when it works out it regenerates new numbers of customers that could be an advantage to the customer.

5.?????? Easy to prove the outreach.

A marketing strategy is considered viral when the crafted market work is considered more liked, shared and commented and with these the company might understand the clear indication of the objectival return on investment (ROI) of the investment accrued to put up the work up for marketing.

Afore-mentioned pointers creates a good identifiers of a good implementation of the viral marketing strategy this making it a well curated and delivered strategy from the creator of the product, services or good to be marketed and acquisition of new and existing sales from the customers.

Demerits of the Viral Marketing

As a customer to a new product have you ever seen an ad pop-up on your social media page and you be like, I don’t think is necessary for me and even question why the ad popped-up?

That is viral marketing getting boundless and thus making it saturated and meaningless

As though viral marketing can do great it also has its unsatisfactory results as discussed below.

1.?????? Most of the content of viral marketing do abduct prospect clients by either appealing or aligning to the demands of the customer making it an uncontrolled marketing strategy as when the content lands on the opposite (negative side) it makes a huge brand smear that might take time to come out of as the audience has already curated a clear image of what your thematic entails.

2.?????? Viral Marketing can be rendered useless when the ROI results aren’t relative to the investment made to put up the marketing content. This unpredictability makes it even hard as the virality majorly depends on timing or luck of the initiated marketing campaign.

3.?????? Many viral marketing campaigns are always short-lived because they are always untimely and spontaneously impactful after it the company has to live to up to the script of making more viral contents which might need high creativity.

4.?????? A viral marketing ad campaign might create a pressure for a brand to always step to their game in terms of marketing like when the marketing avenue isn’t viral the marketing might consider that a failed marketing campaign even it has accommodated the relative return on investment in terms of delivery and customer influx.

Conclusively, a good marketing strategy might prove to be viral but all in all its merits should outweigh the demerits as this marketing campaign elevates or diminish the brand’s alignment to customer demand when the asserted theme mismatches the objective.