Penny1

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Online Viral Marketing

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use preexisting social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, 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. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive flash games,advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or eventext messages.
It is claimed that a satisfied customer tells an average of three people about a product or service he/she likes, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like. Viral marketing is based on this natural human behavior.
The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Network Potential(SNP) and create viral messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being passed along.
The term "viral marketing" is also sometimes used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns the use of varied kinds of astroturfingboth online and offline to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth enthusiasm.
The term Viral Marketing was coined by a Harvard Business School professor, Jeffrey F. Rayport, in a December 1996 article for Fast Company The Virus of Marketing. The term was further popularized by Tim Draperand Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describeHotmail's e-mails practice of appending advertising for itself in outgoing mail from their users.
Among the first to write about viral marketing on the Internet was media critic Douglas rushkuff in his 1994 book Media Virus. The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user will become "infected" (i.e., sign up for an account) and can then go on to infect other susceptible users. As long as each infected user sends mail to more than one susceptible user on average, standard in epidemiology imply that the number of infected users will grow according to a logistic curve, whose initial segment appears exponential.
Among the first to write about algorithms designed to identify people with high Social Networking Potential is Bob Gerstley in Advertising Research is Changing. Gerstley uses SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research to help marketers maximize the effectiveness of viral marketing campaigns.
Business Week(2001) described web-based campaigns for Hotmail(1996) and The Bliar Wirch Project (1999) as striking examples of viral marketing, but warned of some dangers for imitation marketers.
Burger King's The Subservient Chicken campaign was cited in Wired as a striking example of viral or word-of-mouth marketing.
In 2000, Slate described TiVo's unpublicized gambit of giving free TiVo's to web-savvy enthusiasts to create "viral" word of mouth, pointing out that a viral campaign differs from a publicity stunt.
Cadbury's Dairy Milk 2007 Gorilla advert was heavily popularised on YouTube and Facebook.
With the emergence of Web 2.0, mostly all web startups like facebook.com, youtube.com, collabotrade.com, myspace.com, and digg.com have made good use of Viral Marketing by merging it with the social networking.
The release of the 2007 concept album Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails involved a viral marketing campaign, including the band leaving USB drives at concerts during NIN's 2007 European Tour. This was followed up with a series of interlinked websites revealing clues and information about the dystopian future in which the album is set.
The film Cloverfield initially released one teaser trailer that did not reveal the title—only the release date. The subsequent online viral marketing campaign for the film is remarkably complex, making use of everything from fictitious company websites to MySpace profiles for the film's main characters.
In 2007, World Wrestling Entertainment promoted the return of Chris Jericho with a viral marketing campaign using 15-second cryptic binary code videos. The videos contained hidden messages and biblical links related to Jericho, although speculation existed throughout WWE fans over who the campaign targeted. The text "Save Us" and "2nd Coming" were most prominent in the videos. The campaign spread throughout the internet with numerous websites, though no longer operational, featuring hidden messages and biblical links to further hint at Jericho's return.
In 2007, Portuguese football club Sporting integrated a viral feature in their campaign for season seats. In their website, a video required the user to input his name and phone number before playback started, which then featured the coach Paulo Bento and the players waiting at the locker room while he makes a phone call to the user telling him that they just can't start the season until the user buys his season ticket. Flawless video and phone call synchronization and the fact that it was a totally new experience for the user led to nearly 200,000 pageviews phone calls in less than 24 hours.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Online Product Marketing

Is the marketing of products or service over the internet. The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing including low costs in distributing information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Online Product Marketing, both in terms of instant response and in eliciting response, are unique qualities of the medium. Online marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising and sales. It is the process of growing and promoting an organization using online media and does not simply mean 'building a website' or 'promoting a website'. Somewhere behind that website is a real organization with a real products.
There are a few important characteristics that differentiate Internet marketing from "off-line marketing":
- One-to-one vs. one-to-many approach: The targeted user is typically browsing the Internet on their own, and the marketing messages reach them personally. This can be very clearly seen in search marketing, where the users find advertisements targeted to specific keywords that the users asked for.
- Demographics targeting vs. behavioral targeting: off-line marketers typically segment their markets according to age group, sex, geography, and other general factors. Online marketers have the luxury of targeting by activity. This is a deeper form of targeting, since the advertiser knows that the target audience are people who do a certain activity (upload pictures, have blogs, etc.) instead of just expecting that a certain group of people will like their new product or service.
- Measurability: Almost all aspects of an online campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. The advertisers either pay per banner impression (CPM), pay per click (PPC), or pay per action accomplished. Therefore, it is easy to understand which messages or offering are more appealing to the audience.
- Response and immediate results: Since the online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on the message, go to a website, and perform a targeted action, the results of campaigns are immediately measured and tracked. On the other hand, someone driving a car who sees a billboard, will at best be interested and might decide to get more information at some time.
An Online Product Marketing strategy includes all aspects of online advertising, online activity that promotes a company products online , including websites, blog sites, article and press releases, online market research, email marketing, and advertising. It has a large impact on several industries, as well as the advertising industry itself and it just profound that online advertising has grown to be worth tens of billions of dollars annualy in just a few years. As of 2007, is growing faster than other types of media.Since exposure, response and overall efficiency of Internet media is easier to track than traditional "off-line" media, through the use of web analytics for instance, Online marketing can offer a greater sense of accountability for advertisers. Increasingly, however, marketers and their clients are becoming aware of the need to measure the collaborative effects of marketing, instead of siloing each medium. The effects of Multi-Channel Marketing can be difficult to determine, but are an important part of ascertaining the value of media campaigns. In this strategy must consider the security concerns for both companies and consumers that particpate in online business. Many consumers are hesitant to buy items over the Internet because they do not trust that their personal information will remain private because some companies that do business online have been caught giving away or selling information about their customers. Another major security concern that consumers have with ecommerce merchants is whether or not they will receive exactly what they purchase. Trustworthy, reliable merchant performance has been a consumer concern since the inception of ecommerce, and to date, merchants have attempted to address these concerns by investing in and building strong consumer brands.

Online Marketing Business

Online marketing seems to have the business world divided into two. There is the online world of cyberspace and the offline world of the street. Most businesses specialise in one or the other. Some combine the two to the greatest advantage. Some would benefit from the combination of the two but some clearly belong exclusively to one or the other. Nevertheless the question whether a business is going to use online marketing or not is inevitable if a business wants to reach an increasing number of customers. Deciding on this may depend on a number of factors even though the main deciding factor seems to be the ability of the businessperson to handle working online. So many marketers are intimidated by computers and strongly resist any suggestion that they would greatly benefit by up skilling themselves by becoming computer and internet savvy.

Apart from the intimidation factor of online marketing a very important issue is: Where are the customers? If the business is very local depending on people coming in off the street there normally isn't much need to go online. For example the local barber shop or preschool. Nevertheless even these might benefit from some online exposure or using the internet to communicate to customers e.g. sending email reminders and messages. The internet could also help these businesses earn a little extra income by selling business related products. The best marketing procedures for these local businesses though will be offline, using a variety of print and mass media.

The internet is more suited to those businesses wanting or needing to reach the wider community outside of the local area. This is the wonderful aspect of the internet people can do business with anyone else even if that other person is on the furthest part of the planet. Even people in developing countries such as the Philippines can do business with those living in developed countries, enabling many people in developing countries to earn a western income and thereby skyrocketing their living standard. This does not mean that online marketing is particularly easy or even cheap but what it does mean is that those who take the time and effort in making online marketing work can fulfil their entrepreneurial aspirations through modern technology. There are many free ways that marketers can market their products on the internet all the internet marketer really requires is a computer and internet connection.

To be truly successful with internet marketing it is important to know how to gain available resources and frequently how to apply work at home ideas. There are a number of resources available online and many people willing to assist the newbie. Write a copy for your website requires careful thinking and attention. Make sure that your web copy contains the right target keywords or key phrases that potential customers use in their search. If your products can deliver multiple benefits, the better it will be for your prospects. So state all the advantages you can think of. Don’t miss out even the smallest details. As long as it’s a positive thing, include it in your list. Don't forget to include a background about your company. This gives your prospective customers more trust in your company and your business. Before publishing your marketing copy, double check it for possible typographical or grammatical errors using an automatic software and by re-reading it yourself. Better, have another person re-check the copy for you. Remember, that even just one typographical error can create a negative impression on your readers. And make an assurance to the client that their transactions will be free of problems and can be trusted to provide reliable products and services. However, sadly there are also a lot of scammers online who take advantage of internet marketing and make it very hard for any one new to emarketing from making a sound profitable start online.