Social Media Viral Marketing 2020

 Secondly, critically evaluate both viral marketing and word of mouth marketing in relation to other forms of social media marketing activity.

Introduction

In the current business environment, social media marketing has become significant for the companies to be attached to the customers.

It is one of the main marketing activities that is rapidly adopted by the companies to get competitive in the market. It is a kind of the form of the digital marketing that allows the company to target a lot of people in the one time.

In the social media marketing, the one of the main thing that is the selection of the social media platform.

It is because, in the success of the social media marketing, there is a great role of the social media platform and channel (Tuten and Solomon, 2017). There are different platforms are available such as Twitter, WhatsApp Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat.

At the same time, the user of the internet is increasing rapidly due to this, the number of the users are also increasing in the social media. Companies prepare the different strategy regarding the social media marketing according to the kind of the social media marketing.

The main social media marketing is viral marketing, word of mouth marketing, content marketing, sharing massaging marketing, customer review marketing, social shopping marketing. These all social media marketing are different from the each other but in this, the famous are viral marketing and word of mouth marketing (Saravanakumar and SuganthaLakshmi, 2012).

In this report, Social media marketing is discussed that includes the different platforms of the social media marketing such as viral marketing and mouth marketing. It also includes the discussion of the different forms under the social media marketing. Furthermore, this report also critically analyzes the benefits and limitations of viral marketing as comparing other forms of the social media marketing. In a similar manner, words of mouth marketing also analyzed as compared with other forms of the social media marketing.

Benefits and limitation of the viral marketing

In the views of Kaur (2016), in the current business environment, viral marketing has become the significant aspect to promote the business in the short time. The companies and people are using the concept of the viral marketing rapidly due to its advantage.

But, before making the decision on viral marketing, it is essential for them to understand the benefit of the viral marketing. In the same concern of this, Ashley and Tuten, (2015) defined that viral marketing is a form of the marketing that is carried out using the online techniques.

Basically, viral marketing is beneficial for those companies who are engaged in the e-commerce business activities.

With the help of the viral marketing, various companies have become a success in the business environment. In the context of this, Hotmail.com is one of the good examples of this. In this, it is found Hotmail.com provided the free sign up facilities to users that allowed contacting with their firms and business relations.

Figure 1: Viral Marketing (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011)

According to Chaffey (2016), there are various benefits of the using the viral marketing strategy in the business.

In this, it is determined that with the help of the viral marketing, the companies can spread the new the product and service at the worldwide by using the internet sources. It is because it enables users to focus on the larger audience through the World Wide Web.

The practices of the viral marketing are possible with the help of the tools of the online communication. In the current time, in the large among people are using online communication tools.

It is one of the main benefits of viral marketing. In the support of this, Andrews (2014) exhibited that vital marketing strategy enables the company to be competitive in the competitive business environment.

In the competitive business environment, it is not easy to remain the in the marketing but strategy of the viral marketing enables the company to maintain their brand name in the market. Beside this, some other kind of the social media marketing allows the market to target only to the limited people.

On the other hand, the views of Kumar et al., (2013) are opposite of the above findings in which, they are determined that vital marketing depends on the users of the internet without this, it is not possible for the companies to develop the strategy for the viral marketing.

Hence, it is one of limitation that indicates that viral marketing can be used when in the target audience are using the internet.

In the support of this, Scott (2015) stated that the success of the target marketing is possible in the one condition when companies and employees put their effective and continue efforts. In the viral marketing, to achieve the success needs more effort as compared to another form of the social media marketing.

Figure 2: Viral marketing (Vianna et al., 2016)

In the support of the viral marketing, Yang (2013) said that vital marketing is working as a faster mode of reaching the customers.

It is also helpful to develop the reputation of the firm fast by increase the sales and revenue. It is also helpful for the companies to make the online promotion of the product and the service of the firm.

The main aim of the company behind the using the viral marketing strategy only promote the good and service for increasing the sales and brand awareness. But, the views of the Malthouse et al., (2013) indicate some different as depicting that viral marketing is only useful for spreading the news of the product and service.

It is not effective to increase the sales and revenue because this marketing strategy does not motivate the customers. In the final process of the sales employees of the company have to put effort and influence the customers for purchasing.

According to Hoffman and Fodor (2010), it is one of the main forms of the social media marketing that it is able to promote the good and service in the quick manners as compared to other forms of the social media marketing.

However, the growth and effectiveness of the viral marketing are not easy to identify. The result of viral marketing identifies after the viral of an advertisement on the social media. It is also determined that there is no need for the much tools and investment adoption of the viral marketing.

The companies and marketing managers can adopt the viral marketing strategy easily. Viral marketing is easy and does not require much tool and investment as compared to other forms of the social media marketing as content marketing and target marketing.

But, at the same time, it is also posited that viral marketing does not provide much control to the marketers as content, digital and message sharing marketing can provide.

Benefit and limitation of word of mouth marketing

In the views of Kim and Ko (2012), words of mouth marketing also come under the social media marketing because, in this marketing, there is a vital role of the social indignant.

Its one of the main benefit is that there is not required for more effort if the company is providing customer satisfaction. But, there is no control of the company in this marketing. Beside this, content marketing and sharing massaging marketing provides significant control to the marketers.

The word of mouth (WOM) is referred to under the traditional advertising channel which is in existence ahead of the internet penetration in the individual’s life. The word of mouth (WOM) marketing is recognized to have an influence on the business outcomes (Lovett et al., 2013).

It is a commonly observed how a commercial or advertised product is discussed among individuals and how the individual mentions it to their friends, how friend refers it to other in the professional group and other groups mentions to other individuals and so on.

This identifies WOM as a means of valuable marketing as the individuals’ trust on each other and their views which is helpful for the company to drive sales of their advertised or most talked about products in the market.

WOM contributes in the promotions of the company products and services that stimulate the purchase intention, behaviour and actions to buy products or consume services based on the positive publicity (Sweeney et al., 2012). This helps in positive branding and increasing the sales revenue for the company.

For instance, Apple products, in particular, the iPhone, the word of mouth marketing has been effective for its strong positioning in the consumer electronics over its several criticisms.

However, it is discussed that WOM form of traditional marketing lacks capacity and is ineffective to reach the mass audience. This has raised the popularity of the social media as a marketing tool in recent years.

Social media marketing involves activities of promotion and selling of the company offering on the social media networking sites. Social media marketing is related to creating engaging content for the target audience of social media sites to generate interest that persuades the purchase intention and behaviour into actual purchase decisions (Saravanakumar and SuganthaLakshmi, 2012).

This has resulted in many small, medium and large businesses to adopt social media marketing activities to communicate, engage and respond to their online customers, to gain insights about needs, preferences, experience, and satisfaction of the customers.

It is also used by several businesses to increase brand awareness in an online environment. Despite these, WOM is still preferred among several marketers owing to its several benefits and its effectiveness in the specific circumstance.

Word of mouth (WOM) marketing is considered to be an effective form of promotion in the marketing arena.

It reflects customer dialogs on a daily basis that indicates customer interest and opinion towards company products and service offerings. According to Sweeney et al. (2012), the marketing activities of a company cause customers to talk about the advertised products and about the company which leads to word of mouth publicity.

For instance, an individual targeted by traditional marketing campaigns trigger to pass the message about the advertised products or service. The oral recommendation for the good and service consumed by satisfied customer triggers positive word of mouth publicity.

There are several benefits of WOM marketing and networking. On the contrary, in this digitalised era, word of mouth publicity relevance is impacted by the social media marketing.

In this context, word of mouth is criticised to be an old-fashioned marketing activity is the digitalised business environment (Lovett et al., 2013).

It can be said that social media marketing has gained more significance in today’s time as customers spend more time on social media networks and are actively involved in reading sharing, comparing brands and products and exchanging view on different topics of marketer’s interests such as the company, brand, products/service experience, satisfaction, compliant, suggestions, etc.

Thus, the online customer repeatedly refers to brands among the family members, friends, and groups through the social media networking.

On the positive side, it is stated that word of mouth is necessary for offline networking (Vázquez-Casielles et al., 2013).

WOM has been used to trigger the brand-related dialogue among individuals, friends, and social circle and workgroups on a daily basis. Conversely, it is argued that the power of social media marketing is immense in influencing the online customers.

Another benefit highlighted by Lovett et al. (2013) state that word of mouth marketing has been a driving force for customer purchase decisions in favour of the publicized product.

The social media marketing is also recognised to triggers purchase based on recommendations made by other customers in a social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.

It related context, it is observed that the customer are interested and make product decisions for the products of the specific brands they follow on the social media sites like Twitter and Facebook (De Vries et al., 2012).

Apart from this, the benefit of word-of-mouth marketing is that it is considered to be a credible source of information.

In support of this, it can be noted that word of mouth marketing activities helps the marketers with an opportunity to improve trust in the company products and service offerings and also to develop better customer relationships.

At the same time, the increase in customer trust level toward company offering leads to more referrals.

The customer trust also provides an advantage to the company in nurturing the long-term relationship with qualified referrals to generate profitable transactions. Thus, the benefit of traditional WOM is the development of trust which not easily gained from other forms of social media advertising.

The word of mouth activities is also useful in development face-to-face networking groups to concentrate on increasing business through the word of mouth networking.

It is also argued that social media marketing is far-fetched networking method to reach customers segments belonging to different age groups connected digitally.

It can be added that social media marketing has been helpful in business-to-business (B2B) through LinkedIn and Facebook and in the business-to-consumer (B2C) through Pinterest and Facebook as compared to word of mouth marketing which is more prominent in the B2C domain (Swani et al., 2014).

In terms of cost benefits, the traditional word of mouth costs almost nothing thus, it is an inexpensive way of marketing to get more customers over other forms of social media networking which are associated with cost in posting ads on social sites like Facebook Ads.

However, social media networking sites is an effective and low-cost option for marketing when compared to other traditional marketing ads on television, print media and radio (Weinberg and Pehlivan, 2011).

It can be analysed that both WOM and social media marketing play an integral role in the marketing plan of a company thus, both the marketing activities require strategic planning for effective implementation to gain positive responses from the existing and potential customers.

It can be understood that the traditional WOM is a personal communication where an individual in face to face integration share and receive information from other individuals. This traditional form bears high influence in direct marketing activities and on the customer behaviour.

It can be understood that the WOM marketing can increase its effectiveness if matched with the online platform.

The use of internet medium in verbal and written communication has led to electronic word of mouth (eWOM) that influences customer purchase decision and loyalty aspects.

Thus, the word of mouth publicity is seen to be coupled with social media marketing activities to achieve higher gains for positive referrals in the marketing plan to improve the business revenue.

Recommendations

Based on the discussion, it is recommended for a company to make the advertisement campaign visually appealing to the target audience to increase the chance of achieving success through viral marketing.

This can be done by adding images and videos clips in the campaign. It is suggested to carefully plan the content of the message to be advertised so that the message is clear, well understood and well received by the social media audience.

It is also suggested that message content should involve or illustrate emotional elements such as hope, humour, etc. to increase the chance of achieving a viral marketing sensation.

Figure 3: Viral marketing (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011)

It is also suggested that the innovative design of marketing/ advertisement campaign can be helpful to generate positive word of mouth recommendations for the advertised brands.

It is suggested to identify the word of mouth influencers from the existing customers and business connections to develop long-term relationship and understand the reason behind recommendations.

It is also suggested to use networking skills to invite potential and existing customers to preview and review products to encourage word of mouth marketing.

It is advised to combine the word of mouth marketing efforts with a properly planned communication strategy and social networks to achieve an effective success from this marketing form.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that social media marketing has become the essential part of the marketing strategy of the companies. It is because it is helpful to promote the good and service and increase the sales of the company.

In this, it is also analysed that viral marketing and words of mouth are some main forms of the social media marketing. The in the viral marketing strategy internet plays a vital role and without internet, the results from the viral marketing are not effective.

Beside this, in the words of mouth marketing strategy, the role of the satisfaction of the customers plays a significant role.

A company can get the success through words of mouth marketing if it continues providing good service to customers.

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