Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

So, I have noticed that my voicemail provider gotvmail has gotten a lot of blog time lately off these videos with Gary Busey: http://www.youtube.com/user/garybuseyonbusiness

They`re actually pretty funny if you haven`t seen them. But, I`m on the fence as to whether or not I`d use this kind of marketing in my own business. It works for gotvmail because their service is something that you don`t necessarily equate with business sense (although the company itself seems to have a lot of it) -- in other words, I wouldn`t trust Gary Busey to be the spokesperson for a law firm, or even a bank...that would probably be a disaster. To put it in a different way, the videos are funny but give me more of a "my god why did they pay this guy at all" kind of feeling, which may or may not always be appropriate for a business.

Is ANY viral good viral?


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-ph.ind

Hi,

Paypal was another great Viral Marketing leader.  You could sign up for Paypal.com get $10 free, sign up a friend and get another $10 free.  You could also sign up for X.com at the time through paypal receive $25 free in credit & a stupid X.com t-shirt; which I still have.

So Viral Marketing does work..you just need to calculate your cost to acquire a new customer and then the value of that new customer.  In both paypal & vistaprints example I am sure the money / product they gave out far exceeded the amount earned by future business....most likely far exceeded any ROI expectations that can be made be traditional advertising.

Jeff



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Jeff Foster
1-952-935-4192

www.WebBizIdeas.com - Website Design & Internet Business together with WebBizIdeas.com

Having looked at it time and again, and always being cognizant of history, "viral marketin" is essentially just another term for "word-of-mouth." That type of advertising isn`t controlled or managed, for the most part, and can either make or break a business.

It`s only been very clever marketing people who`ve ever been able to manufacture word-of-mouth ("buzz") intentionally. Are you that type of person?


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Craig Landes
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Defining the undefinable. "There are 10 kinds of people in the world---those who understand binary numbers and those who don`t." - Unknown

International Society of Curmudgeons

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I`m not saying viral marketing can`t be controlled. So can word-of-mouth. I`m mostly saying that a) viral marketing is another term for that word-of-mouth, and b) that it takes a pretty clever marketing person to do this controlling.

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Craig Landes
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Defining the undefinable. "There are 10 kinds of people in the world---those who understand binary numbers and those who don`t." - Unknown

International Society of Curmudgeons

It is very much about the message.. it has to be felt...even if a giveaway.. an emotional pelt.. whatever..it has to connect with a large audience.

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Follow my adventures of business and life at Twitter!! Twitter.com/GirlswithGoals
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I actually was contacted on my personal marketing blog by someone from GotVMail who asked me to check out one of their videos. The videos are a pretty decent exercise for increasing brand awareness which is important given that GotVMail is in an emerging market that most consumers don`t understand.



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Aaron Stannard
Editor of Working Smarter
Owner of Marketing Ninja

I think people are confusing the two major definitions/connotations of Viral Marketing. Let me define what I would generalize as the two major but separate terms we think about when people say `Viral Marketing`:

• Traditional Viral Marketing: Some message or offer that is intentionally spread by it`s current consumers to increase the wealth of their friends. This is something as simple as the 500 free Something or SignUp Contest where the person who refers/signs up the most friends wins something big. The success of these `campaigns` are determined by the creativity and execution of the offer/campaign. I recall reading that Myspace was started by the `traditional viral marketing` of a signup contest within the company; and it generated thousands of new users.
  
• Modern Viral Marketing: Some message or value that is in most cases fabricated for the specific use of subconsciously promoting another business, brand or product. For example, the recent "Bush or Batman" video has been claimed to be viral marketing by some on the internet. While I don`t care about looking into the fact of who intentionally made the video, it still brings value in the form of `entertainment` to over 100k people and subconsciously promotes the Batman movie. This is still viral marketing because it`s being spread intentionally (like a virus), but the basis has changed from direct promotion to indirect promotion of a product or company. 
• This is the modern version because it gained popularity through the low cost distribution of the Internet medium. Once YouTube hit it big, anyone could launch a Modern Viral Marketing campaign for free. Therefore, the cost of indirect campaigns decreased to the point which it`s more profitable to focus on alternative value (such as entertainment) than direct value such as Traditional Viral Campaigns such as Free Business Cards.
  

I hope that clarifies the topic for some people. As for the decision of whether or not either method is appropriate for an individual business, I would argue any attention is good attention; given the probability of `backfire` is constant. However, it is the conscious understanding of what you are developing that affects the probability of backfire.

Layman terms: Don`t attempt to dominate in something (modern viral marketing) if you don`t understand that niche.

This is why you can see larger companies now hiring firms to develop their viral marketing, because if the original company tried it themselves, they would have the higher chance of backfire or downright failure.



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Colin Winter
Small Business Website Management and Marketing

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Abraham Tapia

Usa Mobile
817-449-7387
www.usamobileclub.com
info@usamobileclub.com