Editing Viral marketing (section)

==Methods and metrics==
{{Update|inaccurate=yes|section|date=January 2013}}
According to marketing professors [[Andreas Kaplan]] and Michael Haenlein, to make viral marketing work, three basic criteria must be met, i.e., giving the right message to the right messengers in the right environment:<ref>Kaplan Andreas M., Haenlein Michael (2011) Two hearts in three-quarter time: How to waltz the Social Media/viral marketing dance, Business Horizons, 54(3), 253–263.</ref>

#'''Messenger:''' Three specific types of messengers are required to ensure the transformation of an ordinary message into a viral one: market mavens, social hubs, and salespeople. Market mavens are individuals who are continuously 'on the pulse' of things (information specialists); they are usually among the first to get exposed to the message and who transmit it to their immediate social network. Social hubs are people with an exceptionally large number of social connections; they often know hundreds of different people and have the ability to serve as connectors or bridges between different subcultures. Salespeople might be needed who receive the message from the market maven, amplify it by making it more relevant and persuasive, and then transmit it to the social hub for further distribution. Market mavens may not be particularly convincing in transmitting the information.
#'''Message:''' Only messages that are both memorable and sufficiently interesting to be passed on to others have the potential to spur a viral marketing phenomenon. Making a message more memorable and interesting or simply more infectious, is often not a matter of major changes but minor adjustments. It should be unique and engaging with a main idea that motivates the recipient to share it widely with friends – a "must-see" element.<ref>{{cite web|author=National Science and Media Museum|url=https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/what-is-viral-marketing/|website=[[National Science and Media Museum]] blog|access-date=1 May 2020|title=What is viral marketing? |date=2011-04-12}}</ref>
#'''Environment:''' The environment is crucial in the rise of successful viral marketing – small changes in the environment lead to huge results, and people are much more sensitive to environment. The timing and context of the campaign launch must be right.

Whereas Kaplan, Haenlein and others reduce the role of marketers to crafting the initial viral message and seeding it, futurist and sales and marketing analyst Marc Feldman, who conducted IMT Strategies' viral marketing study in 2001,{{citation needed|date=June 2014}} carves a different role for marketers which pushes the 'art' of viral marketing much closer to 'science'.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2001-03-18/viral-marketing-alert|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121107154817/http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2001-03-18/viral-marketing-alert|url-status=dead|archive-date=November 7, 2012|title=Viral Marketing Alert!|last=Neuborne|first=Ellen|date=18 March 2001|publisher=BusinessWeek}}</ref>

===Metrics===
To clarify and organize the information related to potential measures of viral campaigns, the key measurement possibilities should be considered in relation to the objectives formulated for the viral campaign. In this sense, some of the key cognitive outcomes of viral marketing activities can include measures such as the number of views, clicks, and hits for specific content, as well as the number of shares in [[social media]], such as likes on Facebook or retweets on Twitter, which demonstrate that consumers processed the information received through the marketing message. Measures such as the number of reviews for a product or the number of members for a campaign web page quantify the number of individuals who have acknowledged the information provided by marketers. Besides statistics that are related to online traffic, surveys can assess the degree of product or brand knowledge, though this type of measurement is more complicated and requires more resources.<ref>Petrescu, M. 2014. Viral marketing and social networks. Business Expert Press.</ref><ref>Lee, I. (ed.). 2014. Integrating Social Media into Business Practice, Applications, Management, and Models, Advances in E-Business Research (AEBR) Book Series</ref>

Related to consumers' attitudes toward a brand or even toward the marketing communication, different online and social media statistics, including the number of likes and shares within a social network, can be used. The number of reviews for a certain brand or product and the quality assessed by users are indicators of attitudes. Classical measures of consumer attitude toward the brand can be gathered through surveys of consumers.
Behavioral measures are very important because changes in consumers' behavior and buying decisions are what marketers hope to see through viral campaigns. There are numerous indicators that can be used in this context as a function of marketers' objectives. Some of them include the most known online and social media statistics such as number and quality of shares, views, product reviews, and comments. Consumers' [[brand engagement]] can be measured through the K-factor, the number of followers, friends, registered users, and time spent on the website. Indicators that are more bottom-line oriented focus on consumers' actions after acknowledging the marketing content, including the number of requests for information, samples, or test-drives. Nevertheless, responses to actual call-to-action messages are important, including the conversion rate.
Consumers' behavior is expected to lead to contributions to the bottom line of the company, meaning increase in sales, both in quantity and financial amount. However, when quantifying changes in sales, managers need to consider other factors that could potentially affect sales besides the viral marketing activities. Besides positive effects on sales, the use of viral marketing is expected to bring significant reductions in marketing costs and expenses.<ref>Nelson-Field, K. 2013. Viral Marketing The Science of Sharing. Oxford University Press</ref><ref>Petrescu, M. 2014. Viral marketing and social networks. Business Expert Press</ref>

=== Methods ===
Viral marketing often involves and utilizes: 
* Customer participation and polling services
* Industry-specific organization contributions
* [[Web search engine]]s and [[blog]]s
* Mobile [[smartphone]] integration
* Multiple forms of print and [[direct marketing]]
* Target marketing [[web services]]
* [[Search engine optimization]] (SEO)
* [[Social media optimization]] (SMO)
* [[Television]] and [[radio]]
* [[Influencer marketing]]

Viral target marketing is based on three important principles:<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.xing.com/net/contentmanagement/online-marketing-und-web-analysis-19503/spread-the-words-through-viral-marketing-36573140|title=Spread the Words through Viral Marketing|last=Pariñas|first=Jerico|date=28 April 2011|publisher=XING|access-date=19 January 2013}}</ref>
# Social profile gathering
# Proximity market analysis
# Real-time key word density analysis

By applying these three important disciplines to an advertising model, a VMS company is able to match a client with their targeted customers at a cost-effective advantage.

The Internet makes it possible for a campaign to go viral very fast; it can, so to speak, make a brand famous overnight. However, the Internet and social media technologies themselves do not make a brand viral; they just enable people to share content to other people faster. Therefore, it is generally agreed that a campaign must typically follow a certain set of guidelines in order to potentially be successful:
* It must be appealing to most of the audience.
* It must be worth sharing with friends and family. 
* A large platform, e.g. YouTube or Facebook must be used.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://growmap.com/youtube-viral-marketing/|title=How YouTube Can Be Used for Viral Marketing|last=Maqsood|first=Umair|date=28 October 2012|publisher=GrowMap|access-date=19 January 2013}}</ref>
* An initial boost to gain attention is used, e.g. [[Seeding agency|seeding]], buying views, or sharing to Facebook fans.
* The content is of good quality.
* Demographics - It must be correlated with the Region & Society.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2020-09-22|title=Is it hard to viral your products, articles, services?|url=https://www.startstage.in/viral-marketing-strategies/|access-date=2020-09-25|website=Startstage|language=en-US}}</ref>

=== Drivers of success ===
[[Wilert Puriwat]] and Suchart Tripopsakul, who read over countless academic journals on viral marketing, gathered there knowledge to propose what they called the "7I's of effective word-of-mouth marketing campaigns."<ref name="Puriwat-2021">{{Cite journal |last1=Puriwat |first1=Wilert |last2=Tripopsakul |first2=Suchart |date=2021-12-01 |title=The Role of Viral Marketing in Social Media on Brand Recognition and Preference |url=https://www.ijournalse.org/index.php/ESJ/article/view/631 |journal=Emerging Science Journal |volume=5 |issue=6 |pages=855–867 |doi=10.28991/esj-2021-01315 |issn=2610-9182|doi-access=free }}</ref> These seven I's can be used to highlight where the success of a viral marketing campaign comes from. While what Puriwat and Tripopsakul publish outlines what makes an effective campaign, there is also forewarnings that negative word-of-mouth messages about a brand or product have more power over a consumers purchasing decision.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Wang |first1=Ping |last2=Sun |first2=Luping |last3=Peng |first3=Luluo |date=2013-08-16 |title=Modeling product attitude formation process in online word-of-mouth |url=https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/NBRI-07-2013-0025/full/html |journal=Nankai Business Review International |language=en |volume=4 |issue=3 |pages=212–229 |doi=10.1108/NBRI-07-2013-0025 |issn=2040-8749|url-access=subscription }}</ref> With that being said, the 7I's are as follow:

* '''Invisibility:''' The more distant an advertisement feels from being an advertisement, the more likely it is that the population will share the message with the people they are connected to. Puriwat and Tripopsakul suggest in their paper that marketers should be "balancing the branding element with the quality of content" to create an effect campaign.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" />
* '''Identity:''' Identity has to do with the marketing's ability to positively promote the sharers personal traits that they wish to exemplify. To get the consumers themselves to share your marketing campaign it must match the aspects that they are wishing to emit to the people they are sharing with, especially over social media.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" />
* '''Innovation:''' Marketing campaigns that venture off from what has been done before raises the likelihood that word will spread. Deviating from the norm through means such as surprising the audience or using humor can create the innovation needed to engage the audience and distance themselves from being just another advert.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" />
* '''Insight:''' What insight means in this context is that the marketing team should be looking at ways that their campaign can have an effect on the consumer on an emotional level. Instead of just sharing a marketing campaign that tells the viewer how great the product or service is, the campaign should elicit a positive feeling in the viewer that confirms how they feel. This leads to an increased likelihood that the advertisement would be share.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" />
* '''Instantaneity:''' The instantaneity of a given campaign has to do with how well the initial deliverable can be intertwined with recent trends and current popular topics. This all-encompassing leg of the 7I's covers topics such as timeliness on when the campaign is initially launched, how trendy it is to share the viral advert with the people around you, and also includes the use of the correct celebrity for the moment. Using celebrities in ads is not a new idea, however the right celebrity to elicit the correct feeling in the viewer goes a long way in increasing success.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" />
* '''Integration:''' The integration of the viral marketing scheme is how well does the viral moment feed consumers into other marketing avenues for the company. While successfully creating a viral marketing campaign benefits the company by increasing the total amount impressions based on the financial investment, you still need the consumers to further interact with your brand outside of sharing. This can be done through the channeling of consumers to other marketing avenues such as websites and personal social media pages that can increase brand familiarity.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" />
* '''Interactivity:''' The interactivity of a marketing campaign draws its importance based on the fact that a normal marketing campaign pushes its consumers to just buy or agree with what is being promoted. This differs from viral marketing since you know need to close the gap between the brand and the viewer to the point that there is public interaction between the two.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" /> Often times this public interaction is negative in nature without viral marketing since forewarnings on products are often shared between consumers.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Luís Abrantes |first1=José |last2=Seabra |first2=Cláudia |last3=Raquel Lages |first3=Cristiana |last4=Jayawardhena |first4=Chanaka |date=2013-07-19 |editor-last=Lingreen |editor-first=Adam |title=Drivers of in-group and out-of-group electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) |url=https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/03090561311324219/full/html |journal=European Journal of Marketing |language=en |volume=47 |issue=7 |pages=1067–1088 |doi=10.1108/03090561311324219 |issn=0309-0566|hdl=10316/89005 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> This is why having an interactive avenue through viral marketing can correct the balance between negative and positive discussion of a brand through consumer to consumer networks.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" />

Using these seven described aspects of viral marketing, the two ran a statistical test utilizing a survey of 286 people on their thoughts of recent viral marketing efforts.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" /> The questions in the survey gauged whether each point from the 7I's were met in the campaign using Likert scale questions and ended with questions on brand preference and brand recognition.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" /> While many conclusions were drawn from the statistical analysis, the prominent ones to be shared were based around age groups and interaction results. Wilert and Tripopsakul found that viral marketing is a tool that has shown to be more beneficial in targeting a younger demographic than the older audience. They also found that consumers who partook in any interaction with a brands viral marketing campaign more often than not had a positive increase in that brands perception.<ref name="Puriwat-2021" />