Monday, July 04, 2005
A new way to say Referral Marketing?
There's a new term in the marketing world used to describe an age old concept of inspiring your existing customers to tell their friends and family about your product or service. The new term however has never really sat well with me, I guess because it seems derogatory. The new term is "Viral Marketing."
Maybe it's just me, but the term Viral Marketing makes me feel a little achy or inspires thoughts of a computer crash. But no matter what you call it, companies are spending mountains of money on new and creative ways to spread the news. Traditional marketing methods of "Interruption" or "Disruption" marketing are expensive to develop and implement but the new viral marketing techniques are relative inexpensive in comparison.
eCommerceTimes.com reported recently that Anheuser-Busch was able to come up with a campaign that netted 30 million viewers to their website. They used an animated spoof of the presidential election called "This Land" that was so entertaining that people copied the website address and sent links to everyone they knew.
In my Internet business, I have spent little or no money on advertising because I have no need to bring in mass quantities of customers. I concentrate on a few well paying customers and take care of them very very well. However, my overhead is low and my margins are good. Alternatively, with the travel agency (which I also co-own with my wife and two friends), we have spent a great deal of money on traditional marketing. Nothing works quite as well as referral marketing though but as a start up, we had to get the word out.
The example of Viral Marketing I can readily recall in our market here in Bowling Green would be Natt's Outdoor Sports. They created a really cool front license plate that people not only wanted but from what I understand, they are willing to pay for it. Someone would see it on the front of a Jeep or SUV and "want" to get one for theirs. The result of this "virus?" Natt's has hundreds of outdoorsy vehicles running around town with their name on the front bumper. Mission accomplished I think.
I'm going to have to give this concept some more thought for travel agency! I think that because of our cool logo (removed) and the excitement usually associate with travel, there should be a way to "infect" the market and get our good message out there. It's all about brand recognition right?
However, in thinking about this for the past few days, I can say that the best thing I have done in both my business is sincerely care about my customers and provide the best service possible. That truly is something that people will talk about and share... perhaps that is our virus we are spreading.
Call it what you will but in the end it's all the same in marketing, to create the PR/Marketing/Advertising methods that instills a burning desire to purchase your product or service above all others. Referral (Viral) Marketing is an integral part of our methods.
eCommerceTimes.com article that inspired this post: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/H2saJjPklYk77N/Viral-Advertising-Growing-as-Marketing-Tool.xhtml
Edited Thursday 01 Feb, 2007 2:24 pm
