The Marketer's Handbook: Reassessing Marketing Techniques for Modern Business

VIRAL MARKETING (BUZZ)

Application: Communications

Figure V.3: The role of viral marketing

The Concept

This is the deliberate dissemination of ideas and concepts through networks of human beings to promote products and services. “Viral marketing” (viral because the aim is to spread an idea among a target community in much the same way as a virus spreads in a body) exploits social communications and gossip. It is a deliberate attempt to spread positive recommendations, and different messages, through informal customer networks. It can create excitement, respect, and demand for a brand, a product, or a service. It aims to amplify word-of-mouth and is, at the time of writing, one of the newest areas of emphasis among marketers. Although successful business leaders and marketers have been intuitively nurturing word-of-mouth for many years, marketing specialists are only now beginning to properly understand and codify successful techniques to exploit it. For instance, academic research has demonstrated that “word-of-mouth” plays a particularly important role in building services revenue.

History, Context, Criticism, and Development

Marketers and business leaders have known of the value of “word-of-mouth” (WOM), the natural reputation which develops form the use of a product or service, ...