Nowadays a huge amount of facts about viral marketing can be found, its definitions and types. Moreover, there are not so many experts who are able to flag what is what – what is a hidden marketing or guerrilla marketing - what is said to be substandard marketing campaigns.

In any case there might be a problem in understanding of core essence of the term viral marketing. Even experts are not strongly determined in accuracy of usage of its methods. The understanding of reasonable application of viral marketing varies from one specialist to another which is even more confusing. Here we will try to cast light upon viral marketing, hidden marketing and a guerrilla one.

Long time ago guerilla marketing was determined as a means for survival for small companies which had to compete with big ones. Business competition is a war so warlike terminology came to life.

One of the main features of guerilla marketing was its cheapness where you need less money but more brain. It would be reasonable to mention here shocking marketing, life placement and viral marketing when the information about a product is transmitted by customers themselves or decoy – ducks.

Viral marketing is a type of guerilla marketing. Its main purpose is to create a new motive for making a purchase. This is not a direct advertisement, nothing is imposing here so there’s no any internal psychological resistance for making a purchase. Marketing departments are operating more effectively in that case. Guerilla marketers do not use reasonable argumentation, they are playing on emotions. It is like See it – Like it – Buy it – without thinking – spontaneously.

To sum it up, guerilla marketing is a diverse marketing communication campaigns that are looking out of universal means of promotion of services and products. As a rule these are campaigns of scandalous and provocative character which allows exhibiting a product in the best way for customers.

How it works:

Viral marketing or media virus is an advertisement which is targeted at clients subjected to conviction. Then we infect them with necessary information for us and can be certain in further rapid distribution of the facts embedded.

There is a snowball effect here: while using a product clients distribute information about it which looks like an epidemic.

Viral marketing today is a means of brand promotion in the Internet. The core essence of it is distribution of information via personal contacts. The main thing here is to create a necessary atmosphere for a fast and smooth extension. So viral marketing is a part of a hidden one. It dwells in Internet primarily in the places with lots of bloggers, community inhabitants, forum and social net occupants.

There’s an easy road here. Send a thrilling and interesting message about a product that will hook the audience and be free. A word of mouth communication starts here with active discussions, generating traffic to your web-site or just creating a buzz over your product or service.

Backbone: Just Make it Catching

Viral marketing is a strategy when a product, service or their ads possess such an influence on customers that they are eager to become active advertisers of it. It is an idea or message that they will gladly distribute, tell to a friend or post in a blog.

There are also undercover marketing, buzz marketing and stealth marketing. Also interesting ones. The point here is that customers and future loyal clients do not even suspect that they have undergone influence of an advertisement. These are nice stories about celebrities’ preference and loyalty to one of the unknown brands. Watches, tea, coffee, internet providers, mobile phones, software development companies and the like. Such bush telegraph helps to gain loyalty and constant interest to a brand. An obvious advantage here is that such means of communication is more persuasive and effective. Everyone is inclined to believe his own friend more than to an ad.

Primary thing here is to generate a motive for talks and discussions about a product or service, to attract attention and create a buzz. You never know how strong the effectiveness of viral marketing campaign can be which is hard to predict and control. But if a campaign will work out than people will come to you for service, advise your product to friends and will be faithful clients and amiable compilers of your brand fan – club.

The viral effect does not take long to kick in. One person refers 10. Those 10 refer 10 who also refer 10 and in the end you have thousands of new users.

Hidden marketing is a type of guerilla marketing and can also be named a special case of a viral one. It is used in the cases with limited sources and when a fresh and a brand- new marketing approach needed.

In any case hidden marketing is a unique instrument of promotion. It is a complex of measures aimed at a long-standing positive image of a product development among potential clients and customers.

The strongest advertising effect has guerilla marketing, lesser one belongs to hidden marketing, and the minimal impact is appertained to a viral one.

Core Points:

Guerilla marketing:

•Narrow segment coverage of customers

•Trend to a concrete segment

•Pretentious and bizarre marketing

•Cheap and sensational

•Usually on the streets of a city

Hidden marketing:

•Nothing in common with viral marketing

•Hired people (decoy- ducks) are advertising a product by hidden ways

•Not a direct advertising (you never guess that it is an ad)

•Distribution of information to blogs, social networks and communities by links to a web-site, photos, comments, questions and recommendations.

Viral marketing:

•Mass audience as well as a narrow segment coverage

•Buzz-marketing, “Word of Mouth" (rumors, chain letters with warnings, “leaked" information, gossips, urban myths, secondhand versions of official reports)

•Special viral content, games. micro-sites, videos

•“Snowball “Communication

•Submitting articles to article archives (the easiest way to get instant free publicity)

•Free eMail Service

•Free Greeting Cards (If you go to yahoo or some other free greeting card service and send a card, your friend does not get the card in their email box. Instead they get an email message with a URL where they can go to pick up their eCard. They pick up their card and probably bookmark the site and send out an eCard or two by themselves)

•eBooks (free and paid ebooks generate thousands of visitors and always have something of that kind “If you find any of my downloads useful, a link back would be greatly appreciated")

Patterns:

•Beer.com's Virtual Bartender

It was produced by Beer.com, E-zine covering beer, sex, music and fun. Includes searchable beer reviews, grilling advice, humor, videos and desktop wallpaper.

The campaign was targeted to males 18 – 32, launched in November 2004, campaign goal- to drive millions of 18 to 32 year old males to beer.com which will, in turn, help establish the site as a top-tier advertising vehicle for advertisers trying to reach that audience.

Speed Strategy- 10 emails were sent out to friends of beer.com on Thursday Nov. 4, 2004 between 9:00 p.m. and Midnight. No other form of marketing was used and there weren't any links from our home page or any other sites. No search engine marketing, banner ads or offline media have been used to promote this piece. It's success was purely driven by people forwarding the link to others.

Buzz generated- There were many articles in national newspapers and trade publications.

At one point, somebody had hacked into Interpol's site and posted a picture of our Virtual Bartender on the home page.

Specific (Goal-Related) Campaign Results- the success of this project was overwhelming.

Those 10 simple emails led to 75 sessions later that night, 15,000 the following day and then began to double, then triple. Beer.com became the most popular website in the world for the month of November 2004 and achieved more than 800% growth in traffic with more than 10,000,000 user sessions in only 28 days.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&compare_sites=subservientchicken.com&y=r&url=beer.com

•New Rules of PR

http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/documents/New_Rules_of_PR.pdf

Brand campaign was launched for David Meerman Scott in January 2005, targeted audience- business executives seeking an Internet marketing consultant; related event organizers seeking speakers. Campaign goal - to introduce people to David Scott and his thinking with the goal of securing clients and speaking engagements.

Creative- In mid-January, he published a new complimentary e-book “The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly". Since then, he has been happily watching the wave of interest from this little effort.

Speed strategy- David Scott released his ebook via post on his blog and also by emailing a link to select friends and colleagues.

Buzz generated- within hours, hundreds of people had downloaded the e-book. In the next days several alert bloggers including picked up on the availability of the e-book and posted links. Over the next three days, the e-book generated just over 1,000 downloads per day. The power of a half-dozen bloggers telling the same story is tremendous. In just the next three days, 15,000 people downloaded the e-book.

Two months of viral effects later there are well over 1000 hits on Google all pointing to his email book.

So no matter what kind of marketing campaign can be chosen by a company – the aims of it are alike. It is a product or service promotion, generating of a long-standing positive image of a company. The difference only is in means and approaches to a marketing campaign application.