Internet Marketing and Web Search Optimization

Traditional Marketing vs Internet Marketing

If it is true that the best things in life are free, then company's engaged in traditional forms of marketing might want to cry freedom. Millions of dollars are strategically poured into television spots, radio spots, press releases, creative advertising ploys, direct mail, trade shows and/or the like in order to increase sales. But, the game has changed with burgeoning technology. So too has the marketing rules and resources used to meet a company's media marketing bottom-line.

And the very nature of this new marketing phenomenon is best captured in an e-book entitled, “The New Rules of Viral Marketing”, written by David Meerman Scott. Mr. Scott uses the story told by Cindy Gordon, the Vice President of New Media and Marketing Partnerships at Universal Resort Orlando to provide an inside look at the exploits of new viral marketing techniques used in connection with social media technologies, and the uproarious success it has garnered over a short span of time. To the extent where, it is rewriting the old rules of marketing and re-framing how information is disseminated. Cindy Gordon along with "7 rabid fans of Harry Potter" launched a viral marketing campaign using what they called "Word-of-Mouse" to promote her theme park, “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter”. The campaign reached over 350 million people around the globe with random clicks of a mouse. It was an interactive marketing campaign built on the internal construction of a webcast and micro-site that reached hundreds-of-thousands of consumers and grew into hundreds-of-thousands more when cultivated like that of a fatal virus that replicates itself by ravaging everything in its path.

A Virus in Nature

In nature, all a virus needs in order to feed and live is a host that provides an environment with the right set of conditions for mutation. The same is true for the new rules in spreading ideas using viral marketing techniques. Except, in cyberspace, the Internet is the host where relationships are built one (1) click and one (1)consumer at a time. While Social media sites, Blogging sites, Micro-sites, Vlogging sites or the like serve as the new breeding grounds for viral marketing campaigns because they represent new environments that are conducive to effective branding and unlimited marketing success.

Avatar, the one (1) billion dollar box office sensation reinforces the effectiveness of these new breeding grounds evidenced in the sheer numbers generated during their campaign run to second highest grossing film of all times using viral marketing in connection with social media technologies. Below is a brief synopsis of their astronomical numbers according to the article, “How Social Media and the Web Helped Avatar Make $1 Billion”, written by Samuel Axon:

Social Media Technologies

• Twitter: 18,000 followers
• Facebook: 700,000 fans
• MySpace: 781,599 friends

Additionally, they expedited a viral marketing campaign that included the following:

• 2 Apple trailers in 2 alternating months where a lion’s share of their buzz came by way of fan remixed web trailers (interactivity).
• An interactive trailer presented by Adobe Air.
• MTV-hosted live webcasts on Facebook.
• A live broadcasting that premiered on Ustream.

It seems Avatar’s viral marketing campaign stole a page right out of David M. Scott’s e-book on ways, a business can benefit by "... harnessing word-of-mouse". And needless to say, it proved quite effective, as it expanded their ambit of influence. Though viral marketing and social media are two separate but equally plausible entities, they clearly mesh well. Well enough to forge a massive path to new marketing freedom. A freedom that company's using traditional forms of marketing can only cry out about when pushing to seal the deal on the same fate— a $1 billion dollar fate. Or better yet, a fate and deal that is sealed when a solid viral marketing campaign comes together with a solid social media plan, and by word-of-mouse drives home the point that maybe... just maybe, the best things in life are free.