Viral marketing 

·         Relies on existing customers -Tell other people (prospective customers) about products or service / 

·         Use individual customers to spread the word about a company 

·         Example: BlueMountain Arts (Electronic greeting cards / E-mail messages that include link to greeting card site 

 

E-mail marketing 

·         Can be a powerful element of advertising strategy 

-          Used to announce new products or features 

-          Used to announce sales on existing products 

·         Key element: 

-          Obtain customers’ approvals (Before sending marketing or promotional e-mail message) 

-real-time location to the marketing equation enables large brands and local businesses alike to utilize new sets of data, to target messages more effectively, and to reach consumers in the moment—the moment when they are present and engaged at a specific place. 

-Marketers can use the phone’s geographic location as a means to deliver a more relevant, targeted advertisement and/or a service, to the user. 

Direct mail means writing to customers directly. The more precise your mailing list or distribution area, the more of your target market you will reach. A direct mail approach is more personal, as you can select your audience and plan the timing to suit your business. A cost effective form of direct mail is to send your newsletters or flyers electronically to an email database. Find out more about direct mail. Catalogues, brochures and leaflets can also be distributed to your target area. Including a brochure with your direct mail is a great way to give an interested customer more information about your products and services. Learn more about leaflet marketing using letterbox drops and handouts. 
 

Directories list businesses by name or category (e.g. Yellow Pages phone directories). Customers who refer to directories have often already made up their mind to buy - they just need to decide who to buy from. The major advantage of online directories over print directories is that if you change your business name, address or telephone number, you can easily keep it up to date in the directory. You can also add new services or information about your business. If your target market uses print and online directories, it may be useful to advertise in both, although print directories are being used less. 

Advertising on the radio is a great way to reach your target audience. If your target market listens to a particular station, then regular advertising can attract new customers. However, sound has its limitations. Listeners can find it difficult to remember what they have heard and sometimes the impact of radio advertising is lost. The best way to overcome this is to repeat your message regularly - which increases your costs significantly. If you cannot afford to play your advertisement regularly, you may find that radio advertising does not generate strong results. 

- create ads acting like mini video game 

- create ads appearing to be dialog boxes
 

Hanging out with Display Ads back near the start of online advertising, Email Marketing is a cheaper, faster and effective form of advertising.

It’s a great way to build customer loyalty and boost sales; when you use an email campaign manager (see the list below) to prepare and send your emails, you can easily track how well they do and monitor your ROI.

Email Campaign Managers:

In order to succeed at email marketing, you first need to build a list of email addresses. You can do so by using quizzes, or you can put a simple Newsletter sign-up on your site.

Then, you can send email campaigns that focus on promotions, discounts, features or content you’ve posted to your blog. Most emails are short, sweet and to the point. A concise message makes it easy to get your point across and increase conversions. 

- Lower Advertising Costs

While initially your campaign may need a little push (perhaps paid promotion on social media), as it begins to get picked up by your audience, they will do the sharing for you and you can pull back on your advertising expense.

Furthermore, your future initiatives are more likely to naturally reach  larger audience thanks to the brand awareness established during your viral campaign. 

Success in business rarely happens quickly.

Even the cases that look like overnight successes usually turn out to be a 10-year struggles where the founders hustled through many failed attempts until finally getting it right.

That said, viral marketing is one of very few tactics that has the potential to create explosive growth in very little time.

This is obviously the most appealing advantage to business owners, but it's also the most difficult one to accomplish.  

Fortunately, you don't need overnight success to be successful with viral marketing. If you can get even steady, consistent growth at a relatively low cost, you're already ahead of the game.

As inbound markters, we'll usually say that you don't need mainstream media to build awareness, but no one can deny the power and audience is still holds. 

Viral marketing, when done correctly, gives media outlets a reason to cover your brand without you paying or petitioning for it.

The beautiful part about getting mainstream media coverage is that in itself creates virality as smaller media outlets follow the stories pushed by the big names. Just imagine what a feature on NBC or ABC could do for your product.

The simple fact of the matter is usually with recognition, comes trust and acceptance. 

When your brand "goes viral" and grabs the attention of a new audience, more people are willing to give it a chance. Think of Dollar Shave Club and how many people were suddenly willing to give new razors a try after its viral video. 

Although we usually focus on the sales that result from viral marketing, we can't ignore the fact that going viral has a tremendous impact on lead generation.

People always gravitate to trending topics. Everyone might not be ready to purchase from you just yet, but when you attract enough attention, they certainly want to keep you in mind for when they are ready.

Realistically, you're likely to generate more leads than customers from viral marketing if you're a B2B brand or you're a service-based business, but it is well worth the the effort.  

- BANNER ADS

–Small rectangular object on Web page 

–Displays stationary or moving graphic 

–Includes hyperlink to advertiser’s Web site 

–Versatile advertising vehicle 

•Attention-grabbing banner ads 

–Use animated GIFs and rich media objects 

•Created using Shockwave, Java, Flash 

•Interactive marketing unit (IMU) ad formats 

–Voluntary standard banner sizes