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viral marketing
The buzzword viral marketing/viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. These can be delivered by word of mouth and enhanced thru the internet by way of eBooks, free software, games, videos, pictures or text messages.

Here is a viral marketing example: – if you are selling a product and you create a eBook on the topic of that product and then give it away for free and motivate people to also give it away for free to their friend and their friend to other people and so on, you are creating a viral spread of that eBook.

You might recognize this method as a pyramid scheme or a MLM (multi -layer marketing). It is because they work on the same principle. They sell you a product and then they motivate you to tell other people to buy the product and so on, thus creating a viral effect. The downside of this technique is that it can not be maintained indefinably. The spreading stops once all the people have been “infected”

marketing secrets
Guerilla marketing

This marketing strategy is specially geared for small businesses because instead of money, the primary investments of this type of marketing should be time, energy, and imagination. Guerilla marketing techniques are unexpected and unconventional and try to find consumers in unexpected places.

Let me give you an example of a guerilla marketing technique:

Let’s say you have a website and you want to attract people to that website, but you have a very small budget. So you take a T-shirt and you write your address on it. Walking down the street with that T-shirt will attract attention and people will be intrigued to visit the website mentioned on the T-shirt.

Stealth Marketing or Undercover Marketing

The main reason for undercover marketing is that campaigns can reach consumers isolated from all other media and unlike conventional media, consumers tend to trust it more and also once enough buzz has been created it becomes a low cost even free marketing method.

How can you create an undercover marketing campaign?

In order to market your product in an undercover campaign you must look and sound like a peer of their target audience without any ulterior motive, and talk about your product to others like you where a “satisfied” customer.

Here are some examples as related in Wikipedia.org:

Sony Ericsson used stealth marketing in 2002 when they hired 60 actors in 10 major cities, and had them “accost strangers and ask them: Would you mind taking my picture?” The actor then handed the stranger a brand new picture phone while talking about how cool the new device was. “And thus an act of civility was converted into a branding event.” (Taken from Walker, Rob. The Hidden (In Plain Sight) Persuaders. New York Times Magazine; Dec 5, 2004; New York Times pg. 68)

Wikipedia has become a tool for undercover marketing. The creation of Wikiscanner, for example, has revealed attempts at manipulating Wikipedia’s content by a large number of business, government, and special interest groups.

Warnings:
If marketers fail to hide the campaign, they run considerable risk of backlash and consumers will generally become angry over being misled and have disastrous effects.

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