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Keyword : Viral marketing, guerilla marketing, customer attraction, marketing strategies, market trends 1) Introduction Marketing plays a big part In any business firm. It is the fundamental way of getting profit through production of series of products. Marketing Is not only making advertisements or hiring some promoters to introduce your firm’s product, it is more than that. Marketing is the attitude and process of how firms approach their customers and make the customers to give up something of theirs in exchange of the firm’s product.
However, as we can observe nowadays, marketing plans and eateries are everywhere, from newspapers to billboard, shopping centers to public transportations. These methods seems to be lacking of freshness as time passes. Humans always tend to be more attracted to new things In the world. Therefore, new marketing strategies are introduced in order to satisfy the customer’s needs of freshness. Viral marketing, guerrilla marketing are types of marketing methods that can really make an impact on the customers, regardless of either it is a good impact or a bad impact.
Viral marketing and guerilla marketing were most commonly related with the internet as both of these marketing methods re most effectively executed on the Internet. With the technology we have In the 21st century, and the existence of all these social media like, Backbone, Google*, My Space, Twitter, information can be directed to everyone in the world in the matters of seconds. The reason why marketing departments come up with these odd and abnormal marketing methods are mainly is to captivate the publics awareness of the firm’s products and further on making the public have an interest on the firm’s products.
Customer retention refers to how a firm’s marketing strategy Impacts the public ND give them a lasting impression of the firm’s product, further more to prevent customer from decreasing. The objective of this research is to find out : (1 ) The fundamentals of viral marketing and guerilla marketing (2) Comparing the both marketing methods which is more capable to retain customers? (3) Which marketing methods is the least money consuming yet most effective marketing method? 2) The fundamental and effectiveness of viral marketing through the internet as the internet, or specifically the social media is where virtual crowds are nowadays.
According to the estimation of the International Communication Union, the total internet user around the world is around 4. 5 billion. One simple message uploaded to the internet, and about 4. Billion people could see it in matters of seconds. This is what the internet can do. Once marketers realize the power of the social media, they started to come up with an ideology of making spreading messages like viruses on the net. Although the internet has a huge population, but in order to get the message visible to as many people as possible, strategies must be used to have a effective promotional campaign.
Viral marketing arks through self-duplication of short clips, flash games, text messages, pictures, advertising pop-ups and etc. It is normally based on a pass-by basis, reward basis, survey basis, trend basis where all these methods are Just to let the customers to have the existence and the awareness of a certain product. Viral marketing is also always associated with the term word-of-mouth (WHOM). WHOM refers to an informal way of spreading a news or information to customers on the product’s beneficial side, characteristics, usage and others. Coffman and Kane, 1994) During a viral marketing campaign, instead of using the firm’s own employees to conduct hard sales, the firm can use customers to spread the word around from customers to customers. The basic nature of viral marketing is that it is a network of people spreading the news or message, and the firm’s Job is to assist the expansion of the network. When an individual sells the idea to several of his friends, and these friends spreads the message to other friends, the whole virtual friend cycle will come across the message. Tibia, Andrew and Freed, 2011) Traditional viral marketing requires face-to-face communication where transport and time were one of the most troubling issues when comes to traditional viral racketing. Modern viral marketing is more visual form, certainly not in a verbal form. Verbal promotional methods will normally get neglecting reaction from the public as asking the public to tell their friend about your firm’s message is Just too pointless to do, in fact, they do not gain anything from this spreading of messages.
In additional, modern viral marketing has no restriction to its participant, as it does not consider the participant’s background and age, as long one is an internet user, one is qualified to be a viral marketing participant. The role of the internet has enhance the power of viral marketing. Garnishment’s 2001) Especially the social media, as we can see a typical Hollywood singer, Iranian has a total number of 2. 8 billion views on Youth. With the influence of the social media, by using the right advertising material, the right moment to reveal, and the right crowd to reveal, the promotional campaign can easily go viral in matters of days.
For an example, P made a heart-touching video about motherly love in the conjunction of the 2012 Olympics. Before the big game, no one knows about P, but after the video is revealed during the Olympics, P’s image is amplified to the oral. The video became viral, and hit a number of 6 million views. 3) The fundamentals and effectiveness of guerilla marketing Guerilla marketing was originated from the term “guerilla” which means ambush or a sudden attack that the opponent does not see the attack coming. Due the in order for firms to survive.
Guerilla marketing was one of the successful methods introduced to the market. Guerilla marketing is flexible, it can be conducted through people, media, events, sponsorship and so much more. The fundamentals strategies of guerilla marketing was adopted from war strategist Mao Tweeze Tuning. Elliot, 2003) There are 7 basic guidelines for a successful guerilla marketing (Elevations, 1994) , (1) Be focus on a particular place, time or event to achieve a temporary dominance over the customers. (2) Make sure that the ideology behind the product is carried out along with the product. 3) Never follow the existing marketing trends or pattern, analyze the current marketing trend, outrun the existing marketing trend. (4) Identify other side effects of the post marketing campaign. (5) Overcome all doubt on the marketing plan in the marketing team. (6) Search for all possible shortcuts for a deter option, in other word, do not conduct the plan in a direct path. (7) Be as flexible as possible for any possible variables in the plan. These seven methods broke ever standard rules in the marketing playbook.
But results shows that guerilla marketing works. The key of guerilla marketing is to be the opposite of all the marketing trend to attract sudden attention from the public. Standard marketing methods are usually very conventional where things that are out of normality are all banned. As mentioned above, people nowadays are going after fresh and new things. Mainstream marketing strategies are getting pass-by reactions doodads, in contrast, an abnormal phenomenon on the street can gather the crowd’s attention because every human has the nature of curiosity.
For an example, walking on the streets, suddenly you saw a wallet on the floor, your curiosity brings you to the wallet and pick it up to search for the details of the owner. When you open the wallet, there is nothing inside, Just a business card indicating there is a warehouse sale coming soon. This is a type of guerilla marketing, where it uses humans curiosity to spread the message. One thing that is more than promoting the product in a creative way, it is rumoring the ideology behind the product.
Guerilla marketing does not work well with introducing the functions and usage of the product, customers Just does not stick to this kind of promotions. It is how firms come up with a creative way of inserting the ideology of using the product and benefits of the product into the publics mind. Normally, short and humorous videos are used to make the public retain something about the product. For an example, when we think of men’s deodorant, Axe, we will think of the sexy ladies in the advertisement indicating that after using this deodorant, women will be naturally attracted to you.
Although this kind of happening is Just an imagination but people remembers the product in the end of the day. All in all, guerilla marketing aims for the emotional aspect of influencing customer’s purchasing decision. 4) Customer attraction factors and appropriate marketing strategies. Customer retention refers to the memory span of a customer after viewing a certain promotion or advertisement. Customer is indeed the main profit of a firm. With customers, business basically is not business anymore. Customers are commonly described as antiques, the longer they stay with you, the more valuable they are to you (firm).
Gordon, 1998) From a first-time customer, to an ultimate loyal few hours or a few days, it is done through a lifetime service from the firm. However, before firms could increase their chain of loyal customers, they must firstly attain first-time customers. Many firms failed to retain their customers is because they are not impacting enough for the customers to stay with them. Thus, a firm’s promotional campaign is very essential in attracting the public to have the awareness of the existence of the product.
The question is, what is the attraction factor of the public for them to be interested in participating in the rumination campaign? The campaign most crucially is than it can give something customers normally could not get. It can be based on incentives, competitions, current trends, and even sports. The idea of involving the public in a promotional campaign or using the crowd to amplify a message are mainly motivated by a word, trends. Trending is main caused by peer group competition. When someone has or did something “cool” out of a sudden, his friend will start to be interested and ask for details.
For an example, there is a breast cancer awareness recently happening in the social media, Backbone. This campaign uses a teasing method where a host kick- starts a trend by sending messages to female social media user. The message asks females to post the size of their feet in inches and the time taken to wash their hair. As 10 people starts to do this, the trend will be infectious and more and more female will follow the trend as their female friends think that they will be outdated if they don’t do the same thing as well.
By the time Backbone is flooded with inches and seconds, male internet users will start to be curious about this abnormal phenomenon and start asking females what is happening. The main objective of the aiming is to let the public to have awareness on breast cancer. Although posting inches and seconds does not relate to cancer at all, but a the end of the day people remembers the ideology behind the game and start to search for symptoms of breast cancer. This event is a true event happened on the 1st of October where the month of October is the month of breast cancer awareness.
This event surely had worked and donations had been increasing ever since. As shown in the example above, customer attraction is mainly caused by peer pressure where competition drives customer to participate in the marketing aiming without use of the firms to persuade and pull customers to take part in the campaign against their own will. Instead of doing executing the campaign in a physical way, firms can choose to do it the psychological way as the mind controls the body. Even though customers are persuaded to attend the campaign, but they will not be any buying of the product as taking part in the campaign was never their will.
If firms conduct their campaign using psychological tactics, customers will come willingly and the product will be sold more easier as the ideology of the product is conveyed across to the customers. ) Comparison of customer attractiveness between viral marketing and guerilla marketing. Here comes the main question, when comes to terms of customer attraction, which type of marketing is more captivating in a sense that customers can stay with the product after knowing the existence of the product, viral marketing or guerilla marketing? Immunization, the making of customers as temporary salesmen for the firm. Traditional viral marketing is very limited as messages can only be convey verbally form mouth to mouth. However, since the establishment of the internet, traditional viral marketing had evolved into a drastic marketing strategy. Granite and Ward, 1996) The benefits of viral marketing is that information of a product or other ideology of the product can be transmitted in matters of seconds through the internet.
Billions of people are using the internet daily, regardless of any purpose, as long they are on the internet, viral marketing has its own chance to have a wide coverage of people to promote. Besides, viral marketing self-replicates on the web, whenever internet users enters a web, a random link pops-up and advertise about product, by this way even though internet users does not have a real contact with the reduce, but they still remembers it as the appearance frequency of these pop-ups are very high (Iceland, 2000). The disadvantages of viral marketing is that it can only be effective in the internet.
If viral marketing strategies are placed in a shopping mall, and a host asks the public to spread the message around, the public will probably give a perfunctory reaction and continue their shopping. Viral marketing is Just powerless if it is conducted verbally. This is the reason why this way of marketing is less-effective before the existence of the internet. The other flaw of viral marketing is the viral marketing has sees control on its distribution of message in the internet. (Cruz and Fill, 2008) As the message is self-replicating among the internet users, once it is misinterpreted by the users, the image of the firm will be damaged.
As mentioned viral marketing can only be conducted on the internet, thus, the product that firms are trying to promote are very virtual to the internet users. They don’t get to try the product, touch the product and feel the product, buying the product would be the last thing to do. Guerilla marketing is more flexible when compared to viral marketing. It can be inducted in so many different ways and more and more creative ways are still being discovered till date. Guerilla marketing is all about surprising the customers to achieve a short-term dominance over the customers.
By this method, customers can have a longer and lasting memory on the product. (Nag and Bottle, 2006) Guerilla marketing does not work well if it is carried out by introducing the functions of the product or the esthetics values of the product. It is the idea of using the product that can stay in the customer’s mind. For an example, Nikkei is famous of its slogan “Just Do It”. People do not remember the specifications of a typical Nikkei sport shoes, they Just remember what they see on the commercials on how great the football players are when they are wearing Nikkei shoes.
Nikkei conveys a virtual message that whenever you are wearing a Nikkei sort shoes, your strength will increase Just like those football players in the commercial. The disadvantages of guerilla marketing is when sometimes firms decides to use an abnormal and weird marketing tactic, it causes ethical issues as commercials are necessary to be made to a extreme degree for customers to have a impact within themselves. Commercials are mend to connect with the customers emotionally to influence their buying decision.
Emotional commercial videos may be very effective and attractive, but at same time there will be side effects if the video is not goal of entertaining and grabbing attention, they comes to an extend of provoking and frightening the public. When commercial that contain elements of fear, customers will arouse a feeling of repellent to the company’s product. (Ay and Aitkin and Narwhal, 2010) Guerilla marketing is a hit and run based strategy, it can be very effective and well-responded or it can be a total horrendous move to make.
Elliot, 2003) Comparing the both marketing strategies, viral marketing has an advantage of internet users and an disadvantage of limited marketing targets, which is non- internet users. Guerilla marketing has an advantage of flexibility from aspects of place, people, scenarios, event, and even in the internet as well. However, the content of the message may be provoking to some customers if the firm wants a strong impact on the public. 6) Discussion The research shows us that in order to gain maximum customer attention from a promotional campaign, the activities or marketing mediums must be eye catching and fresh to the customers.
Besides, customers does not care about the specifications of the product but the idea behind the product. Specification of the products are too complicated and blurring for customers to remember the product for long term. Idea are what customers remember from the product. For example, when we hear the phrase “Just Do It”, we will think of Nikkei; When we comes to Canon cameras, we will think of “Delighting you always” ; When we think of Samsung ISIS, we will think of the phrase “Designed for humans”.
Customers don’t really remember the specifications of the Camera, they Just watch it from a commercial, seeing celebrities asking pictures with that camera. Viral marketing has a wide coverage of user and it is a highly potential market target. The speed of transmitting the firm’s message is also very fast with the help of the internet. (Sleeper, 2001) However, firms have less control on the distribution of the message, misinterpretation of the message would not be able to be corrected after revealing the marketing medium.
Indeed the internet users till date is drastically humongous, but non-internet users had outrun the numbers of internet users. In other word, viral marketing is still having boundaries with their market argue. Guerilla marketing is flexible and very eye-catching, but the cost of the whole marketing campaign will be slightly higher than viral marketing. It has the ability to make customers remember the firm’s product as guerilla marketing works well in the element f surprise.
Other than that, guerilla marketing’s market target size is limited as it only can be carried out during an event or a crowded place. Guerilla marketing’s commercial videos are commonly emotion-arousing and till an extend of provoking. These elements are essential for a effective guerilla marketing. Because at the end of he day, what guerilla marketing is trying to achieve is making customers to remember the firm’s product. 7) Conclusion All in all, viral marketing and guerilla marketing both have their own advantages and disadvantages.
However, for the better marketing method to achieve a maximum customer attention is guerilla marketing, From my point of view, viral marketing which is commonly conducted online is easy to get perfunctory reactions from the viral marketing are not convincing. Pop-up advertisement are very annoying for most of the internet users because it disturbs internet user from doing their Job. Conversely, guerilla marketing can be done in the most creative way and most of the customers participates in these marketing campaign willingly under the drive of curiosity.
Although sometimes the commercial are provoking and emotionally arousing, but in the end of the day, it works. Viral marketing is not entirely useless when comes to customer attention, it still has its effective methods in gaining customer attention as its main concept of conducting marketing campaign is through reinforcement of an idea or a product. Overdosing the reinforcement will have a bad effect, which is annoyance from the customers. Guerilla marketing was originally designed to gain customer attention, thus, it has the upper-hand compared to viral marketing.