Facebook and Viral Marketing
I am really impressed with the Facebook architecture (believe it or not). I’ve seen companies spend thousands/millions of dollars on getting their product out there. I’ve read business plans and came up with a few in my career. They are all good but few are innovative, creative and match the growing trend of the latest cutting edge technology. Your marketing plan is only as successful as the intellectual capability of the people/team behind it. And if these people are a bunch of technological duncies, well then you have just wasted a bunch of money. What about finding that right match….a marketing team or person who knows the ins and arounds of technology to pad his marketing plan to perfection, be innovative and most importantly, be successful….by taking into account technology and the Web 2.0.
By definition,
Viral marketing and 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.
What I have seen companies spend millions of dollars on can be done on Facebook for free, in seconds, by one person. I kid you not. I am not saying that Facebook is a replacement for the typical marketing plan but it can be a significant complement.
Facebook Groups
By starting a Facebook Group, you can give your brand *instant* awareness. You send out invites, friends invite friends, friend’s news feed show the recent group activity and friend’s of friends of friends of friends (you get the picture) join in. And trust me, this can all happen in ONE day at the cost of $0.00. Compare this to ads in the newspapers, radio and the rest of the media. IMO, this is by far the perfect demonstration of viral marketing.
This same analogy can be applied to Facebook Pages, Facebook Events, Facebook Notes and Facebook Marketplace.
Facebook, the online market place where food prices never go up.
Yeah facebook has revolutionized the way that we market. I think it took the social networking and marketing a step further than most others. One thing though I like how its simplicity stands out .. but its addictive. which is why its also known as “crackbook”
Comment by Keith London — July 4, 2008 @ 8:42 am
Great info here. I’ll make sure I add Facebook to my advertising diary list time.
Comment by Marcel — July 14, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
wouldn’t you suggest to prepare a facebook page instead of a group for brands? more powerful I guess right from the beginning if I think alone of the option to send messages directly to all Fans with one click including HTML, Links and multimedia content..
Comment by Werenfried Ressl - Social Media concepts within FaceBook or without it — February 3, 2009 @ 7:19 am