The history of viral marketing – do you know how it started?
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 5:56 am
The history of viral marketing begins with the advent of the Internet. Person-to-person marketing is widely considered to be the dominant force in a market where information is filtered and disseminated at high speed. Potential consumers visit websites and read reviews from other consumers to learn more about a product or service before making a purchase. Person-to-person electronic marketing thus gains a great influence on consumers' evaluation of products or services.
The history of viral marketing and its first "historians"
Douglas Rushkoff , a media critic, was the first author to whatsapp number database write about viral marketing on the Internet in his 1994 book "Media Virus." Although the Internet was still in its infancy at the time, the author noticed a new phenomenon that would grow in popularity in the years to come, becoming a form of marketing that sent messages to millions, even billions, of people.
The term viral marketing was proposed by Jeffrey Rayport , a professor at Harvard University, in his 1996 article "The Marketing Virus".
In the decades that followed, the history of viral marketing wrote new chapters - this type of marketing showed all its potential by allowing millions of people from all over the world, connected via the internet, to make certain brands globally recognizable.
Viral marketing – a modern approach to marketing
Most solutions have attempted to re-engage consumers in the old “top-down” way, with promotion based on techniques aimed at a mass audience. Such information overload can lead consumers to postpone their entire purchases, and strong evidence shows that consumers are actively avoiding traditional marketing tools.
The modern person-to-person, or “bottom-up” approach to marketing is based on personal experiences with a brand and is driven solely by consumers. Due to the growing influence of this marketing approach, marketing managers are now turning to viral marketing, fighting for each customer individually.
In their 2011 scientific paper on viral marketing, Camero and San Jose aptly described the state of modern marketing communications:
“Communication is no longer limited to a conventional way, strict for the consumer approach or to one-way communication. Communication now finds variations in diverse ways, exploring the connections or relationships that individuals have with others via the Internet. In a period when consumers show less and less trust in companies and their advertising messages, person-to-person communication is proving to be very popular, especially due to the fact that the source (who communicates or transmits the message) is known to the recipient of the message, influencing the consumer's beliefs. However, the evolution of the Internet, email, and the second generation of the web (web 2.0, built by everyone for everyone, such that many consider it social or democratic), as well as social media in general (Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, etc.), has led to the phenomenon of viral marketing gaining gigantic proportions.”
The Internet has dramatically facilitated consumer interactions. Recommendations via email, online user forums, and social media groups, as well as consumer reviews encouraged by merchant websites, allow consumers to share information more easily than ever before. This network of users and their interactions is a global phenomenon that facilitates the spread of both positive and negative marketing from person to person, while the spread cannot be easily controlled by marketing managers or brand managers. In addition, it bypasses the existence of geographic markets and hence the possibility of implementing local marketing strategies.
person-to-person marketing
Information we receive through person-to-person communication, regardless of the source, is considered highly reliable, persuasive, and therefore an effective tool in consumer decisions about purchasing most products and services. According to recent research, more than three-quarters of consumers believe that companies lie in their advertisements, and they place advertising in fourth place when choosing areas that need legal regulation, while more than a third of consumers have a negative image of what traditional marketing communications represent.
Viral marketing is a new form of user protection, through which recommendations are valued the most. The only question is whether companies will adequately take advantage of the great opportunities of this type of marketing and what will be the next step in the evolution of marketing?
The history of viral marketing and its first "historians"
Douglas Rushkoff , a media critic, was the first author to whatsapp number database write about viral marketing on the Internet in his 1994 book "Media Virus." Although the Internet was still in its infancy at the time, the author noticed a new phenomenon that would grow in popularity in the years to come, becoming a form of marketing that sent messages to millions, even billions, of people.
The term viral marketing was proposed by Jeffrey Rayport , a professor at Harvard University, in his 1996 article "The Marketing Virus".
In the decades that followed, the history of viral marketing wrote new chapters - this type of marketing showed all its potential by allowing millions of people from all over the world, connected via the internet, to make certain brands globally recognizable.
Viral marketing – a modern approach to marketing
Most solutions have attempted to re-engage consumers in the old “top-down” way, with promotion based on techniques aimed at a mass audience. Such information overload can lead consumers to postpone their entire purchases, and strong evidence shows that consumers are actively avoiding traditional marketing tools.
The modern person-to-person, or “bottom-up” approach to marketing is based on personal experiences with a brand and is driven solely by consumers. Due to the growing influence of this marketing approach, marketing managers are now turning to viral marketing, fighting for each customer individually.
In their 2011 scientific paper on viral marketing, Camero and San Jose aptly described the state of modern marketing communications:
“Communication is no longer limited to a conventional way, strict for the consumer approach or to one-way communication. Communication now finds variations in diverse ways, exploring the connections or relationships that individuals have with others via the Internet. In a period when consumers show less and less trust in companies and their advertising messages, person-to-person communication is proving to be very popular, especially due to the fact that the source (who communicates or transmits the message) is known to the recipient of the message, influencing the consumer's beliefs. However, the evolution of the Internet, email, and the second generation of the web (web 2.0, built by everyone for everyone, such that many consider it social or democratic), as well as social media in general (Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, etc.), has led to the phenomenon of viral marketing gaining gigantic proportions.”
The Internet has dramatically facilitated consumer interactions. Recommendations via email, online user forums, and social media groups, as well as consumer reviews encouraged by merchant websites, allow consumers to share information more easily than ever before. This network of users and their interactions is a global phenomenon that facilitates the spread of both positive and negative marketing from person to person, while the spread cannot be easily controlled by marketing managers or brand managers. In addition, it bypasses the existence of geographic markets and hence the possibility of implementing local marketing strategies.
person-to-person marketing
Information we receive through person-to-person communication, regardless of the source, is considered highly reliable, persuasive, and therefore an effective tool in consumer decisions about purchasing most products and services. According to recent research, more than three-quarters of consumers believe that companies lie in their advertisements, and they place advertising in fourth place when choosing areas that need legal regulation, while more than a third of consumers have a negative image of what traditional marketing communications represent.
Viral marketing is a new form of user protection, through which recommendations are valued the most. The only question is whether companies will adequately take advantage of the great opportunities of this type of marketing and what will be the next step in the evolution of marketing?