For many, a well-executed viral marketing campaign increases sales or brand perception. Viral campaigns spread very quickly and with the advent of blogs, social networking, and other web 2.0 sites, mention of a business, product/service can appear in hundreds to thousands of websites around the world overnight.
While viral marketing offers the advantages of “word-of-mouth” advertising, sophisticated marketers must realize that SEO plays a large role in converting visitors to buyers as well.
In the JupiterResearch report “Consumer-Created Content: Assessing Opportunities for Automotive Marketers”, consumers did one or more of the following after viewing an online ad:
31% searched the product or service to learn more
22% visited a site related to the ad
12% told a friend about the ad or product
8% forwarded the ad to someone
7% went to a related site to post a comment
5% went to a related site to upload photos or videos
What’s interesting to note is how little trust was placed on consumer-created content such as blogs and forums. Almost 50% more people found public forums untrustworthy. Four times more people didn’t trust ads. More than double found product information on blogs untrustworthy.
Consumers of higher-priced items are getting savvier and perform more research to check out a product before purchase. By having a more pervasive presence in the search engines in addition to a virally spread message, a business capitalizes on building a stronger brand and gives them an additional opportunity to re-introduce the message to their target audience through the corporate site by showing up in the top ten organic search results for their business name/product/service.
Via Clickz, JupiterResearch Analyst Emily Riley emphasizes:
Viral marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum, to consumers these are all just different ways of getting a message about the same product….Just taking advantage of this new tactic in social media doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to improve your brand affinity