How did videos like 'Damn Daniel' sent sales of white vans soaring?

How did campaigns like "Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches" brought awareness to beauty went viral?  

or even a simple photo of "#whitegold or #blueblack dress got viral? 

I am sure everyone knows the power of all these examples and how it was able to garner a massive amount of attention from the public. But what actually went down in history that #broketheinternet was Kim Kardashian's Paper cover.

So what is viral marketing? Viral marketing is a form of electronic word-of-mouth whereby some form of marketing message related to a brand is transmitted through the use of social media applications (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011)

In this case of Kim Kardashian, she bared it all on Paper magazine. This gave an whole new concept of magazine covers that are edgy and different. When Kim Kardashian posted the magazine cover on twitter, it garnered thousands of retweets and the paper site received over 50 million hits in one day.

From this success, we learn that there are three criteria to tick off in order to create a viral marketing. The three basic conditions which is that the right people need to get the right message under the right circumstances. (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011) 

Paper magazine is a small circulation magazine, more situated towards an independent outlook. Instead of using mainstream and typical cover shots, they made a bold attempt on this cover. Leveraging also on Kim Kardashian's popularity on social media sites and her vocal opinions on loving her body, they were able to get the message across. Within 24 hours, the print magazine was able to generate publicity and got people talking about a magazine or publication they had never heard of. Hitting an all high 6.6 million page views with 5 million of those being unique visitors. The impressions created through all social media totalled to over a million. Celebrities like her husband, Kanye West as well as her other family members retweeted the photo and showed their support. This garnered even more attention towards the magazine even before it was released. The key to Paper's success was to involve the person they were featuring. Instead of 'sending a person to interview', they involved Kim Kardashian in this spread. Paper Magazine is currently well received by many people globally.

However there are also other cases of viral campaigns that was able to gain awareness of its campaign at the start but brought about a discussion of ethics in marketing. An example would be Witchery viral campaign. Basically, they created a 'genuine' youtube video of an woman attempting to track down a man. This brought about a lot of help from the public in helping the women find the man in the jacket. However when it was exposed that everything was staged, the public response was negative. The public felt that it was unethical of them to have lied about it and this angered public as they felt deceived. (you could watch the videos here x and x)

This was badly engineered and the campaign backfired about them. But have you ever wondered that since it became viral, more people know about the brand name? A point to note is that even though there was an increase in brand awareness, but it comes along with a negative brand association.

References:

Kaplan, A. & Haenlein, M. (2011). Two hearts in three-quarter time: How to waltz the social media/viral marketing dance. Business Horizons, 54(3), 253-263. 

 That is the question many digital marketing industry publications have recently been declaring in their headlines. So first and foremost, let me define SEO to you. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is "a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results" as quoted from Moz, an SEO consulting company. SEO includes both technical and creative elements to drive traffic and increase awareness in search engines. (Fishkin, 2015) It is evident for a business website to use SEO as majority of web traffic is driven by major search engines like Google or Yahoo. Search engines provide people with information they are looking for. (Sen, 2005)

I believe SEO is not dead and search engines are definitely still thriving. We still do our search on google to get information. How can it be that SEO is dead? But i believe there are reason why articles are publishing articles on whether SEO is dead.  I believe the reasons that led to those beliefs are because of rapid changes in social media. There are 3 reasons that im going to point out:


Organic reach is the total number of unique views of people who are shown to your post through unpaid distribution. Google has always been the go to search engine but over the years, consumers has become more aware of the difference between sponsored and organic listings and have search for information elsewhere.

Which brings me to my next point on,

Typing searches into google has decreased as people are putting more trust in other places. For example, looking up on cafes has shifted to places like Instagram. Comments and reviews typed in by other people on the photo has been a way for people to know more about the cafe. People want to see opinions of other people. Consumers are more likely to care about what are the popular cafes that their friends go to than to find out about it through a google search

3. Mobile apps are increasing their stake in the market

As i mentioned earlier about Instagram, many other mobile apps are increasingly used by many consumers. This affects SEO in a way that the trend is splitting up and it is no longer a traditional search engine that could help us get information but now more apps are able to give us heaps of information. For example, if you are searching for fashion inspiration, would you still head to google? People may still use google to search for articles on fashion or news but people are more likely to search for outfit inspirations on websites like Pinterest or Tumblr.

SEO can only die when search engine dies. It cannot be denied that we still use search engines and it cannot be denied that as long as there are search engines, people will definitely find out how search engines work in order to get business. It includes activities designed to get business from organic search result in a search engine. Minimal changes like changing the title tag to appear high in a search engine is also an example of SEO. ( you can read more here, x ) I have highlighted as why SEO is presumed to be dying. The rapid changes of social media has brought about new ways for people to search for items apart from Google. It is evident that there is a shift in SEO but SEO are definitely not dead.

To say that the internet is growing expeditiously is an understatement

Devices have become a vital part of our lives. The future of marketing based on Big Data and Internet of Things (IOT) is emerging and attributing to a whole new dimension in digital marketing. As said in the article by Andrew MacAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, "Big data seeks to glean intelligence from data and translate that into business advantage. (McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2012) The massive accumulation of data now readily available allows one to extract valuable information from it and creating devices that will complement connection between consumers and marketers. (Labrecque, vor dem Esche, Mathwick, Novak, & Hofacker, 2013)


For one thing sure of IoT, It is creating a new connected avenue for marketing. Iot have enabled ways for communications with the brand and consumer benefiting both consumers and marketers. Marketers will be able to understand why customers are buying certain products as well as being able to interact in real time with customers while customers are able to explain their needs and wants.

Do you realise when you go on Facebook after browsing through online stores, ads of that store appears?

you could check it on these links here , x  o

Credits: x