Viral Marketing is a term used to refer to word-of-mouth marketing. It can be better understood as the strategy that promotes the passage of a marketing message among people. The successfulness of viral marketing depends upon a strong passage rate from one individual to another. The larger the percentage of recipients who receive the marketing message, the greater the success of that specific viral marketing ploy is. When the passage rate of the message is slow or the number of recipients who receive the marketing message is minimal, the weaker the success of the viral marketing strategy is. The primary purpose of viral marketing is to create the potential for the exponential growth of the specific message, promoting its exposure. This strategy, in turn, increases the potential for the message to have a widespread influence in the market. Other terms have also been used to refer to viral marketing including network marketing, creating a buzz, and leveraging the media.
External links:
Two cost-effective marketing tools that are widely used are emails and newsletters, often referred to as eShots. Both allow you to stay in contact with potential or actual customers, maintaining communication that is essential to the success of your business. It is important to note that you must have permission to contact each individual before sending any emails. Both forms of eShots, emails and newsletters, should be kept simple in design. One or two calls to action should be included and the eShot should work well even if any included images do not load.
Newsletters can be used to update customers on new products and services as well as any relevant changes. Software applications are available that not only set up your eShot campaign, but also, they track the outcome of the campaign for you by gathering statistics on soft bounces, hard bounces, and how many emails have been forwarded, deleted, and read.
External links:
Outsourcing refers to the practice of obtaining services from another company for work that could have been accomplished within that company itself. Rather than have the work completed in-house, the company utilizes another company to do the work for them. In some cases, time constraints, an overload of work, or the opportunity to have the work accomplished for a lower cost is the motivation for outsourcing. For example, utilizing a third party’s resources for IT management can be less expensive if the company has not yet developed an in-house IT management team. Another example is the outsourcing of data storage needs when the company does not want to store and manage an in-house data storage system. Onshore outsourcing refers to the practice of obtaining services from outside the company but from inside the same country. Offshore outsourcing refers to the practice of obtaining services from a company or someone outside of the company as well as outside of the country.
External links: