Viral marketing is the latest trend in online marketing tools, also known as “pass-along,” “friend-tell-a-friend” and “evangelism” marketing. Consumers tell one another about a product, service or Web site. The so called ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing phenomenon saves companies of huge costs on advertising.
The promotional effort in viral marketing is designed to encourage visitors to an online site and makes them pass along a marketing message for a product, with an attractive incentive. The incentives vary from a free product to a discount coupon. One of the most effective ways to spread enthusiasm about a product is, though, games. Games are not only fun, they are powerful viral products used for traffic generation, training and education.
Viral marketing games are fast gaining popularity. Such online game contests allow the user to play a game online with a free product as the prize. At the end of the game, the user is re-directed to your product site. This ensures a constant stream of visitors to your site and also encourages repeat visits – the two goals of viral marketing.
There are award winning viral games. Original and addictive games have been played by millions and have massively increased brand awareness and customer acquisition for brand owners. A good example are the very popular Simpson games that are made for the new Simpsons movie and Extreme Pamplona, a game made for Rexona, which has been played millions of times. MTV is going to spend millions of dollars on online games for promotion. The range of these campaigns proves that viral is not limited to entertainment brands or games for teenagers and adults. Big brands – from Levi Strauss and Fox Television to traditional warhorses, such as The New York Times, Sports Illustrated or Lucky – are popping up everywhere in the blogosphere and on message boards.
Viral advertising bounces like crazy on the Internet. Yes, it’s 2007 in the viral marketing world and Internet users aren’t so easily impressed with just any game, contest or video clip. As technology evolved, the online games also went forward for the better. Since the earliest invention of games in computers there has been advancements in leaps and bounds in terms of the technology and programming software’s used to develop games.
New games [http://www.gamenode.com/flashnewgames.html] appear on the viral market every day. These online games cover all categories and needs of the consumers. Any demographic can be targeted – moms, dads, teachers, primetime TV loyals, city dwellers, rural folk etc. Just name the game and you can find action games, action games, arcade games, board & card games, classic games, fighting games, puzzle & word games, car & racing games, shooting games, skill games, sports games and strategy games.
Most of us, who use computers for different purposes at present, would admit that playing games was the first reason of attraction towards computers. Almost everyone would admit that his or her first interaction with computers was through playing a game on it. Even now among millions of individuals, who sit in front of a computer, a vast majority would acknowledge that they are still addicted to gaming experiences on computers for long hours at a stretch.
Recent high-speed Internet connections make downloading a faster process and one can easily enjoy a full range of levels and degree of difficulty for the game. No experience can be more entertaining than of playing a flash computer game.