The marketing approach techniques are innumerable. There are many ways to approach the potential customer. There are two marketing approaches that are very interesting for their specific techniques. They are viral marketing and direct marketing.

Viral Marketing is a marketing technique that uses social networks, both online and offline, to transmit the message or advertising, through a self-replicating viral process. This process resembles the spread of computer viruses or biological viruses.

Almost anything can be the subject of a viral marketing effect: information, web link, video clip, e-books, etc.

The expansion methods of viral marketing can be:

Word of mouth: simple communication between people who know each other.

Social networks like Facebook are the perfect examples of viral media. The number of people using these services is huge. The members of these social media environments are very well connected, as each user has many contacts. Finally, the method of sharing an idea or a message is very simple, through different exchange techniques.

“Invite Your Friend” calls from different electronic services. These messages that provoke the actions are moving an important part of the population that wants to share the message, but is not willing to invest efforts.

The advantage of viral marketing is that it requires little or no investment. The viral marketing system is driven by the willingness of the broadcasters to convey the message further. The power of exponential growth is tremendous. If each person is distributing the information to 5 people and more, this gives 3,125 people informed after 5 levels from the transfer of the original message. Viral marketing experts know this formula very well, therefore, viral marketing is part of the portfolio of marketing techniques.

The downside is that viral marketing is unreliable as a standard method of information transfer, as not all ideas are likely to transfer at the same rate. Simply, the outcome of the viral marketing campaign is unpredictable, as the power of the campaign depends on many parameters.

Also “viral competition” dictates the effectiveness of the viral campaign. If two similar campaigns are present in the same period to the similar audience, the social group is likely to pass on the message that seems most interesting at the moment.

There is no secret formula to guarantee the success of your viral marketing campaign, but good ideas, with a tone of humor, anticipation, and added value elements can help your viral marketing campaign succeed.

On the other hand, direct marketing is a sales method in which advertisers approach potential customers directly with advertising, products or services. The most common methods of direct marketing are telephone sales, requested or unsolicited emails, catalogs, brochures, brochures, direct visits, etc.

There are two main differences that distinguish it from other types of marketing. The first characteristic of direct marketing is that the message is transferred directly to consumers, without the use of intermediate media and mass media campaigns. The second feature is the “call to action” principle of communication to consumers.

Direct marketing is attractive to many companies, as campaign results can be directly measured. For example, if a marketer sends 5,000 emails and 250 respond to the promotion, the company easily estimates that the campaign gave a response rate of 5%.

On the other hand, the measurement of other media (TV, Radio) must often be indirect, since there is no measurable estimate of the recipients of the messages. The measurement of results is a key element of any activity.

Direct marketing is practiced by companies of all sizes, from the smallest to multinational corporations. The decision to use a direct marketing approach is not related to the size of the company. If the niche of the target population is too small, direct marketing can be more profitable than a large-scale advertising campaign.

Direct marketing and viral marketing have a completely different approach. The power of both marketing approaches can be harnessed, depending on the situation. Each person is the potential buyer, it only takes a little to activate the purchase mechanism.