BELOW-THE-LINE VS VIRAL MARKETING

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Marketing has played a central role in business success for decades and is ultimately concerned with the creation and retention of customers who through the purchasing of products generate profits for companies. It has been suggested that the cost of attracting new customers is much higher than maintaining existing ones and thus firms seek to build up efficient and effective retention systems for customers using a marketing mix.

While the ‘below-the-line’ promotional model has established itself as a major component of marketing mixes due to the rapid development of new technologies and globalization another marketing form, viral marketing, has gained broad attention, (Lanman, 2013). The reason for this attention is that companies have demonstrated their success with minimum marketing budgets in generating millions of profits in using this tool. The International Direct Marketing Network measured the use of different marketing techniques and it found that 84% of firms used some form of below the line marketing (North, 2018). In this way the response of distribution of products and information can be measured immediately. However both organisations and individuals have been subject to an unprecedented rate of change in the way they pursue and are involved in business and commercial opportunities in the 21st century making the case for an expanded role for viral marketing ever more compelling, (Kalakota, 2018).