The Pros And Cons Of Unintentional Marketing

Often larger businesses engage in “unintentional” advertising, this saves the company money for advertising to a specific market, market research, and the actual advertisement placement. When someone uploads a video to any number of social media sites, using a company’s product, and that in turn goes viral on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or any other mainstream social media outlet, and the business is able to utilize that video to springboard an advertising campaign – this is the core of unintentional viral marketing. A recent viral game application sensation -- Pokémon Go -- has helped small, and local businesses receive an increase in foot traffic, and business. Many of the “Poke-stops” are at geocache sites which many times are

Not all small businesses are aware of the additional foot traffic’s cause, thus they may not be utilizing the additional business to its fullest. There is also the possibility that the businesses are unwilling, or unaware of the most creative ways to capitalize on this additional foot traffic. Another key element, is the willingness for the small business to not only reach out in the initial interaction but continue to be open to growing their business model around new strategies in terms of obtaining and retaining this new customer base, and not wholly relying on the unintentional viral marketing to be to sole driving force. Another drawback is the core of a small businesses business model. If a business is a family business with a multi-generational element, they may be reluctant to do anything that might be new or different. This fear might be a sound protection in a viral world, or it could just draw out the slow death of the business in ever shrinking small towns, or small downtown

Many studies observe larger company models without evaluating the potential benefit, or harm unintentional viral marketing may have on smaller businesses, in addition to smaller communities. Is the unintentional viral marketing for big companies being done at the potential expense of these last bastions of the American Dream? Are small freestanding businesses just holding off the inevitable final sale? The greatest question, is the unintentional viral marketing a resurgence for small businesses, or is this going to just act as a temporary revival that will have a greater negative impact, of a crash, in the long