Vegedus wrote:
I dunno if I'd call 'word of mouth' marketing. It's the best kind of advertisement there is, but also the hardest to create artificially (marketing = artificial). In the case of Minecraft, it seems to stem from innovative and immersive gameplay, which is one of the better reasons for a game to be known.
... So I disagree semantically, but agree with your point.
Word of mouth marketing (WOMM it even has an accronym) can be an effective form of advertisement. And companies have viral campaigns that work off this concept they pay billions to do it. An example of this are companies that pay "hot women" to go to bars, act flirty order specific drinks in a specific way, then talk about specific movies and music before moving on to another bar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_marketing. There are risks but word of mouth tends to be more credible than adds on tv or internet, however with a word of mouth campaign it can cost a million dollars to get the word out to 30 or 40 thousand people. If it does not go viral that money is wasted, generally they go in the thousands of dollars and get the word out to hundreds of people and hope it goes viral that way. On the other hand half a million dollars can get the word out to 20 million people. If that money is spent well and hits the target demographic you can look at 10 million potential customers out of the mix. Maybe 30 percent actually look into the product and half buy. So for 1.5 million sales. If it is a video game that is good ad money spent. Internet is the cheapest advertisement, but it lacks credibility. Nobody believes internet ads. So the more credible the ads the more expensive they are to utilize and the less coverage you get.
