What Is Viral Marketing

Viral marketing as the name implies refers to a form of marketing in which the marketing message is spread rapidly across to many people just like a viral infection. Viral marketing is widely used on the internet to market products and services by businesses and marketers due to the viral nature of the internet medium. A viral marketing campaign can be a very sophisticated affair with the use of videos and podcasts or a very simple one consisting of just an email message.

A classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the very first companies to offer free web-based email services to internet users. Basically, people are attracted to the ideal of having free email services and they signed up for it. Whenever any Hotmail users sent out any email, at the bottom of each email is a short message that entice people to sign up for their very own free Hotmail email account.

As more and more people started using Hotmail to send emails to their personal networks of friends and acquaintances, more and more people are exposed to the short viral marketing message attached to the bottom of each email. In turn, a high percentage of these friends and associates will sign up for the free Hotmail email accounts, spreading the viral message even further with every email they sent out. This is viral marketing at its best.

A successful viral marketing strategy should consist of the following components:

• Free products or services that are useful or beneficial to others
• Understand the underlying nature and motivations of your targeted audience and what drives them to spread the message
• Channels for people to spread the message easily and readily
• Ability to handle the campaign’s requirements when it gain traction and become too successful

The few components above will go a long way into making your viral marketing campaigns a success. While viral marketing remains one of the best marketing strategies to use, it is not easy to implement a successful viral marketing campaign. Most marketers failed at viral marketing because they do not understand the nature of viral marketing. From the product or service itself and right up to the marketing message, everything need to be construct with “viral” in mind. Most importantly, your product or service needs to be highly beneficial and useful to people in order for them to spread your marketing message.