Viral Marketing

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others. The very first, and most well-known, viral marketer was hotmail.com, who gave away free email services, but included a small message at the bottom of the email saying "Get your private free email at www.hotmail.com" Whenever anyone forwarded an email message to an associate, they too would see this message.

There's no doubt that viral marketing gives advertisers the ability to send promotional campaigns out to huge quantities of people exponentially, and is a very powerful strategy. This article will focus on the components that define viral marketing, and make it stand out from other forms of marketing online.

Viral marketing campaigns usually centre around a free product or service of value to the recipient. When something of value is given away free of charge, this attracts prospects to opt-in with their email address. This in turn allows the marketer to sell something of interest to those prospects some time in the future, creating revenue.

The marketing message in a viral campaign needs to be short and sweet, so it can be transmitted easily via electronic means without degradation. The hotmail scenario is the ultimate example with a short, compelling message that urges the reader to click through to the web site for their free service.

As a viral marketing message is forwarded around the internet, and the offer is taken up by more and more people exponentially, planning must be done in advance to carry the load of respondents, and servers might need upgrading to cope with the bandwidth.

If you design a viral marketing campaign around common human behaviour and motivation, then it should work wonders. Take the example of forwarding a funny video or a link to a funny video on YouTube… Many millions of people have viewed these and passed them onto their friends. Include a marketing message, and you're set to reap the rewards.

By utilizing social networks and bookmarking sites, you can capture the attention of many people very quickly. By adding a signature line in your communications with 'friends' in these networks, you can pass your marketing message along to many thousands of people.

Viral marketing takes advantage of other people's resources. Take the following examples into consideration:

- Your video can be displayed on YouTube's site using their bandwidth.
- Your article can be uploaded to an article directory, and used by hundreds of publishers in their newsletters and on their web sites.
- Affiliates to your program will send out solo ads, and display banner graphic on external advertising web sites for you so they earn commissions.
- A press release can be quickly sent to media channels for on-air broadcast, and publication in periodicals around the world.

When you consider the absolute power of viral marketing, it is one strategy that shouldn't be ignored in your marketing plan.

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