What is Viral Internet Marketing

Copyright (c) 2008 Colin Meunier

Every person who walks on the face of the earth has been a subject of viral marketing at some time or the other, whether consciously or unconsciously. In the same strain, every person who promotes a product or service indulges in viral marketing. Quite simply put, viral marketing is the promotional tactic where you create a buzz about your business to a few people in the hope that they will pass on the message to other people. It is an endeavor at creating brand awareness through a chain reaction effect. Viral marketing has been present in the world since Adam, but in the times of the Internet, a new flavor called the viral Internet marketing was perfected. Viral Internet marketing can be simply looked upon as a better streamlined version of the traditional viral marketing.

The Internet can be used as a very significant tool to create and pass on awareness of your brand. There are a ton of Internet resources that can be harnessed to this effect - you can blog, post on forums, interact in chat rooms, participate in social networking sites, etc., which would become a very direct approach at tapping the Internet's vast traffic. When you viral market your brand here, you speak about your product. That could set people talking about it. Those impressed with the product will pass on the message to others. That's the whole idea, actually.

Now, there are two ways a viral Internet marketer would go about the promotion. Some of them like the direct in-your-face approach. They would directly launch with a glorification of the features of the product, perhaps put a very impressive video or .pdf file or something like that to grab the attention of people. Having a sales page on the website is a very popular option. Offering discounts for groups is a very brazen viral Internet marketing tactic, because there the idea is that one person who is impressed with the product will bring in others. All these are direct methods.

But then, some marketers prefer to create the virus of the idea surreptitiously. They will not openly speak about the product, but would subtly make them know of their best features. That creates a sort of intrigue. Today we see a lot of fiction authors, game developers and even Hollywood movies using this tactic of viral Internet marketing, with great success that too.

A special mention must be made of article marketing here. This is a tactic of viral Internet marketing that every entrepreneur is either already using or at least thinking of using it. Here, the market gets some professional articles written and submits them to open directories on the Internet. People visit here through search engines and get indirectly sold to the product's idea. They could visit the website link below. When suitably impressed, they will definitely tell their friends about the product.

People are also using direct email marketing as a bid to market virally on the Internet. In short, almost all the Internet's resources are being used in this brand of marketing. Word-of-mouth publicity has always been the best. Viral Internet marketing is an attempt to tap its great potential.