What is Viral Marketing?

When someone asks that question I assume I must start at the beginning. The word "viral" comes from virus. Most of us know what that is. OK… so Dictionary.com defines viral as: of, pertaining to, or caused by a virus.

So, now that you know what viral is, let’s apply it to marketing. Specifically Internet Marketing. For any marketing to be considered viral, it must be something that is self-propagating. It must be something that the marketer starts and places into action and it continues without further action by the marketer. In other words the marketer is able to start it and then forget about it. It grows and finds its way to more and more prospects without any further action by the marketer. Viral marketing then, is any marketing plan or system that encourages or compels individuals to pass on a marketing message to others.

How does that happen? The theory is that if you have a item of value, like an eBook and you allow others to reproduce it and distribute it, either free or for a small fee, people will do just that. Pass it on that is. Of course the key here is that it must be perceived to have value or it won’t get passed on. Assuming there is perceived value it’s pretty easy to see what can happen in a short period of time. Let’s say you wrote an eBook with value to a wide audience and allowed free distribution. Let’s assume that you distributed only three copies yourself, but each person you gave it to gave it to another three people and everyone who received it did the same thing. When 10 levels have been reached almost 30,000 have seen your eBook. Remember, you only personally distributed three! What would be the result if you distributed 1,000 yourself? You can do the math, but I think you get the point. Again, you need to have something that people will pass on and make it very easy for them to do so or it won’t go viral.

One of the great early examples of viral marketing was, and probably still is, Hotmail. Hotmail’s method of gaining new subscribers was by including a brief

There are several vehicles that can be used as viral marketing products. Examples are: E-Books, E-mail, Newsletters, Blogs, Chat-Rooms, Video Clips and Flash Games. My personal preference happens to be eBooks. I like eBooks for viral marketing because once you have spent the time developing them you are pretty much done. If you can create an eBook that has real value to a wide base of potential readers you should have a successful viral marketing campaign. Again, the secret here is IT MUST HAVE VALUE and it must cause the reader to WANT TO SEND IT TO OTHERS. Miss either one of these and your viral marketing campaign will most likely fail.

Pick a vehicle from the above list, or create your own vehicle and get it rolling. Use your imagination and be creative. Do something a little different and you can be a success.