Viral marketing is sometimes called viral advertising and concerns the type of marketing methods that look to tap into preexistent interpersonal networks in order to create unlimited growth in the awareness of a product or service. With the ease of being able to reach massive numbers of people through the Internet, viral marketing has taken hold of the power provided by online marketing tools and seeks out these types of opportunities continuously. Viral marketing is sometimes the terms that is used to identify what some people refer to as stealth marketing campaigns that are done online. Some of the tools used in viral marketing include web sites that appear to be created by a relatively inexperienced person, web logs and other ways that generate attention through Internet grapevines and even gossip.
Ever received a funny and entertaining video clip from a friend? This could have been an attempt at viral marketing. Viral marketing relies on the human nature to pass along fun and entertaining content on the Internet to as many people as they can. This humorous content is usually sponsored by a particular brand that wishes to heighten its visibility in order to make people aware of a particular product or service. Other forms of viral marketing that is used this way includes images, flash games and even textual content.
Anyone who wants to sell a product or service usually finds the concept of viral marketing appealing because it is a simple and easy way to market their product that is often less expensive than other, more traditional means of reaching new customers like direct mail marketing. Viral marketing is unique in the fact that it can carry out a marketing campaign while reaching a high number of individuals at a very low cost. The only downside to using viral marketing is that if the viral marketing isnt done properly, the message that a product is trying to get across will simply look like SPAM. One very sensible way many viral marketing services are trying to avoid becoming deleted as SPAM is to ask anyone forwarding on a web link or page to provide their name so that there is a recognizable sender in the subject line of a message stating that so-and-so thought you would like this.