[shawn]

What is viral marketing? How does it work?

[leahmarie]

Viral marketing is a form of promoting your brand or product like a virus through certain mediums like flash games, videos, ebooks and many more. It works like virus that can be shared by those who stumbles on it.

[Renzel32]

viral marketing is any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. One example of successful viral marketing is Hotmail, a company, now owned by Microsoft, that promotes its service and its own advertisers' messages in every user's e-mail notes.

[kylegregory]

Viral Marketing is based on the principles of information sharing between the people through emails. It can be forwarded as easy as text, HTML text, images, videos, etc. .

[shego]

I have one question though about Viral marketing. I saw this service in my town where they put a banner of a company and ride around the city, parking at crowded areas like market places, stadiums and bus stations. Is that an example of Viral Marketing?

[nsmchris]

Originally Posted by shego

I have one question though about Viral marketing. I saw this service in my town where they put a banner of a company and ride around the city, parking at crowded areas like market places, stadiums and bus stations. Is that an example of Viral Marketing?

No. In viral marketing, the marketing tactic is self-replicating. For that to be viral, people from the crowd would be compelled to buy their own truck with the same ad on it and start driving around. That is just precision billboard marketing.

[Connections]

Viral Marketing, creating something that people will want to take "viral" ie you make a video which is going to be shared by million of people via social networks, email and word of mouth.

A good example is the Will it Blend Video series, these guys promote their products perfectly using Viral Marketing.

For more info go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

[johnspells]

The term "viral marketing" is something where if the company launched anything they mail to people and that message contain an advertisement or a link of that website at the bottom of the mail. These way they connect the people and make them aware about the product. Suppose there are 10 mails send by company then these 10 people will send to other who are their friends or any one else.This way the chain will build up.you can say that it is one kind of word-of-mouth marketing. It works in that fashion only. This helps the organization in a very broader way.

[james123612]

Viral advertising is also good and nice way to introduced your new business and new thing which you launched but i think SEO is also one of the best way to advertise your business.

[Riseykins]

Like when people buy a bag with the Chanel logo on it. People see it and know it's expensive and therefore also want the Chanel logo on their bag...So, in essence, the consumer does the marketing! Well, the company starts it, but consumers pick it up and pass it on without really KNOWING they're doing it.

As opposed to an ad company paying to display ads for a certain amount of time. People are not going to think "Hey, I want a giant billboard in MY house!", are they? ;-)