Viral Marketing: A Form of E-Marketing-Buzz Strategies

Viral marketing can best be understood from its negative parent term virus because of the way the advertising works. Viral which seems to sound like virus can be understood from the concept the exponential spread of a virus.

By definition, Viral marketing is a form of online advertising that facilitates and encourages individuals to forward compelling marketing messages, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence (Wilson, 2000).

Viral marketing often involves products or services being given away by spurring common motivations and behaviors of users, and can be carried out from a small to very large scale. Viral marketing also makes use of communication networks so users can "transfer" the products or services to others with ease.

Incentive viral marketing occurs when one recruits another person to use the product, the former is paid or given some form of incentive. By being rewarded, the user is motivated to share the product with others. Say, giving a commission to broker, www.paypal.com gave $5 for each referral.

Value viral marketing occurs when people share quality experiences or products with others. The product or service should be attractive or interesting enough to instigate enthusiasm between the person who shares it and the person who hears about it. Merely telling someone about the product does not render it viral.

Guile viral marketing occurs when people try to push a product or service to others in exchange for incentives. The incentive must be strong enough for the user of the product or service to "promote" it, even if it means a possible case of displeasing others. An undesired reward attached to the product may result with the user having a bad image of the product.

Vital viral marketing occurs when certain products are required before one is able to share the experience or product with others. The user must feel that the product and experience is valuable enough to make an effort to change. Otherwise, it may cause a rejection in accepting the product or service instead.

  Product examples: ICQ, RealPlayer, Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat

  Web site examples: eBay, AOL

Spiral/Experience viral marketing occurs when people share funny, dirty and/or interesting experiences with others. This kind of viral marketing is rarely meant to be "viral". Users wanting to share about the product is mostly due to its exceptionally humourous or interesting quality.

Vile viral marketing occurs when people warn others of their own negative experiences. These products are usually designed from poor taste, are of a poor quality or percieved by the user as an underhanded marketing scheme.

• Product examples: Many failed dot-coms, Apple Newton, Olestra, "Plan B" book, Crystal Pepsi
• Web site examples: Real.com (for the RealJukebox fiasco)

Here is an example of viral email marketing from a www.squidoo.com website:

It is called viral because if it works well, your message will spread like a virus. Here's an example. Say you have an Opt-in email list of subscribers to your emails and newsletters. You create a campaign that enables them to win a prize. As part of this prize campaign, you include an option in your emails for the original recipients to send their contest emails to their friends and family.

Now, you not only have your original recipients participating in the contest, but you have their friends and family involved as well. When friends and family receive this email, include a subscription link that they can click on to confirm that they'd also like to receive emails from you. In just a short time, you've more than doubled your list of permission-based participants.

The key element to any viral email marketing campaign is to get permission. You never want to email anyone who hasn't given you specific permission to email them. If you send to non Opt-in recipients, you'll get hammered by spam complaints and it will ruin your reputation. Hence, you should never assume that recipients want to hear from you unless they confirm that in your email.

Being viral therefore means that some or more posts from your blog become very popular in very short time. They spread like virus, hence the name viral. Your posts can become viral with help from social networks like and lately increasingly popular Stumble upon.

The Viral Article Publisher is an invaluable software solution, which is extremely easy to use and which saves you from having to submit articles manually to all of the top free article sites though it does contain that option in case you want to hand submit an article to one or a few select sites.

Read more: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Know-What-Is-Viral-Marketing-And-Its-History-/528219#ixzz1Ju4duZam
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution No Derivatives

Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or text messages.

The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period of time.