Viral Marketing Basics

Viral and video marketing is becoming more current in the world of online electronic media where just about everyone has an entertainment center in their computer. Video marketing is one form of viral marketing that is considered a successful source of unusual visitors. With sites such as YouTube and MySpace video marketing has become easier to do. In addition, most website and blogs have the ability to put videos on their site.

Viral marketing really means that customers or potential customers will voluntarily pass on information about the company without being paid or prodded. Thus, Viral marketing follows the logic of human nature in the sense that when something is liked we will tell three other people and if we don’t like it we will tell somewhere around eleven other people. Both positive and negative marketing has its advantages.

Viral marketing can come in many different forms. One may put together a video, develop a fun game, interesting images and even text messages. Basically, it is anything that that can be passed on to other people. The more interesting the message or medium the more likely it will be passed on to colleagues, friends and family.

Statistically viral marketing can be very successful. 81% of people who receive a viral message are willing to pass it on to atleast one other person while 49% are willing to pass it on to 2 or more people (Nucifora, 2000). The more people the message is sent to the more visitors your site or business will receive.

The key to having a ample viral marketing campaign is to offer the ability to send this message to another person. For example, if you have a funny video you might want to include a link that directs not only to the website but also to a page where a message could be sent to other people. Make the process of getting the message out.

You may also assume offering an incentive for anyone interested in signing up for your services or leaving their contact information in their guest book. That way you have the opportunity to see how successful your campaign is through the entries but also encouraging people to see your site.

Viral marketing is a relatively cheap design to get new visitors. Think of ICQ who currently has 32 million subscribers and never spent a dime are marketing. How did they do this? Well, they offer a simple service that allowed for real time chat and the ability to send it to friends so that they could get the service for free as well.