subject: Viral Marketing Is Not Catching [print this page] Viral Marketing has got nothing to do with viruses. It's also known as viral advertising and is used to increase the profile of your product or company by spreading your information by word of mouth.
This can now be done via social media like facebook and twitter, or through forums and email, because of the digital world we live in.
A good example of something being spread virally, is when a popular video is posted on YouTube. because everybody passes along to their friends before you know it, it's been seen by thousands of people, and everyone is talking about it.
It can be a very smart way to generate traffic but it shouldn't be your only means of generating traffic. What it means is that you are getting other people to spread the word about your product and you get traffic back to your website from what they tell other people.
One of the main reasons it is so effective is because it's very cheap to setup. It gets spread like a virus and you only have to promote it once - it's passed on to one person, they pass it to two others, they pass it to other people and so on.
There are a few things that you need to do to have an effective viral marketing campaign.
Your product first of all needs to be easy to explain. It should be possible to explain it in a few words - Imagine if it took 10 minutes when someone sat and explained it to you. You would start to lose interest very quickly and wouldn't be interested in passing it on.
It also has to be easy to use and this means it should be uncomplicated. People will stop using it and not spread your message if it's at all complicated. That's another reason why videos spread virally on the Internet, because all someone needs to do is share the link with their friends and then they share the link with their friends and then it's spreads like wildfire.
Another thing a viral product needs is a coolness factor. People just won't tell other people about it if they don't like using it or if youe product isn't cool. Think how popular iPhones are now, and a lot of it's popularity came from word of mouth. If your product is fun to use you'll find it's far easier to get people to tell their friends about it, and will make a viral marketing campaign much more effective and successful.
