What Is Viral Marketing And Its Advantages - Marketing

The Marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses is referred to Viral Marketing. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.

Funny or obscene emails which are forwarded by our friends is because of internet, with its email lists, web sites, chat rooms and bulletin boards, is an organism in which message viruses thrive. Creating them can be tricky -- a lot trickier than traditional advertising messages. Unlike biological viruses, the hosts on the Internet, consumers, have control. Marketing viruses can backfire. But if you can create a message, be it an ad unit, a newsletter or a web site, that is both compelling enough to spread but that also firmly supports a brand's values and objectives, you might have a winner on your hands.

Viral marketing relies on spreading the buzz. It works because it is a self-sustaining word of mouth strategy, which is also easy on the bottom dollar. Once a viral is released, it will most likely spread itself without the marketer's constant backing. In India, it is a fairly new symptom. However, being true to our philosophy of shooting from the hip we have made the viral infectious across the country.

The truth is that the term "viral marketing" is in itself an oxymoron. In reality, the two have an almost inversely proportional relationship. The more viral marketing is planned, controlled and thus contrived, the less likely it will succeed; the less it is controlled and allowed to do its organic ritual voodoo dance, the more likely it will be to propagate among the so-called innovators and early adopters.

Some marketing people prefer terms other than viral marketing. A marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.

You can successfully use Viral Marketing to market your business. Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly.

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.

One of the fast growing online platforms that is being used for communication and conversation is Twitter. Twitter is has over 1 million users and broadcasts over 3 million messages everyday. It can be used as a marketing tool, but you must do it right by following the Twitter etiquette in order to be effective. Let me show you how to use Twitter as a marketing tool for your business.