Ebusiness Blog

As we saw in a previous post, a simple definition for marketing would be to consider it the art of designing new ways to attract the attention of the public, build up enthusiasm for a particular product, and motivate people to purchase the product and become customers.

In this way, a definition of viral marketing would be the use of pre-existing social networks and communities to get the promotional message out to attract attention, build enthusiasm and motivate people to buy.

Once the message is launched, it will spread on its own using a self-replicating viral process, reaching a large group of targeted audience instantly.

This definition of viral marketing may lead you to the misconception of thinking that internet viral marketing implies less work than a traditional marketing campaign due to the fact that is the people who finally promote your business, but you must understand that the success of viral marketing relies on a deep understanding and a thoughtful research of your target audience. You not only need to make your message effective, but also it has to be appealing for people to make them pass it to friends and networking fellows.

There are two aspects that can convert your message into a viral marketing weapon:

• Fun: people like funny messages (videos, photos, text) and tend to pass it by more easily than any other thing.
• Free value: if people find something interesting and free for them in your offer is more likely that they will share it with their closet contacts. You can achieve this attaching a free e-book, report or software to your promotional message.

When you write useful and fresh content about your niche and publish it in article directories, blogs and forums (along with links to your site) is easy for other webmasters to pick up and reference your material. This is the best way to start a viral marketing campaign to promote your website.

Short videos and podcast also are a great option and usually outperforms written material in velocity of spread. Take Cadbury’s Dairy Milk 2007 Gorilla advert, or the Cardo popcorn buzz videos of May 2008 as viral marketing examples that have been popularized on YouTube by millions of people.

Any time you want to start a viral marketing campaign you have to think what can make people talk about it and spread the word for you. Try to find the best angle of your promotional material that better motivates your target audience.