Tuesday, August 10, 2010

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing is a form of promotion based on the free circulation of ideas via a word of mouth process. When you like something, it feels second nature to share your discovery with someone you like. Be it friends, relatives or colleagues, you get a kick out of sharing with someone else something cool that you have discovered. And in turn, those people you share something with, will do the same with their network of friends. That is what "going viral" is all about. From a marketing standpoint, "going viral" is fascinating for a number of reasons: Distribution: Viral content spreads like virus, in an ever expanding loop which may never end. For an online marketer, spreading content endlessly from person to person represents a superior strategy to promote content at a fraction of the effort and costs required by traditional marketing techniques.
Reach: A successful viral marketing campaign may exponentially increase the reach of your communications by placing you in touch with thousands of prospects which, with your traditional communication approach, you might not have ever intercepted. Awareness: The more people will see your content, the more people will know who you are, what you do, what can you offer customers. Not only: by sharing content on a specific topic you will make yourself an authority in that field and people will start naturally coming to you asking for advice and recommendations. Cost: Viral marketing is relatively inexpensive as you do not have to plan a huge budget to promote your products or start campaigns that meet the needs of all your potential customers. Once your content starts to go viral, your fans become your best marketing agents.
To help you make sense of what are the key traits and components that create the conditions for a successful viral marketing campaign, this MasterNewMedia guide shares a highly curated selection of the best analysis, reports and published research on the web on the topic of viral marketing. This guide is organized in three sections:
What is viral marketing The key principles of viral marketing Viral marketing best strategies and tactics
To be Continued stolen from Contagious Group