Online Viral Marketing Campaigns Ballston Spa NY

First, we should probably find out what exactly viral marketing is. Viral marketing, simply put, is knowledge of your product which spreads “virally” – by, in other words, self replication. The most ancient form of advertising is also a form of viral advertising – the classic “word of mouth” approach. In other words, someone uses a product, likes it, and tells their friends about it. The initial audience reached – the one person who tried the product – “replicates” when he tells his friends, expanding the audience to them as well, who in turn “replicate” by telling their friends.

Needless to say, viral marketing is a very powerful form. If every person reached by viral marketing told two friends, it wouldn’t be long at all before you’d reach an enormous audience. Just look at the numbers: one friend tells two friends, who each tell two (4), who each tell two (8) and so on: 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1028, 2056, etc – as you can see, it really doesn’t take all that many iterations before you’ve reached a very large group of people. In the next few pages, we’ll take a look at some popular methods of online marketing using viral marketing techniques as well of some very successful examples of it.

First, though, let’s look at what not to do – what isn’t good viral marketing protocol, in other words. This is what springs to mind when most people think of “viral marketing,” and it’s critical to make this distinction with your customers and clients when you talk about viral marketing. The sort of viral marketing that has negative connotations in most cases is indeed viral marketing, but a form of it with very debatable success rates. There are two basic types of bad viral marketing: spam and actual adware and spyware viruses.

Spam is viral because it infects and forwards – the classic “forward this to ten other people to get a discount” scams are good examples – and takes over things like mailing lists in order to replicate itself extensively. The problem, of course, is that no one actually reads spam, thus negating its effectiveness entirely. If you want to be successful, you’ll have to take a different approach. Viruses could also be considered viral marketing, at least the ones that infect your computer and cause pop-ups to appear. However, this only annoys people and causes negative connotations to the products that appear in the pop up ads. By taking these examples of what not to do and acting accordingly, you can achieve success in your viral marketing ploy.

There are plenty of good examples of viral marketing out there – don’t get discouraged! Some of the biggest successes – Google and HotMail – will be discussed in later sections. Needless to say, with examples like that, you definitely have a good shot.

In many ways, the Internet is built for viral marketing. Communication around the world is instantaneous, and the “birth rate” of viral marketing is sped up to unbelievable rates. The communication potential in the online idea marketplace makes for astounding potential in viral marketing – the only thing that matters is how much you can get out of it and how well you can utilize the resources offered to you. We’ll discuss some possibilities at a later point in the article. For now, take a look at some of the best in the business and how they did it.