Achieving viral marketing success for our business can be quite tricky. Viral marketing has been known for centuries and before the digital era, it is driven by the word of mount. The concept is quite simple. Viral marketing will drive significant peer to peer recommendations to use or purchase a product. However, word of mouth is often contained to a geographic area. Also, word of mouth could result in changes in meaning and the actual message can be slowly distorted or degraded. The arrival of the Internet has brought a new opportunity for business owners to use viral marketing strategy properly. The Internet allows us to change the word of mouth concept radically and just about any Internet user is susceptible to such message. In this case, it would be much easier for business owners to “infect” new potential customers by asking them to sign up for a new account. If a user has significant interest about our products, it is likely that they will infect other potential users. Email is an significant catalyst and the availability of many social network platforms also make the process much more effective.

With these online tools, distributing information should become exponentially faster. It could take months to reach a few thousands of people if we rely only on word of mouth. On the other hand, viral marketing could reach tens of thousands of people in a matter of hours. When designing our viral message, we should make sure that it will work like virus and it should be able to cause an epidemic outbreak. However, this is significantly determined by the relevance and potency of our marketing messages. There are different definitions related to viral marketing. It is often seen as a marketing technique that can exploit existing social characteristics to ensure rapid and exponential increases in brand recognition and awareness. Viral messages should spread like the actual virus during an epidemic. It could be transmitted through word of mouth or various online means. It should be noted that average consumers are being bombarded by thousands of different marketing messages in TV, newspaper, brochures, radio, billboards, mugs, T-shirts and many others. This causes them to be immune to standard marketing message and it is important for marketers to deliver something that is more interesting and out of ordinary.

Regardless of the methods used to convey marketing information, it is important for marketers to know that they can get the more appropriate attention. This will give marketers and business owners significantly positive ROI for their effort. Viral marketing is an important alternative mean that can help them reach customers better. It is a highly attractive solution, due to the presence of free endorsements from loyal users. In general, consumers trust other consumers better, especially if they are not affiliated to the sellers and producers of the products. Viral marketing is something that’s effective and can deliver things at much lower costs. Viral marketing is a great solution for start-ups with very limited budget.