Viral Marketing Strategies - Spread Your Message Fast!

Implementing viral marketing strategies can catapult your campaigns to the next level quickly.

Most marketers have heard of this marketing strategy but for those of you who haven't, it is termed 'viral marketing' for one reason: it is an internet marketing strategy that takes your advertising message, niche or brand and spreads it like wild fire very quickly.

How Does Viral Marketing Work?


A potential buyer sees your advertisement and finds it so useful, funny, helpful, valuable and relevant that he or she passes it on to a friend. That friend feels the same way and passes it on to a friend, a different friend mind you, and that friend does the same thing until the advertisement has reached an innumerable amount of potential buyers. It's the word of mouth referrals from the brick and mortar world only it spreads much, much quicker via internet marketing and to waaaaay more people.

Now that we have the basic definition of what viral marketing is, the next question is what are some viral marketing strategies that can be implemented in your campaigns?

There are some great examples of viral marketing that have been highly successful:

The campaign implemented by Hotmail is probably the most familiar and classic example of how effective the strategy can be. If you remember, they offered free e-mail to EVERYONE and attached a message to the e-mails that promoted this free e-mail service.

EVERYONE that signed up for a free e-mail account and sent e-mails out passed the word along to all of their recipients to sign up for a free e-mail account. It blazed through the e-mail world at lightning speed and was tremendously successful.

Another one is the subservient chicken by Burger King. You go to their website and there is a man dressed in a chicken outfit. You type in any command and the subservient chicken does whatever you command. It has been said that 1 million people had given the chicken a command within 24 hours of the site's launch. WOW!

Now we come to the viral marketing strategy that YOU can implement to take your campaigns viral very quickly.

It is online video marketing!

Most of us have realized by now that people LOVE videos, especially if the video provokes emotions from the viewers. If a video is hilarious people are going to email or text the link of it their friends. If it has a captivating message people are going to email or text the link of it to their friends. If the video inspires people they are going to email or text the link of it to their friends. If it allows them to interact in a way that is fun or in a way that they could end up benefiting from an action, I don't have to keep telling you what's going to happen.

Videos that go on and on about a product or reiterates a message over and over can cause your audience to lose interest. Have you ever watched one of those videos that make you feel like saying, 'Ok Ok I get your point!'? Most videos complete the sales presentation and then leave it up to the viewer to take that next, VERY important step which is to click the link to buy your product and not the back button of their browser. And you want them to be able to easily share the video presentation with their friends, and then they are able to share it with their friends (a different set of friends) and then they share it with their friends (a different set of friends) thus implementing the viral effect.

The most affective way that video marketing could be used as a viral marketing strategy is if it would allow your viewers to buy your product during the video. No waiting until it's completed and hoping the viewer makes the right decision; but at the right time during the sales presentation, when the viewer is convinced and ready to buy, he or she needs to be able to click a button in the video and make the purchase.

This is a phenomenal concept. Not only that, but you want your sales presentation to get in front of as many people as possible so your video needs to be able to be easily shared with other potential buyers.

You need hassle free programming and embedding, easy file transferring and cheap video hosting and an inexpensive way to do it all.