An online advertising approach that functions like word-of-mouth. The "viral" refers to how quickly the message propagates to others, but its purpose is not to cause damage like a computer virus but to make an offer available to the masses. The ad is disseminated via links in e-mail, blogs and Web sites that all point to some service or product people might want, whether free or paid.
The term was attributed to venture capital firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson www.venture-capital.com) after its investment in Hotmail grew dramatically. Hotmail automatically put an advertisement at the end of everybody's e-mail message suggesting that they too sign up for the free service. In a year and a half, more than 12 million people became Hotmail users.
Advantages:
1. Huge massive reach of your business target group and beyond. XXX more than Word of Mouth campaigns or any other Marketing Instrument.
2. The lower costs in relation to conventional Marketing campaign.
Disadvantage:
1. Not all products or services are viral. One needs to verify first if the product or service falls into this criteria.
2.Viral Marketing campaigns once unleashed are not controllable. The downside is: If you did it wrong or bad you might have hundreds of thousands of users in the Internet hating your stuff and posting negative remarks about it everywhere.
3.You need to reach the critical mass (10%) of your target group/segment in order to go viral addressing primarly opinion leaders or also called e-fluentials. That can be quite a huge number and therefore more costly in campaign costs.
Good times ahead.
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