Imagine getting hundreds of thousands or even millions of page views on Facebook, Twitter, Digg or YouTube about a story or product you introduced. The concept of viral marketing involves everything you do to sell something. It then becomes successful on the Internet, and thus goes viral when explaining why your story or message ballooned to over so many million views after say 24 or 38 hours of being posted.
In turn, the emergence of this new type of marketing – as both an approach to sales and to share information on the Internet – has been linked to the notion that one’s ideas can spread like viruses.
“I never imagined that the video we posted on YouTube of our dog sleeping with a kitten would go viral,” said one Internet fan. “We later learned that our video had more than 1.2 million hits, and was official dubbed a viral video.”
Viral approach now a text book method
When someone asks the question what is viral marketing, there are many buzzwords referring to this highly successful marketing technique that’s even listed in many marketing textbooks.
For instance, one marketing guide states that viral marketing is “all about increasing brand awareness through a self-replicating viral process.
In addition, many of today’s marketing guides point to the spread of “viruses” and “computer viruses,” as one explanation as to how this word of mouth marketing process caught on so fast with so many people using the Internet.
“The idea is simple,” claims one Internet expert who has achieved viral status online. For instance, the expert said “one must first find a subject or theme that you think will be popular or interesting. Then you market it in the form of a video or a great photograph, story or even web pages.”
The expert then noted how the creative nature of this type of marketing “allows one to maximize a message that only the Internet or mobile devices allow because just about everyone in the world today is online.”
The Goal is to Reach Millions of Users
The overall goal of creating something online that may go viral is an assumption that many Internet marketers have in mind when they create a story, video or website that they hope “infects” users with something so very cool or interesting that it creates an almost spontaneous word of mouth reaction.
“We want to sell, sell, sell and our goal is to create a buzz for our product that goes viral. It’s that massive reaction from users that we’re after,” explains a marketing expert.
Of course, any marketing campaign may not be successful or even achieve “viral marketing” status.
Thus, many marketing experts – who are out to infect users with a viral video or message – find that it still takes a lot of hard work and dedication to achieve that marketing goal.
“The idea that everything you put out there is going to go viral just because you think it’s clever will not work,” added the viral marketing expert. “You really need to do your homework, and maybe you will get lucky with a viral video or some other online effort that gets a lot of attention on the Internet.”
Social networking key to “going viral”
It’s no surprise that many of today’s savvy Internet marketers are using algorithms designed to find those potential customers who could be part of a successful viral marketing campaign. In turn, those marketers who’ve successful employed algorithms in their research find it useful when trying to identify those Internet and social networking users who could be part of their viral marketing campaign.
“This type of marketing is huge these days because more and more business owners want a viral campaign that markets their products or services to the hilt,” said a viral marketing expert. “Thus, the use of algorithms is just one new high-tech tool that’s designed to find those customers who could easily jump on the bandwagon and help drive something to viral status online.”
Marketing Something that Goes Viral
A textbook definition for this thype marketing includes methods that often involves and utilizes such things as customer polling services to create a targeted viral marketing campaign.
At the same time, many marketing experts write how they prefer old school methods such as using various forms of print and direct marketing to sell something. The marketers also like to target something dubbed “search engine optimization,” that more or less pinpoints what Internet websites or social networking sites are popular, and then attempts to sell these potential new customers with direct marketing methods.
However, marketing experts say that one can’t achieve top results without paying attention to social profile gathering, proximity market analysis and real-time key word density analysis.
Thus, the Internet really allows you to create a marketing campaign that can go viral, and thus make your video, product or brand almost famous overnight, added the expert when writing about creating something called a viral advertising model.
Overall, the growth of viral selling methods is linked to the same growth in social networking, say experts.
For example, it’s estimated that “two thirds of the world’s Internet population” visits a social network or blog site at least once every week.
“This means more than 1 billion potential customers are viewing something you may want to market – in hopes it will go viral – on a social networking site. As a marketing professional, one can’t ignore those numbers,” said the expert.
About the Guest Author: My name is Larry and I have been helping new marketers become successful with Internet marketing. I hope you enjoyed my guest post about viral marketing.You can also contribute to OSH by “Write for US”.
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