Let’s take a simple test.

When was the last time you have emailed someone an article or an interesting link?
When was the last time your friend emailed you a funny video?
When was the last time you read a review of the restaurant you want to try for the first time?
Recently, correct? And that is through ‘word-of-mouse’ not ‘word-of-mouth’ – isn’t it?

Internet is now became an essential part of our life. A powerful medium we cannot imagine to live without. Its ability to spreads the message much faster than word-of-mouth is one of the reasons it became extremely popular from any other medium. It is like spreading a virus from one person to another. The term for this type of advertising is called Viral Marketing.

We all have experienced these types of marketing campaigns but may not be acquainted with the term. Let me give you few examples so you get an idea before I tell you what it is.

Most classy example to Viral Marketing is Hotmail and Youtube. Hotmail started giving away free email accounts to everyone and that web-based campaign spread into online communities like the virus. Before we knew, most of us had a hotmail account. Such Brilliance.

You must have seen ‘Will it blend?’ Viral videos on Youtube – a marketing campaign demonstrating the blender which blends all kinds of gadgets such as iPad, iPhone, golf balls to marbles. Who blends the iPad? About 23.5 million people have watched this only on YouTube. Pure Genius.

So now you know what I am talking about, see below diagram so you get the picture how Viral Marketing message spreads:

One person tells two; two tells four; four tells eight and so on… Its ability to spread faster than anything else made Viral Marketing extremely popular in online communities.

Another way to look at it is as advertising without being broke. Marketers try different way to get attention; to stay in the market to motivate people to pass it on and stay popular among their competitors. No wonder marketers love this baby.

It is an amazing way to generate huge amount of buzz wheather you carried out online or offline. So, how do you do it? Create such genius content such as – funny video, brilliant ad on Television or cool email campaign where success is defined as positive ROI. If done it well, it’s not hard to get global fame in days. Therefore, stop shouting for selling your artifact; acquire attention by integrating counterintuitive Viral Marketing campaign in your strategy so buyers will automatically walk toward you.

Click here if interested to learn more in detail and look at an excellent list of Viral Marketing campaign list.