Posted on May 12, 2009 by Brett

What is online viral marketing? It is basically a successful advertising campaign. The phrase was a creation of a business school graduate, made popular by the media and a media critic Douglas Rushkoff. This simply refers to the potential to reach an thousands of people by starting out with only a small amount.

If you tell me something that I think is interesting, I will tell my friends about it. If they, too, think it is interesting, they will tell their friends. They probably know people that I do not. So, growth can literally become exponential. In the old days, we called it word of mouth advertising.

The main difference between word of mouth advertising and online viral marketing has to do with the sheer potential number of people that someone can or does speak to daily. Using me as an example. In my personal life, I speak to my immediate family members daily. I may speak to my family and friends once per week.

Some of them I haven’t talked to in years, “live”. Through e-mail and social networking websites, I never fail to communicate with all of them, every day. If something really grabs me that I think my friends will love too, I will share it with at least 30 people.

Surveys indicate that the average person shares this type of thing with 12 people max. So, I may be a little outside of the curve. The main feature is that the 30 people that I know will share with others. With very little effort, the information moves through this mass of people. Could the wave eventually crash?

If you have an effective online viral marketing strategy, you may be able to generate numerous waves; when one crashes, another forms. Different strategies are out there, but the effective ones include one element. There is a free item for people to share.

In some cases, it is simply a well-done commercial. Sony had one some time ago. It was posted on YouTube and people got it out there to people they knew. To date, it has had hundreds of thousands of views. How many people bought something? Who would possibly know?

Here is the point. If you wanted to reach thousands or millions of people not so many years ago, your olny option would have been via television advertising. And, of course, you would have had to buy space on the most popular shows and the costs are prohibitive. With online viral marketing, you can reach that many people for next to nothing.