Viral marketing is a phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, and in some recent cases to millions.
It can be an amazing way to generate a huge amount of buzz and brand awareness whether it’s carried out online or offline which is referred to as “word-of-mouth.”
The most recent example of a worldwide viral marketing explosion was a clip of the TV show Britain’s Got Talent. The footage of Susan Boyle’s audition for the ITV1 talent show on Youtube has become the most downloaded clip ever! Overnight she became a massive worldwide star, the viral marketing campaign was so successful was invited on the Oprah Winfrey show and to sing in the Whitehouse for Barack Obama! That shows how powerful viral marketing can be.
