Viral Marketing

Viral marketing also known as word-of-mouth marketing or WOM is the promotion of a service or product by using existing customers to pass along a marketing pitch to friends, family, and colleagues.

Where did the words "viral marketing” come from?

Probably because a biological virus replicates itself by invading a host cell and then using the cell's machinery to create new copies of the virus.

So, your clients and customers act like a kind of "host cell" for a company's marketing message, and that customer is used to create new "copies" of the viral marketing message spreading it around to many other people they know and meet.

It’s been said that a person tells an average of three people about a product or service they like. People will tell eleven people about a product or service which they did NOT like.

Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person.

If a large percentage of people forward something to a large number of other people, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. But, If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fades away.

Today example of viral marketing is having someone ReTweet (RT) your twitter message to their list of followers and those followers then RT to their followers, and on and on the followers spread your 140 word message far and wide.

What viral marketing and, word-of-mouth marketing plans have your worked into your formal advertsing and makreting plans and marketing system to help grow your business?