Ever forward a funny email? Did that message contain any advertising? When individual consumers pass advertising messages to their friends, family and co-workers they are participating in viral marketing. Today, whole campaigns are designed to get the public to endorse products to their peers.

Initially the impact of the message is limited, but by motivating readers to propagate the information, the campaign has the potential for exponential growth.

Viral Marketing is considered to be an art rather than a science - it doesn’t allow a lot of control, and you can’t always track results. Advertisers have no way of knowing what the recipients did with their messages. In many cases it’s hard to tell if new customers found the business because of the viral marketing campaign, or through more conventional means.

If done incorrectly, viral marketing breeds SPAM. In too many cases, individuals eager to make more money are motivated to spam the masses. This can be problematic for the client company image.

One way of ensuring the ‘worst case scenario’ doesn’t happen to your campaign is to spend more time than money doing market research, analysis and planning.

Learn more and read our full article on Viral Marketing; Threats and Opportunities! We have four more articles to share with you. Keep an eye on our article section and be the first one to read them!