What does a virus have to do with public relations and marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a PR/Marketing-oriented message to others, 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, to millions.
Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as ‘word-of-mouth,’ “creating a buzz,” “leveraging the media,” “network marketing” and “permission marketing.” But on the Internet, for better or worse, it’s called “viral marketing.” While others have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, the term “viral marketing” has stuck.
*The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free web-based email services.
Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely fast.
PR Blogger
