What is Viral Marketing

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing 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.

The goal of a viral marketer is to create "buzz" about a product or idea, so that the idea spreads widely. If effective, viral marketing may require very little effort on the part of the propagandist, as the recipients of the message become the primary agents who spread it to other people. Initially viral marketers identify individuals with high social networking potential and create viral messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being passed

Key points
1) Viral marketing is a word-of-mouth marketing but in digitally
2) Effortless to transfer to others people
3) Scales easily from small to very large

Source: The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing by Dr. Ralph F Wilson, E-commerce consultant, Web Marketing Today, Febraury 1, 2005http://www.viralmarketingwiki.com/