What is viral marketing? Let’s imagine that your clients praise your product or service. But they don’t stop there. They pass on the word to their family and friends. But words alone are usually useless. So, let’s say you attach a free product. Now the people who receive the product will usually pass on the good news to their friends and co-workers. That’s viral marketing—and it’s infectious!

To make a message viral, some companies use pass-it-on tools like online forwarding options and even reward people financially for spreading the message. For instance, one company gave people money when they bought items through advertising banners on the web. Sometimes companies encourage consumers to pass back information to them not only about themselves but also  their friends and colleagues. For instance, one contest, which offered a free trip to the winner and three friends, asked the contestants to provide details about their friends when entering.

Writer Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) claims that people who are very good at influencing others are the ones who begin most word-of- mouth epidemics. If you are interested in starting a word-of-mouth epidemic, Gladwell writes, you must focus solely on ‘influencers’.

In Unleashing the Ideavirus, Seth Godin argues that traditional advertising is becoming obsolete. It will soon be replaced by marketing strategies that rely on consumers spreading recommendations by word of mouth. Godin also predicted that consumers would rely more and more on a global community of  influencers to tell them what to buy.

Godin feels that the most likely ideas that will go viral are those directly related to communication. ‘The best sort of communication is an actual communication tool,’ he says in his book. But inventing words, new musical concepts or other ways people communicate goes a long way as well. The most important thing is to convince someone influential to use the new tool. Word-of-mouth contacts across the Internet are expected to do the rest.