Viral marketing, the electronic equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing, is one of the most popular and cost effective marketing techniques. Today almost all big and small corporate houses are using viral marketing to circulate their brand messages. The popularity of viral marketing can be attributed to its easy execution at a relatively low-cost. Bollywood, too, has begun to use this technique to create a buzz about their films, reach out to the audiences and woo them to the theatres.

Viral marketing, the electronic equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing, is one of the most popular and cost-effective marketing techniques. It is a term coined to define one of the ways in which a marketing message can be spread in a target market group. Today, almost all big and small corporate houses are using viral marketing to circulate brand promises and brand messages. The idea has caught on like a virus as efficiently as information technology has entered all walks of life.

Yes! It's a virus that helps in spreading marketing messages. But how can a virus help in marketing? Isn't it sounding strange? Actually, viral marketing is a specially designed marketing strategy that encourages a receiver to spread the message about a company/product or service to many others. The main purpose of this strategy is to multiply the number of receivers of a message about a product or service and influence them to act in a desired manner. So it works like a virus that helps to spread the message to many others in no time.

Marketing experts mainly talk about two types of viral marketing techniques offline and online. In general, word-of-mouth technique of spreading the marketing message is a offline viral marketing technique. In case of online viral marketing, the marketing experts utilize mainly the pre-existing social media to increase brand visibility and awareness to achieve predefined marketing objectives. Viral marketing helps in breaking barriers in the process of advertising and assists in developing a relationship between the brands and its customers. Being a new concept, viral marketing is not considered a powerful technique of marketing by all. Many of them allocate only a small budget to viral marketing in an attempt to engage the audience through the `word-of-mouth.

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