When mentioned this term to some layman, they might get humbled by it. It sounds like some kind of defect or disease. However, I must assure you that viral marketing is nothing of those sorts. In fact, it is one of the most popular ways of marketing about yourself. This is not only a tool that has become famous with the individuals and freelancers, but also with big companies. In fact, this mode of communicating about your product to customers was started by a big company. Though it was not very popular at that time, it started to advertise about its free service to people. The trick of the business was to make people aware of their product. Also, they made sure that their product was accessible to people and also did not take much of their efforts. Hence, the very basic and simple principles of marketing were put to use by the people working for Hotmail.

They were just tagging the information of their product to the mail that was sent by people to others. This way, in no time thousands of people were sent the information without having to do much about it. Hence, even though not all are subscribing to it, they are getting to know about it. This is where you create awareness and become the buzz of the town. Hotmail was advertising to people about its free emailing service through the pre-existing users. People got to know about it and in no time Hotmail got millions of subscribers. Now that the product was popular and people knew how to use it, they started off with their business. This is the classic example of doing viral marketing. Since that time, there have been many variations in this mode of getting to people.

What makes it a very efficient way of advertising is the fact that there is no need to create a channel of your own. You use the present means of communication and get to the maximum number of people using that network. The products that are advertised through this way are most times very general, though, this is no obligation. There can be very specific consumers to the products which are advertised through viral marketing. In this way, you use the link that is used by the target consumer.

In the present times, this form of marketing is very well seen in the social networking sites. This is a very good example of using the word of mouth method to the next level. The information is spread through the channels of the people who know each other, and hence, in no time millions get to know about your product or service. Another thing that this marketing strategy takes advantage of is the human's wish to associate to things. Once a thing advertised through this method becomes a buzz, then there are many people vouching for it, just because it becomes symbolic of something. For example, the networking sites themselves are a very good example of this mode of marketing.