It’s a horrible word isn’t it….marketing? No, only joking, I mean “viral” of course. Mention viral and one tends to think infection, illness and disease – or for the geeks among us, computers messed up. But viral marketing is nothing so negative or unpleasant, viral marketing is good!

What is Viral Marketing?

As the name suggests, it’s a way of spreading your marketing message from person to person, rather like the flu virus is passed on. You give the germ to, say 5 friends/colleagues/family members, who in turn each pass on the bug to 5 more (5×5=25), who then spread it to another 5 (25×5=125) and so on until after just 8 levels, you reach the staggering figure of 1,953,125.

What we are discussing here today are the elements needed to form an online marketing system.

The first element needed as always is a website purely because if you are in online marketing / internet marketing then as you will most likely know is that you can not possibly function on the internet without a website. Now this can be anything from a simple sales page relating to one of your particular products or it can even be a wordpress blog that you can host on your own server where you can post information and updates to communicate regularly with your audience regarding your niche market. Some people also consider having a full corporate website where they can describe everything from their companies products and services all the way to exposing their online brand to potential clients.