Internet Marketing is also a wide world. Part of it is Viral Marketing or Viral Advertising. This strategy involves the usage of social networks to boost product or service awareness and other sales targets through the viral processes.

It sounds scary because of the presence of the word viral that comes from the root word virus, which is the major enemy of computers. However, this process is called Viral Marketing simply because it is comparable to the process of the spreading of the well-known computer viruses.

Furthermore, Viral Marketing can be accomplished through the word of mouth, distributed by the effects of internet networks. At the moment there are different forms of Viral Promotions; such as video clips, Flash games, e-books, software, images, and text messages.

Viral Marketers with a thriving Viral Marketing programs have their goal. It is to recognize people with prominent Social Networking Potential and produce Viral Messages that would catch the interest of a certain population segment. The Social Networking Potential represents the size of a person’s social network and their influential capability to the network. This also shows the effectiveness of a certain Viral Marketing strategy through a quantitative marketing research.

Moreover, there are different factors or variables to get the Social Networking Potential of an individual. Some of them are Social Networking activities participation, memberships with certain groups, leadership roles, electronic media contributions such as websites and blogs, recognitions, and the occurrence of the information dissemination within the network.

It is really similar to the spreading of a virus. However, it is not about the spreading of a virus to destroy a computer or to hack web sites. It is the spreading of information or content within a certain individual’s social network. It can be termed as a positive epidemic. If a product or service will be introduced to a social network with a very high Social Networking Potential, then the details about it will spread so rapidly, like a virus affecting a computer system. Since viruses really move fast, it means that this strategy will work at a very fast rate as well.

In addition, Viral Marketing is also a form of public relations or advertising. It touches the awareness of a social group, giving them all the facts about a certain product or service. Then, the individuals involved within the group will pass the information from one person to another. Since it is within a social network, the spread of information will be pretty fast.

The Viral Marketing process is also being applied with Affiliate Marketing. In these Internet Marketing processes, the spread of information is prioritized. This becomes the initial source of getting potential customers that could lead to higher sales within a few days or weeks. A business owner that has an ad campaign online or a webmaster could be certain that his or her advertisements are seen by the prospective customers. The more possible customers seeing the ad, the higher will be the probability of the product or service on the sales track.