Internet marketing is big business these days and it continues to evolve. Some Internet marketing systems have been used for a number of years while others are new and popular due to their freshness and promises of fast and easy money. On of the systems that have been around for a while now is viral marketing. Its definition is "marketing techniques using social networks which are already in existence to increase awareness of another businesses product, leading to sales of that product."

Viral marketing has proven to be a successful strategy for some businesses, depending on the product or service they are trying to sell. Although the definition of it sound very cut and dry, it is often more complex in its application. The success of this type of marketing depends largely on the word-of-mouth of customers who are happy with the product they bought so as to lead to others buying the product as well. It can also refer to a virus which spreads via the Internet as information and not to destroy websites.

The definition of viral marketing will tell you that it is up to people to voluntarily spread the word about your product, which is an unusual technique in itself. Instead of having to pay for advertisement, you are relying on a person's satisfaction with your product to do the advertising for you. It is obvious, however, that this is solely dependent on the first person being happy with your product. Supposedly, any customer who is happy with a product or service will tell an average of three people whereas an unhappy customer will relay the information to eleven. Since viral marketing is based on this principal, it is imperative that a customer be happy with the product or service before the strategy can work.

Using this marketing strategy, based on the principal of the satisfied customer, tells you that for every satisfied customer you get for your product, you should get three more potential customers. If this strategy proves to be accurate, you can expect exponential sales growth of your product. This is one of those places where "if" proves to be a very big word. You have no guarantee that a product is going to be popular with the first customer, much less with each continuing perspective customer down the line. Your product or service will have to be something that is useful to a majority of people and that is unique in design or quality before it has any hope of being the beginning of any great marketing strategy.

In some cases, viral marketing has been used with an awards program where the first customer is rewarded with products or cash when they get another customer to purchase a product or service. When you sign up for satellite service for your T.V., you may get the offer of $50 when you get a friend to subscribe as well. Although this is not by definition what it started as, it is a more effective approach in some instances.