Viral marketing, on the other hand, takes a more laid back and indirect approach. Virtual marketing depends only on a limited amount of people to spread the advertiser's message (often through social networks, e-mail) to related people who share interests (Beattie, 2011).
Andrew Beattie (2011) says that viral marketing creates a snowball effect, meaning that "in theory, an individual shares an interesting piece of marketing content with all of his or her network [and] that person's friends pass the message on to their networks." A simple, yet popular example of viral marketing deals with hotmail.com, which was one of the first free web-based email services. The company started by giving away free email addresses. Tagged at the bottom of each email message, it advertised its own email service with the message "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com." From their, contacts who received emails containing this tag from their peers, would then sign up for their own free email. The new consumer would send messages to their friends, and the audience would increase in size (Wilson, 2005).
The reason that viral marketing works so well is because it is easy and it is cheap. Social networks play a big role in viral marketing, as they are an essential asset to a business that will quickly and efficiently spread their message to their target audience, who will then relay the message to their own personal network, who will then repeat the cycle and so on. This method of communication is almost effortless because it allows the targeted audience to diffuse the content for a company. In addition to an audience essentially doing the advertising for a company, it becomes easier and easier with time as social media is constantly increasing. As previously stated, the second reason why viral marketing is effective is because it is a low-cost form of communication. Distinguishing a target audience and placing advertisements in specific magazines, radio spots, ads, etc.
