Before you hire a viral marketing agency, take a moment to look objectively at your website. With a good technique, a marketer may be able to drive tens of thousands of visitors to your website. However, you are defeating the purpose if your website does not or  does not have the capability to sell your products or services.

If you are confident in your website and the products that you offer, then there are many companies you could choose from. You can even take a free course or paid class and learn how to “do it yourself”. Take time to do your research and look around. Read about the company’s techniques and see if it is something that you could apply. Try to establish how many people are in the network. Research any available testimonials.

There is one company that operates very quietly, almost hard to notice. The techniques that they use may be ok, but sites like YouTube would not approve of them. Moreover, their services can not be customized. They recommend the same methodology for all of their customers.

If they are to effectively grow your business, a viral marketing agency should tailor their solutions to suit your products or services. They should offer ways to keep in touch with your current clients and turn your clients’ friends into your customers.

One of the effective techniques is a regular newsletter, sent to your client’s e-mail address. If you have no clients, you may need to purchase a list of quality email addresses. Some of these lists were compiled by other companies. They ask their customers if they would like to receive information from affiliates. If the customer says “yes”, they become part of the company database.

It is entirely possible to locate a viral marketing agency that provides this sort of list together with their other services. To be most effective, you want the list to be targeted to include people in your niche market. If you are selling a toy, parents would be your target market. It would be wasting everyone’s time to send thousands of emails to seniors.

Some of the easier methods that you can employ include “social networking”. Become a member of an online forum or group, whose members have interests that are similar with your target. If you have yet to identify your niche, you may need a little more help than a viral marketing agency can offer. Everyone has a unique niche. In some cases, it’s just hard to see it, no matter where you stand. Someone outside of your company may be able to help you find your niche and grow your business.

If you do a web search for free viral marketing, you will see the system at work. Giving something “free” is part of the tactic. None of these companies actually offer free advertising. They could provide free information. But, it will be just enough to make you curious and want to learn more.

Reports, trials, tests and getting leads are many of the things they offer. Of course, if you want lots more, you must pay. That’s how this method of advertising campaign works. It is what you decide to do with your company, too.

It doesn't matter what you offer for sale, you need to think of something that you can give away. You might be an expert at carpentry. You might provide do it yourself tips and publish the information on your website or online magazine or even create a newsletter specifically for people that are interested in carpentry. Then find a way to let people know that you offer this information.

The only way to do free viral marketing is to do it on your own. You would need to create or buy a list of e-mail addresses. Join social networks, follow blogs, get on twitter. Post on all relevant forums. You can purchase a list of e-mail addresses and as well, some companies offer a “trial” for free. We know for certain that giving something away free often generates customers and gains interest.

Success of any campaign depends on reaching a big group of people and offering a free item. But, your success depends on the quality of the item or service that you have to offer. Any product only reaches virus levels if people really love it or they think that that it is a "must have" item. The cool aspect wears off. Valuable items usually always stay around.

Actually, I’m giving you free viral marketing advice right now. Do some companies charge for this kind of advice? There are actually classes that you have to pay for and what they teach is what I have just told you. Of course, they go into great detail to make you feel that the seminar was valuable. But, there really is not a lot to learn.

Do businesses charge to do the marketing for you? Yes. You can attempt these kinds of advertising campaigns , but they take up alot of time and effort. Your website might not even possibly be ready for the amount of business that a viral campaign might generate. If you read some more about free viral marketing, you’ll see what I mean.

The viral marketing business model was first described by Tim Draper and popularized in 1997 to describe Hotmail’s practice of adding advertising to the outgoing mail of their users. Viral marketing had been around for ages. So, it is word-of-mouth marketing.

It is in the nature of a person’s tendency to “tell their friends”. It is really just the terminology that is new. Surveys tell us that the average individual online has at least six close friends they communicate with on a regular basis. If they have a good experience with a product or a service provider, they will tell those six people about it.

Those same surveys tell us that when an internet user finds something valuable, informative, funny, interesting or free on the internet, they will share that with 12 of their “online friends”. Thus the internet is the stage for most viral marketing business models that are successful.

We have also been told by the pros that in order to sell something, you need to give something away. I recently read a free e-book about dieting. It made perfect sense. It was written by the marketing department of a supplement manufacturer. He suggested that you share the book with all of your friends. His main motivation was to sell supplements.

He could have sold the book. It contained just as much information as some of the diet books out on the market, but he realized the value of giving something away, what he would get in return would be far greater. Not only do people love give aways, they have a tendency to put trust in people or companies that give them something of perceived value with no strings attached.

You will see countless software programs on the web that offer a free versions and a “ultimate” version. This is another example of a viral marketing business model. If a person sees any free software program, they usually share it with up to 12 people they know would like to try it as well.

Social networking is becoming increasingly popular. People on MySpace and Facebook literally have hundreds of online friends and they “share” things with them on a daily basis. If you can provide something that they want to share, then you may have struck it rich.

There are other elements of a successful viral marketing business model. Coming up with something free that allows individuals to share it with others is the most important.

What is online viral marketing? It is called a successful advertising campaign. The phrase was a creation of a business school graduate, popularized a media critic named Douglas Rushkoff. It simply refers to your ability to reach an unlimited number of people by starting out with a handful.

If you tell me something that I think is interesting, I will tell my friends about it. They will tell their friends as well if they like it. They probably know people that I do not. So, growth can literally become exponential. It traditionally was called word of mouth advertising.

The biggest difference between word of mouth advertising and online viral marketing is the potential number of people that anyone at any given time communicates with daily. I can give you a personal example. I speak to my family every day in my personal life. I may speak to my family and friends once per week.

Some of them I haven’t talked to in years, “live”. I communicate to everyone at least once every day or so via e-mail and social networking sites. If something really grabs me that I think my friends will love too, I will share it with at least 30 people.

Surveys indicate that the average person shares this type of thing with 12 people max. So, I may be a little outside of the loop. The point is that the 30 people that I know will share with others. Effortless, this information ripples through this wave of people. Will the wave eventually crash?

If you have an effective online viral marketing strategy, you may be able to generate numerous waves; when one crashes, another forms. There are a number of different strategies, but all of the effective ones include one element. There is something “free” of value for people to share.

In some cases, it is just a well-done, simple commercial. Sony had one some time ago. It was posted on YouTube and people got it out there to people they knew. To date, it has been seen by thousands of people. How many people bought something? Who would possibly know?

The point is this. To reach hundreds of thousands or millions of people in the not so distant past, TV advertising would have been the only option. And, of course, you would have had to buy space on the most popular shows and the costs are prohibitive. With online viral marketing, you can reach that many people for next to nothing.