Implementing viral marketing campaigns has in recent years transformed internet marketing enabling online businesses to expand the reach of their campaigns to a countless number of people.

There are several examples of these ‘viral’ campaigns beginning with the classic viral campaign by Hotmail. Most of us are familiar with the e-mail service that gave away free e-mail accounts to gain exposure. This free offer was ingenious, but it was not this face of their system that caused their campaign to go viral . The more effective aspect of the campaign in terms of it becoming viral was that each time they gave away a free account and that account holder sent out an e-mail message, there was an offer for a free e-mail account to the recipient of that e-mail also.

What was so revolutionizing about this campaign and viral marketing campaigns in general is that they advertise FOR you. Most of you know that giving away free stuff is one of the best ways to gain exposure for your campaigns, but if no one knows you are giving anything away there is no one to give anything to. Hotmail could not have done any form of traditional advertising that would have the reach that this campaign had. What is more is that, they could not have afforded to advertise in such a way that would get their message in front of the number of people this campaign reached.

The success of your campaigns can superscede anything you can imagine if you learn tointegrateviral marketing strategies.  And the most unbelievable thing about it is it is easier than ever to do.

There are major benefits of implementing viral marketing strategies:

• It gives you the ability to put your marketing methods on autopilot. Using the right mediums you can set up your campaigns once and then let them work for you.
• It is very cost affective to set up. You will have to invest your time, but most of you are already doing that you only to change the method you are using.
• The advertising mediums used for viral marketing strategies are extremely easy to develop. A lot of times you do not even need to have any technological knowledge at all to use these mediums.

We know of a lot of the ‘traditional’ mediums that can be used for viral advertising campaigns such as article marketing, affiliate programs and RSS feeds but there is also an advertising medium that has come on the scene that is not only very effective in getting your message across, but also has viral capabilities.

This medium is online video marketing. A lot of you are already using this medium for the sales presentations on your websites but not many of you realize that video marketing is a marvelous way to implement a viral advertising campaign.

Think about the viral attributes of online videos:

• People love videos.
• Videos makes connecting with your viewers a lot easier.
• People interpret better when they have a visual image of what is being spoken about.
• People visit online video sites regularly looking for new content – This means you do not have to find them.
• If your video is produced effectively your viewers will share it.
• Google is returning videos more and more in search results.

Besides these viral attributes, online videos also have all of the major benefits listed earlier.

This marketing medium possesses outright viral potential. If presented properly it can infect your audience like the rapid spread of a stomach bug.

Experienced internet marketers use all of the viral marketing strategies mentioned in this article to their benefit in multiple ways, however, online video marketing is in all likelihood the only marketing medium that has underlying viral qualities.