I'm not a marketing guy. I'm a "technologist" (at least, this is how Hillel Cooperman kindly referred to me), but, I was just reading a blog post on Read/WriteWeb from Emre Sokullu "teaching" entrepreneurs on how to market their product and saw this:
"...You want to reach thousands of users as quickly as possible. Aha, you think, the cheapest and shortest path is viral marketing - via blogs and social news sites. ..."
And just to be clear -- again -- I'm not a marketing expert, but I had to learn a lot (I mean, *a lot*) about marketng to make sure I didn't ruin Sampa. And from the phrase above I can guarantee you that Emre Sokullu is not a marketing guy either. Heck, he knows even less than I know.
What he describe as "viral marketing" is not viral at all. That is PR -- good and old traditional press release work. This is also not new. Decades ago, having a big hit on a mainstream publication would be the equivalent of TechCrunch for a Web 2.0 company today. If you've got mentioned on Newsweek, NYT or CNN you could see your product fly out of the shelves, or your phones non-stop ringing. And that still happens today, independent of the Internet.
That begs the question: What is viral marketing?
Maybe I don't have the best definition, and I'm sure if I go to Wikipedia I'll find a great explanation (or a bad one, it depends on who edited it), but my definition goes like this:
Viral Marketing is when the customer is doing the marketing for a company.
What do you prefer to have, one excellent VP of Marketing, or 10,000 extremely satisfied customers that can't stop talking about your product and referring new customers?
Now, every company will have a viral multiplier. That multiplier is a rate of the existing user base. Some companies will have a very low multiplier. Maybe each 50 existing customers will bring 1 new customer. Some companies will have a very high multipler, as in each customer will bring 6 new customers.
Since we did a lot of work on the last 3 months at measuring, understanding and tweaking our viral rate, I could go on and on of how you do those things, but that is a very long blog post for now.
My recommendation is to not trust a technical guy with tips on how to do marketing. Get a marketing guy (or gal).
I suppose I qualify as a marketing guy. I agree with you. Viral marketing, like you suggest, is marketing done by customers without being asked to. I would say the products from 37signals are an example of viral products. I did not hear about them from a PR piece or the company itself, but via someone I knew who had heard about them from someone he knew, etc etc. The best way for a company to take advantage of viral marketing is to make a good product and put it in a position that people will notice it, find it, use it, etc. Then let them take over. The best marketing is the one your customers do for you. Cheaper too :)
Hi Marcelo, thanks for taking on, yes I'm not a marketing wiz but I'm an entrepreneur so I must be a kind of "everything" guy... For me, word of mouth is the best thing that defines viral marketing; because in viral marketing, your message is spread from person to person, at no cost; you just influence some people, and they spread your word to their friends and your awareness increases exponentially. That's why I think social media and blogs are parts of the viral marketing as well. Because similarly, with your blog, you say something - because you're influenced by the product, then your readers read it and probably get influenced too, and write about it in their blogs. Just like domino cards..
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hi, I thinks I'm not a marketing guy.Maybe I don't have the best definition, and I'm sure if I go to Wikipedia I'll find a great explanation but my definition goes like it.
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Sandhaya,
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kindly referred to me), but, I was just reading a 
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September, 2007