Im sure youve come across the term viral marketing at some point. This is an absolutely explosive concept that every Internet marketer needs to harness and utilize.

A solid definition of viral marketing is this:

A form of advertisement that propagates itself by encouraging people, either passively or actively, to pass along a marketing message to others they come into contact with.

One of the most common and easily grasped examples of viral marketing is Hotmail.com. All outgoing messages sent from the Hotmail servers include a brief promotional tagline that invites the reader to acquire their own Hotmail account at no cost. Many thousands of people are advertising for this company on a daily basis by the simple act of emailing their friends and family.

Naturally, once someone registers their free email account, they can be marketed to on a regular basis through on-site advertisements, upsells, and mailing list solicitations. MSN is building an enormous profit funnel with Hotmail as their free front end; and more impressively, they are doing it primarily through a massive viral advertising campaign.

But you dont have to be a multi-billion dollar company to exploit the potential of viral marketing. In fact, all you need is an attractive digital product that can be given away for free.

For example you could create a simple e-book and make it available as a free download that includes giveaway rights. You could then actively encourage folks who access this e-book to just give it away as an incentive for people to join their mailing list or sign-up for their business opportunity.

Of course the book would include a couple of links to your primary business website, and could also be full of your favorite affiliate links. As people give their free copy away in an effort to build their opt-in list, they are also providing you with loads of exposure.

You could easily create your own digital product and follow this example. Or, you could just buy re-brand rights to an existing product and create the same effect.

Re-brand rights allow you to replace the links in an e-book or other digital product with your own links. You can then give the product away, and encourage others to do the same.

By allowing other marketers to give away your original or re-branded product in their promotions, you will be launching your own viral ad campaign. This is how people who never progress beyond the free front end of your profit funnel can still be of tremendous benefit to you.

If you havent already started exploring the possibilities of viral marketing, do so now! It only takes a little work to set something like this up, and the rewards can be truly amazing.

Tim Whiston

Tim Whiston is a full-time entrepreneur and who lives in northeast Tennessee. In addition to marketing on the web, Tim enjoys reading, writing, playing video games, getting his exercise, and arguing with his friends and family about politics and religion. ;-)