Viral marketing is a technique that is more commonly being used by brands online these days, however take caution, the chances of your viral campaign being a flop are as good or better than having it take off.

PC Plus, the UK’s premier technology magazine, compared viral marketing to the A-bomb of advertising in a recent article, “powerful, dangerous and something you really don’t want used against you.”

The goal of viral marketing should always be to encourage users to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for unlimited growth in the message’s exposure and influence.

Some elements can give a viral marketing campaign a greater chance of having success. For example, giving away valuable products or services. Consumers love to hear the word free, and marketers understand that while they may not see instant profit, the interest or buzz they generate and the opportunity that can be created from that should earn revenue in the end.

Another aspect to a good viral marketing campaign is the ease of it. If a user has to work hard to transfer something to their friends they are less likely to participate. It’s called viral for a reason - ensure that the medium you chose to spread your message is instantaneous. To encourage this, most publishers are now including “share this” or “tweet this” links on their content.

The campaign should also be prepared to go big. The nature of viral marketing is that it hopefully spreads like wildfire. If your company and more importantly your servers are not able to withstand a rapid growth spurt in a short time period, your campaign will end before it ever really takes off. Ensure that scalability is a factor in your strategy.

Clever marketing campaigns take advantage of common human behaviours and motivations. This theory falls in line with using existing communication networks and getting the message to the right people. Whether we like to admit it or not, we all tend to follow a distinct pattern of use depending on our demographic. If I am a heavy user of social network sites then I am already online ready to spread your brand’s messages - you just need to get them to me.

While a big portion of viral marketing can appear like spam, it really isn’t going anywhere. Some of it will be clever, like Burger King’s Subservient Chicken from 2005 or Hotmail.com’s use of a tag on the bottom of every email that gets sent out, promoting their free email service. Most of them, however, will be unremarkable or potentially annoying, offensive and worst case scenario - dangerous. Hopefully, your next viral marketing campaign will be truly inspired, or at the very least offer users a few laughs.