The buzzwords viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.., to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.
The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individual websites with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create Viral Messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being taken by another competitor.