Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networking services and other technologies to try to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses or computer viruses.

Viral marketing often involves and utilizes:

Customer participation and polling services
Industry-specific organization contributions
Internet search engines and blogs
Mobile smartphone integration
Multiple forms of print and direct marketing
Target marketing web services
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Social media optimization (SMO)
Television and radio.

The Internet makes it possible for a campaign to go viral very fast; it can, so to speak, make a brand famous overnight. However, the Internet and social media technologies themselves do not make a brand viral; they just enable people to share content to other people faster. Therefore, it is generally agreed that a campaign must typically follow a certain set of guidelines in order to potentially be successful:
It must be appealing to most of the audience.
It must be worth sharing with friends and family.
A large platform, e.g. YouTube or Facebook must be used.[
An initial boost to gain attention is used, e.g. seeding, buying views, or sharing to Facebook fans.
The content is of good quality.