Advantages and Disadvantages of using Viral Marketing

Low costs, great reach, high credibility, high efficiency are the advantages of viral marketing. A very quick impact at a relatively low cost is the key driver for marketers wishing to use such techniques.

However, there are also a lot of disadvantages, such as brand dilution, association with unknown groups, lack of control, limited possibility of segmentation, and large-scale spam issues.
Brand dilution is that viral marketing depends on people who are not versed in the company's brand to do the "selling" for the brand. Therefore, the message must be carefully crafted, otherwise it may result in misinterpretations and distort the creator's original intent, or make the communication brandless.

Viral marketing's strength is its potential to spread exponentially from person to person. Sometimes it may difficult to control. If the message is passed to someone who is not supposed to be associated with. The viral message would then be perceived as spam and lead to damage to the advertiser's reputation and affect the company image.