Viral marketing depends upon people not versed in your brand to do the "selling" for you. It is important to carefully craft a message that is strong enough to endure misinterpretations or make your communication brandless.
Association with Unknown Groups
Viral marketing's strength is its potential to spread exponentially from person to person. During this process, it is possible that your message could wind up in the hands of and passed on by someone you would rather not be associated with. The only way to partially counter this is to ahead of time define and limit what information you make available for your viral marketing.
Avoid making Purely Financial-based offer
The best viral campaigns work on the principle of value not greed. If you try to use money as an incentive there is a chance that 1) your offer will be spammed across the web and you'll be broke and left with the nightmare of figuring out who gets what; 2) your offer will be perceived as "too good to be true" and won't work at all.
Spam Threats
If done poorly, viral marketing can lead to large-scale spam issues. Consider a company that pays individuals to email their friends to convince them to buy one of its products. In this case, the individual who receives the email had only given the friend permission to send email of a personal nature. The one friend's receiving an unsolicited commercial email can weaken his or her relationship with the person who sent it. This can lead to the recipient of the email dropping a friend and becoming angry with the marketer for sending an unsolicited message. Flames may result, leading to damage to the advertiser's reputation. In some cases, individuals who want to earn more money simply go out and spam people. This can be problematic for your company image.
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