Nobody has all the answers when it comes to marketing.

New ideas and concepts are being launched all the time and it takes an astute business person to stay ahead of the game.

Technology can now provide a free marketing channel if you are smart enough to come up with a new spin.

The idea is to get other people to send your marketing message on to their business colleagues and contacts and, where appropriate, to their friends and family.

Known as viral marketing, this concept has been around for a while but is rarely exploited to its full capacity except by email providers like Hotmail and Yahoo who get free publicity for their services on the bottom of every mail.

The idea is to send out an email bearing your marketing message that is so entertaining or educational it gets copied by everyone who receives it to all the contacts in their address book - your message will then spread like a virus.

If you have any doubts about the potential of email, remember the explicit email from a head teacher's daughter that circled the world in less than 48 hours.

The whole planet was suddenly aware of her nocturnal activities and yet she had only emailed one untrustworthy boyfriend. This sort of email will almost certainly get circulated but it won't do much for your business. What you need is a strategy that encourages people to pass on your marketing messages to others.

Some viral marketing strategies work better than others. The best tend to incorporate one or more of the following elements:

They give something away for nothing (tickets, flights, etc).

They exploit common behaviour (sending interesting email to friends).

They work anywhere in the world (Jokes are good but humour can vary around the globe).

They are easy to forward.

They don't need any alterations to remain relevant.

They carry a click-on hypertext link to your web site.

They take advantage of social groups.

It sounds easy but there are a few catches. The biggest is people are starting to object to anything that looks like a chain letter, so format needs to be considered very carefully.

Telling people unless they forward your mail they will get ten years' bad luck is a direct invitation to them to hit the delete key.

Remember people do not share the same sense of humour. The amusing story or cartoon you choose must be non-confrontational and appeal to everyone, regardless of race, colour or any other variable.

Huge images can take too long to download on a slow system. Many people are using older modems or mobile phones to download their mail and will not appreciate a 3Mb download or forward it to anyone else.

Understand, too, there is considerable resentment from employers when employees misuse their office system with viral email.

Finally, the freebie on offer must actually exist. It is no use promising people things if you don't deliver the goods.

Viral marketing can be a very effective way to spread the word about your business and can even bring instant results if used carefully.

If it upsets people, the change could be for the worse.