All marketers have the same goal – to let people know –far and wide – about their brand. They hope that the content they produce will go viral in their viral marketing campaign. Of course, people in the industry know that’s easy to say something will go viral than to actually see it go viral. Marketers have to use social media to make people aware of their message, but taking it to the viral level is something totally different?
What makes something go viral?
A Look At Viral Marketing: What Is It Really?
For those folks who are asking what is viral marketing, it’s the kind of product promotion that needs an audience to produce a message about a service or product that spreads quickly like a wildfire in a short time frame. When something goes viral, the message will reach most social media users.
Would you like to know how to create content that would go viral? Would you like to create viral marketing content without too much difficulty?
The gold star of viral marketing goes to Old Spice, for their hilarious, witty efforts of their 2010 “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign. The ad garnered over 52 million views and still resonates with people years later. It was a great content and continues to be great content.
Try too hard, and your audience is going to see it and ignore you.
Going viral may sound impossible, but it’s quite doable. With some simple steps, you can attain a large share count, increase in audience numbers and generate social buzz.
5 Benefits To Viral Marketing: Why It’s Something To Consider Trying For
Ignore the shares, the likes and 15-minutes of fame; viral marketing is advantageous in five key ways.
It Reduces Your Advertising Costs
At the beginning of your campaign, you may need to do a little paid promotion to get it going. Once the audience picks the material up, they start the sharing, and you can reduce how much you spend on advertising.
Any future endeavors are likely to reach a bigger audience naturally – all because of the brand awareness that was generated during the viral campaign.
Rapid Growth
Business success isn’t seen overnight. And, even what appears like overnight success tends to be the result of five or 10 years’ worth of struggles with the founders failing multiple times before finally getting things right.
Of course, there are all kinds of viral marketing techniques that can ensure amazing growth in a short period of time. While this is what most business owners want to see happen, it rarely is attainable.
Viral marketing campaigns don’t need overnight success to be considered successful. If you can get a steady growth of viewers at a low cost, you’ll already win.
Exposure From Mainstream Media
Inbound marketers tend to say they don’t need mainstream media to establish awareness, but it certainly has a hold on people.
When viral marketing is done right, it provides media outlets with the opportunity to talk about your brand without you paying for the attention.
The great thing about mainstream media coverage is that it establishes virality with smaller media outlets following stories big names are pushing. How can ABC and NBC help your product become known to the world?
Rise In Credibility
When a brand is recognized, acceptance and trust often follow. When a brand is suddenly viral, it captures the audience’s attention, and people want to give the brand a chance. For instance, the Dollar Shave Club is well-known, and many people suddenly felt the need to give their razors a try after their viral marketing videos.
Quick Lead Generation
While marketers focus on the number of sales that occur from viral marketing, there’s no doubt the impact it can make on your lead generation. How so? People will look at trending topics. While they may be ready to make a purchase, if you garner enough attention, they’ll remember you when they’re ready to buy.
While more leads are generated for a B2B brand or a service-based company, it doesn’t hurt to try to gain more leads from your viral marketing strategies.
4 Key Drawbacks Behind Viral Marketing
Although there are some worthwhile benefits to having a viral marketing campaign, there are some drawbacks to it as well.
·They’re Not Easy To Develop – You must be original for the campaign to take off. You want the brand to be both funny and sexy. You want something that will resonate with people.
·You Can’t Have The Same Viral Campaign – You cannot use the same campaign from the year before and think it’ll have the same effect. The only exceptions to this rule are if you’re doing a follow-up viral campaign or reworking one such as what was seen with Old Spice.
·It’s Difficult To Measure Viral Campaigns – There’s no way to gauge if a viral campaign is working or not. After all, videos can be copied and messages repetitive.
·You Have No Control Over Viral Campaigns – A company has complete control over their paid ads, but when it comes to viral advertising, there is no control. Once the masses have control, that’s it. They decide if the campaign should go on – good or bad. A bad viral campaign can lead to negative feedback for the brand and damage relations it has with customers, partners and suppliers.
6 Ways To Boost Your Chances Of Going Viral
Yes, viral marketing isn’t easy, but not totally impossible to pull off. You just need the tools to create a campaign that will work. You need to look at viral marketing campaigns that have and haven’t worked previously. While this isn’t your end-all, be-all answer to going viral, it does give you some understanding of how your viral ad campaigns can work for your brand.
There are six ways you can increase your chances of your brand going viral.
Use Social Media Reporting To Your Advantage
If you want to grab the attention of an audience, you have to understand who the group is. Look at the various social media analytics:
- Page impressions
- Audience engagement
- Clicks and reach
- Trending hashtags
- Social interactions
- Keyword performance and traffic
- Demographics
Each of these metrics will offer you some insight into what content is doing best on the social media. With a social media publishing tool, you can get a look at every platform, so you know what the content’s performance is like.
These analytics will give you the chance to create a social media viral marketing campaign that can be effective for your brand. For instance, you can create viral marketing videos for your YouTube account.
Determine Why You Want Your Brand To Go Viral
A huge mistake companies tend to make is not realizing why they want to go viral – why they want to be in people’s news feed. You must create an action plan for the content, so there is some purpose to it. Many marketers feel that viral content must catch on… no matter how it catches on. The problem is that this could backfire.
For instance, the most popular marketing campaign that went viral was the Mountain Dew Kickstart Puppymonkeybaby. It was a really bizarre commercial that had the mission to be weird, and people recognized easily.
Although people knew what Mt. Dew was, they didn’t know about Mt. Dew Kickstart. However, even after 23 million views on YouTube, people are still wondering what Puppymonkeybaby is, but they definitely know what Mt. Dew Kickstart is now.
Many might have assumed that creating this odd content would have backfired, but for Mt. Dew, it knew that creating something odd would leave people to wonder what in the world they were thinking.
Create Content People Want To Share
It seems obvious, but you want to optimize your content so that people will want to share it. Be sure the content is something they want to share; encourage them to share the content on social media so that it increases the chance of it going viral. Your campaign won’t go anywhere if you don’t have it on anywhere but your blog.
Rather than leaving the material on your blog, use every social media channel to promote the material. For instance, if you have a picture for your content, use Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter. If you have a video for your campaign, you can use Instagram, Vine or YouTube.
You want to make the sharing process as easy as possible, and you can do this by doing the following:
- Offering various routes for them to share the content
- Give free services/products away
- Learn what motivates your primary audience
- Ask questions that will get your audience thinking
- Don’t restrict the content
Make Use of Hashtags To Spread Word About The Campaign
Hashtags are a great way in which to spread word about your content quickly. For instance, Coca-Cola used the #ShareaCoke hashtags to make people know about their brand. The key soft drink company used names on their cans and bottles so people would want to share a Coke with their loved ones and friends.
A hashtag can inspire folks to take pictures with the can and share it through their social media account. The American Marketing Association, the campaign lead to an increase of 28% more customers than it had the year before. On top of that, the #ShareaCoke hashtag was used over 250,000 times when the campaign was going on.
Trendjack The Viral Content
Trendjacking is a surefire way marketers can make sure their content is seen. What is trendjacking? It’s a social media term that related to some kind of viral piece of material that promotes a business. It’s one of the biggest practices used for brands who want to become a part of the viral market.
One of the most recent popular memes circulating the Internet is the “Damn, Daniel” video, a diminutive group of Snapchat videos of a teenager complimenting a friend about his shoes. These shoes are from Vans, and rumors are circulating that the company is working on a commercial with the meme creators. Its Instagram account is loaded with “Damn, Daniel” comments.
Fiat ran a commercial for its 2016 500X, using a groundhog that said that six additional weeks of winter isn’t bad. When the commercial is about over, a groundhog will yell.
It’s similar to the meme of a “Screaming Marmot” video that went viral after someone dubbed a man screaming over the yelp. Fiat combined the meme with the company’s ad, and it attained about 700,000 YouTube ads.
It’s certainly a viral video marketing campaign that garnered a lot of attention and fan.
Make The Content More Human
Brands often get more shares if they create content that comes across as genuine and human. Information from Marketing Land suggests that viral success is a bit difficult to do, but when the message is authentic, the content is shared more often.
Marketers tend to focus more on millennials, but it’s not always easy to figure the group out. Studies have demonstrated that creating more human-like content is a way to come across as being reliable – not as corporate.
Androit Digital recently conducted a study that noted 64% of millennials felt brand loyalty they had was about the same as or better than their parents. It also found the following:
About 50% of millennials felt brand reputation was about as important as their peer recommendation
·36% of millennials felt social media was a highly trusted channel
·About 40% of Millennials tended to steer clear of social or mobile channels
·44% of millennials noted they would talk with customers via social media
Begin Engaging With Your Audience
Businesses need to remember the last stat, as it’s one of the most important for them to keep in mind. The more communication that occurs between customers and a business, the higher the chance for customers to engage with the campaign.
Businesses can use a social media engagement tool to help them to keep abreast of all incoming messages that relate to your brand. On top of that, businesses can use the message tagging features to determine if they are related to a certain campaign.
It’s difficult for marketers to make content go viral, but if you abide by the following steps above, you can boost your social media interactions and engagement with the content you create.
Have you done any viral marketing campaigns ? Please let us know in the comments below.
