In today’s rapidly shifting marketing landscape, numerous strategies can attract new customers and drive profits. Yet, within digital marketing, one approach stands out with extraordinary potential — viral marketing.
Creating a successful viral marketing campaign involves many moving parts. That’s why we’re here to clarify what viral marketing truly is, explain its significance, and explore some of the best strategies you can adopt for your company or brand. Dive in to discover how you can harness the power of viral marketing to elevate your business.
What Is Viral Marketing?
Viral marketing is a digital marketing strategy that emphasizes producing interesting content to see it shared all over the internet.
Social media platforms are one of the main places that companies and brands turn to when launching their viral marketing strategy.
The viral content could be any marketing material that social media platforms support. Those can be a tweet, a photo, a video, or something else entirely, such as an interactive quiz, a meme, or a user-generated contest.
The success of a viral marketing campaign will often hinge on its originality, adequate campaign preparation, and more often than not, good luck.
This marketing strategy’s primary focus is engaging many users in a brand’s target audience, motivating them to share the content with others on social media or elsewhere. However, creating the ‘spark’ to the flame of a viral marketing campaign is no simple task.
Key Takeaways
Viral marketing refers to an online marketing strategy that is primarily utilized on social media platforms, where users are incentivized to share the marketing message;
The potential of viral marketing campaigns is vast, and their ability to reach a brand-new audience is what makes this strategy so popular among online brands;
Getting the attention of mainstream media is one of the most effective ways to facilitate the viral spread of a specific piece of content and keep your viral marketing campaign alive.
How to Define Viral Marketing?
Viral marketing is a type of online marketing strategy that focuses on the customer and aims to motivate each viewer to share the content with new potential customers. Viral marketing can organically create interest, sharing helpful, amusing content that spreads throughout the internet.
Social media platforms are the ideal environment for this type of marketing due to their speed and ease of spreading. The most common viral marketing campaign type in recent years is the production of emotionally moving, unexpected, humorous, and original YouTube videos.
Those can be later shared on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms.
Two iconic examples of viral marketing campaigns include:
- ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge swept social media in 2014, inspiring millions to dump buckets of ice water over themselves to raise awareness and funds for ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) research. The campaign’s simplicity and social sharing mechanics led to widespread participation from celebrities and the public alike, ultimately raising over $220 million. Learn more.
- Dollar Shave Club Launch Video: In 2012, Dollar Shave Club disrupted the shaving industry with their viral launch video featuring founder Michael Dubin. The humorous and irreverent video showcased the company’s value proposition and subscription model, generating millions of views and catapulting the brand into the spotlight. The video’s success demonstrated the power of creative storytelling and shareable content in capturing audience attention and driving brand awareness. Watch the video.
Why Is Viral Marketing Important?
The benefits of viral marketing are pretty easy to spot, even if you have no first-hand experience as a marketer. Here are the main points that make viral marketing a highly desired marketing tactic.
1. Extensive reach
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of viral marketing is its ability to rapidly disseminate content to a vast and diverse audience.
A viral campaign has the potential to reach thousands, if not millions, of individuals across various demographics and geographic locations.
This broad reach allows brands to connect with new audiences who may resonate with the content and messaging, expanding their customer base and brand visibility.
2. Organic growth and cost-effectiveness
Unlike traditional marketing strategies that often require substantial financial investment, viral marketing campaigns can develop organically without significant monetary expenditure.
By creating compelling and shareable content, brands can leverage the power of social sharing and word-of-mouth to achieve widespread exposure, making it an ideal strategy for startups and small companies with limited budgets.
3. Enhanced brand perception and trust
A successful viral marketing campaign not only generates immediate exposure but also contributes to the long-term success and reputation of a brand.
By capturing the attention and engagement of a large audience, viral content reinforces the brand’s popularity and trustworthiness in the eyes of consumers.
This increased credibility can lead to greater customer loyalty, repeat business, and sustained growth over time.
Viral Marketing vs Content Marketing
As two strategies often employed on social media, viral marketing and content marketing are distinct strategies with unique approaches.
While viral marketing endeavors to captivate the broadest audience possible, content marketing targets a more niche, relevant audience. This difference in audience scope highlights the divergence between the two strategies.
A key challenge of viral marketing is the limited control marketers have over what content achieves virality. Conversely, content marketing typically offers a more predictable return on investment (ROI), providing marketers with greater assurance of outcomes.
What Are The Best Ways to Execute Viral Marketing Strategies?
While there is no straightforward recipe to create the perfect viral marketing campaign, many different strategies can be utilized to achieve excellent results. Take a look at a few of the best viral marketing approaches.
1. Social media outreach
Getting in touch with several influential social media accounts, such as influencers, public figures, or other so-called thought leaders, is one way to ensure your campaign gains traction.
This type of outreach often requires an investment or the ability to offer something else that a social media influencer might find valuable.
2. Mainstream media mentions
Getting press coverage for your marketing content can drive traffic to your business. However, getting featured by reputable media websites is problematic because it often requires never-before-seen content or an already successful marketing campaign to gain their attention.
3. Hashtag hacking
Although this strategy does not require you to do any actual hacking, it may feel like you are doing so when the campaign starts showing results.
Choosing the right keywords for your hashtags can motivate users to use and share the specific one, letting the social media algorithms push your content out to more new users.
4. User-generated content (UGC) campaigns
Encouraging users to create and share their content related to your brand or product can amplify your reach and engagement.
UGC campaigns leverage the creativity and authenticity of your audience, fostering a sense of community and ownership while increasing the likelihood of content virality.
5. Interactive and gamified experiences
Creating interactive content or gamified experiences can enhance user engagement and encourage sharing.
Whether it’s a quiz, contest, or interactive video, these immersive experiences captivate audiences and incentivize participation, driving viral spread through social sharing and word-of-mouth.
Additional Tips & Tricks
- Viral marketing campaigns depend significantly on their viral content being shareable to succeed. Try to modify your CTA to motivate and inspire users to share the viral content;
- Marketers should familiarize themselves with their target audience to craft their viral marketing campaigns in the most effective way possible;
- A well-crafted video can propel almost any viral campaign to the broadest possible target audience. Different types of content can boost brand awareness and enhance overall viral marketing efforts.
The Bottom Line
Viral marketing is an approach to digital marketing that primarily focuses on the target audience spreading the intended message. The primary habitat of viral marketing campaigns is social media platforms, where content can be easily shared with other users.
From this article, you know what viral marketing is, why it is important, and strategies for it. Also, you’ve got a few tips & tricks in your pocket. This information will help you determine whether viral marketing is the approach you must take for your company or organization.
Viral Marketing FAQs
Viral marketing is not necessarily paid media. It often relies on organic sharing and word-of-mouth, though it can include paid elements to boost initial visibility.
Guerilla marketing is an approach to marketing where unconventional methods are used to spread the word about a product or service. Guerilla marketing methods have often been used to spur viral marketing campaigns.
Viral marketing campaigns can take many forms depending on the business or brand. Still, most viral marketing efforts are engaging, entertaining, relatable, scalable, and genuine.
It isn’t easy to pinpoint what makes a viral marketing campaign succeed. However, it’s crucial for viral marketing to be interactive and simple to share with the audience. At the very least, your content should have a call to action that instructs users on what to do after reading or hearing your message.
Viral marketing focuses on creating content that spreads rapidly through social sharing, while digital marketing encompasses a broader range of online strategies, including SEO, email marketing, and PPC campaigns.
