You must be coming across tons of viral videos on Instagram or Facebook every day. These videos are quite “contagious” in the sense that they grow on consumer minds in a way that does not let them get rid of them. Whether it's a personal trainer engaging in an amazing feat or a funny kid video, one might think why is this video so intriguing? Why is it everywhere on my feed? Why can’t I let go of it?Well the answer to these is a killer viral marketing strategy that goes behind the ideation of the videos. It is every advertiser’s dream today to make their brand’s content go “viral”. For the ones who don’t understand, viral marketing is a variant of business strategy that is devised to promote a product, service, or an idea. This blog will give you a comprehensive view of what a viral marketing strategy is and everything else you need to know about it.Here are the topics we will cover ahead:
- What is a viral marketing strategy?
- Advantages of viral marketing
- Types of viral marketing
- How to create a winning content marketing strategy?
- Viral content marketing examples
What is a viral marketing strategy?
Viral marketing strategy is a form of business strategies that uses social media networks for promoting a product or service. The spread of content in this strategy is very similar to the spread of a virus among people. It is how consumers disperse information about a product amongst the members of their social network. Think of it as advertising in stealth mode. Your content is consumed by people and they do not even realize that a product is being sold to them. They enjoy the content in an advertisement and simply share it with their friends or family. This is how a viral content campaign would grow.
Advantages of viral marketing
Viral content marketing has the ability to sell your product like a phenomenon. Here are the advantages of viral marketing:
- Reduced advertising costs
Advertising costs can eat up a significant chunk of your company’s marketing budget. With a viral marketing strategy, you can cut down the costs over time. Launching on social media would not be expensive anyway and because you would have enough exposure and buzz over time, you won’t need to spend extra on promotions.
- Extraordinary business growth
There is no quick fix for success in a business. Viral marketing is one of the few ways in which a miraculous growth can happen in a short span of time. Once your content hits the right nerve in people’s brains, it will spread like wildfire and bring immense profits for your business.
- Builds higher credibility
The amount of credibility you have will depend on how many people are talking about your brand. If your content manages to create noise on social media, your product recognition will definitely rank up. More engagement on your posts will translate into a positive outlook for your brand.
- Increased visibility
Every brand wants to be seen by people. Viral marketing has the ability to make your brand visible even in huge crowds. A well-crafted content marketing campaign will arouse interest in your target audience. The brand visibility will increase and that will lead to an increased growth of your brand.
- Lead conversions
The success of any digital marketing strategy can be measured only by its ability to increase traffic. The central objective of almost any strategy is to achieve maximum engagement with the audience. Viral marketing can attract customers at a surprising velocity and boost awareness about the brand. Eventually, prospective customers will be converted into potential customers of your brand.
Types of viral marketing
There are always several types of options that consumers can choose from when it comes to the kind of content they feel most attracted to. Marketers can be proactive and target any of these types in order to hook the audience to their content. Different types of viral marketing are:
- Incentive based marketing
An incentive can be explained as a reward offered to someone. A campaign based on incentives will reward the people who share your content with their network. For example, companies offer a certain sum of money to their existing customers as credit for each of their friends that becomes a customer. There are referral discounts too.
- Buzz creation
The ads made with the purpose of creating a buzz need to hold consumer attention. The message is passed across various social groups and potentially becomes a hot topic for discussion amongst people. Some people who have not seen the ad itself would still know about the message because of the buzz that surrounds it.
- The luck factor
Although viral marketing strategies are highly planned, there is an element of chance or luck involved in their success. Marketers might not be able to predict how things could unfold after the release of a certain campaign. Some ads could go viral without any planned objective of doing so.
- Emotional
Campaigns that have an emotional appeal are difficult to ignore. Keeping this in mind, marketers can craft an ad that could target pride, anger, nostalgia or happiness. If the audience reacts with laughter or tears, it can be a sign that your ad is working and people are connecting with it. If the ad manages to strike an emotional chord in viewers, they will share the content with other people who might feel the same way. Emotions targeted can be negative or positive.
- Well engineered strategy
Most campaigns that go viral have months of careful and elaborate planning that goes behind their making. There are some sensational ads that gain popularity without much investment, but these are rare. In general, viral marketing campaigns with high impact have been structured carefully to be made viral.
Additional resources: How to go viral on Tiktok?
How to create a winning content marketing strategy?
Now that you have seen what viral marketing is and the types of it that you can incorporate in your content marketing strategy, let’s run you through the techniques you can use to create a winning content marketing strategy:
- Making your content crisp and simple
In order to put across the right message, you need to make sure that what you are communicating is simple. It has to be very easy to break down and understand for even a layman. Messages that are simple would be short, to the point, and catchy. These should be easy to roll out of the tongues for the masses. The time taken to understand the message should be less than 10 seconds.Before writing or creating a content, take your time to do a SEO analysis. You can use SEMrush or Similarweb to check the content gap, what's trending, etc.
Additional resources: How to create great content
- Do something out of the usual
People are hungry for content that is fresh or straight out of an innovative mind. Constructing viral campaigns becomes difficult because of the need for innovation. If you want people to remember you, or if your idea should stay with them for long, you need to create an ad that is unpredictable or unusual. You can give a fresh perspective to an existing product rather than just simply promoting it. Or you can come with radical experiences that would stick with the consumer minds.But remember when your working fast and creating great innovative content, don't forget to internally link to it so that you avoid orphaned content issues, these are bad for SEO and can really hurt you in the SERPs.
- Post consistently on social media
Consistency is definitely the key to getting noticed on social media. You can’t just post once a week and expect to go viral. If you think it is quite difficult to post daily on multiple social media platforms, you can use a social media management tool to automate everything. RecurPost is one such tool that allows you to schedule months’ worth of content in advance on all major social sites. Using it, you can also schedule your content for best times to post on social media, which will bring maximum engagement to your posts.
Additional resources: Go viral on Tiktok
- Make your content shareable
Think about how you can make your content shareable or snackable. When you design content for making it viral, you should think of ways in which you can make it worthy of sharing. It should not just sit on the timeline or feed of your user. The user should be urged to share your content by looking at it. Your content should be made in a way that is convenient to share in technical aspects. People should be able to download it and embed it where they want easily.
- Use video content to your advantage
Many brands have been acing viral video marketing and so could you. As per studies, videos are the best way to hold the attention of your audience. You can tell a story or demonstrate your product via video content or an exciting webinar recording. Once you create your video content, you should work on its shareability.
- Offer value through your content
One of the most legitimate viral content ideas to make your content more valuable for the user. When you offer value through your content that is free of cost, people are going to want it. When we say value without cost, we mean surprise gifts with purchase, free shipping, or a complimentary download. You can even condition it. You can ask a user to sign-up or share your post in order to receive a perk.
Read more about Missqgemini
- Content reinforcement
Releasing a message once and making it viral might not be as effective as you would think. You need to find ways to keep the message afresh in your customer’s mind. A viral message can be forgotten easily after reaching its peak of attention. You can have a series of campaigns with the same character as in the original piece or create certain themes that might help you reinforce the first content piece in consumer minds.
Additional resources: How to Get Out of Facebook Jail
Viral content marketing examples
Here are the best viral marketing campaigns that managed to bag massive attention:
- #GEInstaWalk campaign by General Electric
When you think of General Electric, you might think of it as a boring, industrial body. But the company shattered this notion by a break-through Instagram campaign that brought in massive engagement figures. The company devised an Instagram campaign that took users up close and personal with the company’s facility and work processes. Instagram influencers were taken onboard to share breathtaking images of the tour and share them with #GEInstaWalk. The results were mind blowing to say the least. It brought in over 3.8 million unique viewers to the account and 3000 new followers.
- “Share a coke” by Coca- Cola
Coca-Cola took personalization to the next level with this campaign. Users were seeing their names written on bottles and were compelled to purchase as well as click pictures with it to portray their prized possession. The brand also came up with a groundbreaking call to action. It was unique and catchy, and it drove the user mad. They just had to buy it.There was a direct 2% increase in soft drink sales. And to top it all, there were 25 million new followers on Facebook.
- “Dunk in the dark” by Oreo
Back in 2013, there was a power outage for about half an hour at the Super Bowl. Oreo was quick to make a move and released a tweet that said “you can still dunk in the dark” with a picture having a black background and their cookie. This is one of the best viral marketing campaigns in the history of marketing. The tweet was shared over a million times and everyone was talking about Oreo.
Conclusion
Viral content marketing success is hard to achieve but if done right, it can deliver results that would blow your mind. Content that is viral, spreads fast and reaches wider. You have a chance at increasing your sales by a twofold amount with the help of a viral content marketing strategy. The best part about it is that you don’t have to be a big name in the industry to be able to pull it off. In fact, you have a chance to go big with a viral content campaign. So, capitalize on this highly effective form of marketing and reach the top of your game. If you are not sure where to get started or how to go about it, this guide will help you out.