WHAT IS VIRAL MARKETING? BEST TECHNIQUES TO GET VIRAL

In the present day generation, where you see songs sung by the most unfamiliar faces becoming a huge internet sensation, some hilarious videos trending on YouTube, and some creative reels getting loads of views on Instagram, hopefully, a person reading this article will be absolutely familiar with the word VIRAL.

Well, this article is surely not about songs and reels though, as this technique of making anything viral for popularity is not just used here but also in the marketing field.

Yes, a similar method is used by many companies to make their products viral with the use of viral marketing. So if you want to know “what is viral marketing”, then continue reading this article till the end.

WHAT IS VIRAL MARKETING?

Imagine that you go to a mall for purchasing a conditioner. Now, out of all the varieties in the store, you purchase a conditioner which you think is probably the best or is of a renowned company, or simply because it fits your budget.

After purchasing it, you use that conditioner and you are extremely satisfied with the results. You go and recommend that conditioner to a friend of yours suffering from a hair problem. She too is happy with the results and tells her sister.

Let’s imagine another scenario. Suppose you opened a boutique and you tell your friend circle about it in order to get customers and ask them to spread a word about your boutique among their friends or known. Hence, you form a chain of clients for your boutique without actually advertising it in the form of posters or banners.

These are some relevant examples of viral marketing. In the first scenario, you used a product and found it extremely helpful hence recommended others about it thus making it popular and viral among your friend circle. Similarly in the second scenario, you told your friends about the service you are selling to create clients and make your service viral again from word of mouth. This is what is called viral marketing.

In technical language, viral marketing is a marketing technique that focuses on spreading organic, or word of mouth information about a particular product or service rapidly to a large population. It also involves sharing information through email or via the internet. The main aim of viral marketing is to persist people to share a marketing message to their family, friends, etc to create more and more recipients rapidly.

This technique is based on a simple mindset that when something will get viral, it will be an easy and cheap way for a message to become popular among the audience. Thus, companies often use viral marketing techniques to increase their reach and build a large customer base. 

HOW VIRAL MARKETING WORKS?

Well, though in the above examples we saw that the distribution of information happened organically the initiations could be intentional. Mostly, viral marketing is a deliberate affair.

Though it is mostly done through word of mouth, social media has now provided a perfect platform for viral marketing. With the coming of social media applications such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. the efficiency of modern viral marketing efforts has increased efficiency.

These platforms have resulted in an extensive increase in the number of viral marketing messages being circulated in the form of memes, shares, likes, etc.

HOW TO CREATE A VIRAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN?

No matter whatever industry you are in or whichever business you run, for a successful outcome it is important that you grow your brand and extend your reach so that you can compete with other brands already ruling the market.

One has to ensure that they expand their business or ultimately it will shrink and go into nothingness. With that fact keeping in mind, one should constantly make an effort to attract new audiences. For this, it is important to design creative marketing strategies to boost your website traffic.

The company should try to make contents that simply rule their hearts. Contents that are convincing, and efficient that Target the audience mindset and get viral rapidly. Here are some steps that will help you to prepare viral content for your marketing campaign.

1. Prepare your growth – a good business company is one that keeps itself prepared for all the ups and downs it will encounter. Therefore, a company should already be prepared for the rapid growth of its business, if the viral marketing campaign becomes successful. The company should make sure that it is ready to host a huge number of customers, the offline stores are ready with sufficient amounts of products and everything is in place if the sales rise suddenly.
2. Identify your target audience – as it is said that you cannot make everyone happy, in the same way it is true that you cannot appeal to everyone. Thus, companies should make content keeping in mind who they are targeting? If they know their target audience then they can customize their products and sell them according to their needs and wants. But if they randomly sell products then not all the people would be able to relate to the content. Hence, one should always make content keeping in mind who their target audience is.
3. Clarity– it is true that viral marketing is sometimes unintentional. But despite this, one should make sure that they clearly spread their purpose and their message to the audience. The people should not be in any doubt about the product or services that the company sells.
4. Right channel– after knowing your target audience, you should select the right platform to project your viral marketing. The platform must be such that your content reaches your targeted audience. Remember that your viral marketing campaign can go into vain if it doesn’t reach out to your targeted audience and this can only be done through choosing the right channel.
5. Concentrate on people’s emotions– most decisions are emotionally driven and thus you must always work on the emotions of the audience to attract them. Anything that can make people sentimental, hopeful or laugh can work the best for you.
6. Visualization– you must always make your content visually oriented. Avoid going for a written content as most people won’t read it or some might not understand it. One can go for pictures that spread rapidly on social media platforms especially in the forms of memes. Videos are another way of sharing information as it conveys your exact emotions, message and purpose clearly to the audience and also gets viral easily. Thus you must keep in mind that your content is visually oriented.

SOME VIRAL MARKETING TOOLS THAT HELP TO GENERATE MORE TRAFFIC

Here is the list of some viral marketing tools along with their links that can help to make your campaign effective.

1. WORRIES

It is a platform that enables you to create online contests in the form of surveys and polls. It also has tools to enhance the growth of your email list so that you can reach out to the maximum number of people.

Price – €30/month

2. REFERRAL CANDY

following the conventional means of viral advertising referral candy is used to spread information to your friends and relatives and in return get incentives. When you purchase anything online sometimes you get a referral code that you can forward to your friends and family and in return get discounts and other benefits.

Price- $49/month

3. APP VIRALITY

it is a platform that helps to accelerate your business by creating an automatic referral campaign. In this, you can create your own customized rewards and referral conditions.

Price- $199/month

4. MOBILE MONKEY

if you want that your organic content on Facebook gets viral then you must go for mobile monkey. It works on a simple strategy that the more people respond, the more views your post will get.

Price- $9/month

5. OPTINMONSTER

in case you are fainted because of constantly going after the leads then you must try optinmonster. This tool will not only help you find leads but will also turn them into your customers. Thus, it results in increased leads, sales, and traffic on your website.

Price- $29/month

There are other platforms too like up viral, prospect.io, etc. . One can always try these platforms in order to expand their business and choose them according to their needs or what their pocket allows.

ADVANTAGES OF VIRAL MARKETING

• Customer base – the huge customer base is one of the biggest advantages of viral marketing. As the term “viral” itself means to spread, i.e. the the reach of the products spread to huge numbers of people in such a short time span. The products of the company also reach to those audiences which could not be targeted through other forms of Marketing. Thus, a company is able to expand its customer base.
• Short time span – since internet and social media platforms allow the information to spread rapidly, thus viral marketing could result in a quick growth of the customer base in a very short period of time. One should keep in mind the fact that this could only be achieved if the companies adopt the right tricks and techniques to make their products viral.
• Economical – well, what money will it take in transferring information from one friend to another? The traditional viral marketing technique has always been a free way to advertise your product or service. However, now with viral marketing not just being limited to mouth words and being extended majorly to social media platforms, it is not a free of cost affair, but is comparatively economical than many other forms of advertising marketing forms.

DISADVANTAGES OF VIRAL MARKETING

• Negative reviews– we know that viral marketing has an ability to create a huge customer base but the hard truth is that viral marketing also has the power to break that customer base too , if any negative comments start to circulate within the chain. One negative view from one person will result in complete negative perception about the product among thousands of people. These losses are sometimes hard to recover.
• Low virality– if the audience believes that the form of viral marketing used by the company compromises their security and privacy in any way, then the company will completely lose trust of its audiences. As a result the campaign can fail and future campaigns will be enormously affected by the present failed campaigns.
• Hard to measure– one cannot maintain any record to see how much sales have resulted from viral marketing methods. One has no idea, about how much audience it has actually attracted or how people are perceiving their product. Thus, the success rate of viral marketing campaigns are quite hard to measure.

CONCLUSION

Viral marketing is certainly a way to expand your business and set out your reach among various segments of the audience. With the advent of social media, this Marketing technique has become quick and easy but one should remember that it is not 100 percent sure that you will always have a successful campaign, as it all depends upon what appeals to the audience. Thus, one can never be certain of success despite putting in all the effort.

In viral marketing, the company or the individual must keep themselves prepared for the positive or negative comments and results that they receive from the audience.

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