What is Viral Marketing? How to Do Viral Marketing in 2023?

With the rise of the digital age, the marketing world continues to evolve. More and more businesses are investing in social media marketing strategies to attract attention.

With viral marketing, brands can capture the attention of consumers, trigger potential conversions, and ensure that their social media content spreads rapidly. For this reason, many businesses view viral marketing as a path to social media popularity.

Using viral marketing can increase a company's customers, sales, and revenue. So, what is viral marketing and why is it essential for businesses? Here are the details you need to know about viral marketing.

What is Viral Marketing?

The answer to the question of what viral marketing means is highly anticipated by many. Viral marketing involves creating engaging content with the aim of promoting a product or service on the internet. It ranks among the best marketing strategies. Viral marketing allows you to organically create and deliver a message for a product or service.

Your content is generally considered "viral" when it is shared by people with a unifying effect. Thus, the messages you want to convey appear on everyone's social media feed. Consequently, social media is one of the natural habitats of viral marketing.

With the rise of social networks like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, anyone and anything can become popular. For example, cat videos and Gigi Hadid's pasta suddenly went viral on the internet.

In such viral advertising campaigns, a large part of the control shifts into the hands of the users. Therefore, you must not forget that there is a risk of your message being misinterpreted.

On the other hand, a successful viral campaign can work wonders for your brand. This way, your sales and brand awareness can increase, because it encourages a word-of-mouth marketing strategy.

What is the Importance of Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing is important in terms of bringing your brand rapidly in front of a large potential market. It is highly recommended to use it when bringing a new product to the market; in other words, it provides instant awareness.

With a viral marketing campaign, you must evoke reactions in people such as laughter, surprise, and shock. Consequently, your chances of attracting attention increase. The control factor is always with the consumers, because they pass your content to others according to their own truths.

Characteristics of Viral Marketing

Effort must be exerted to create a successful viral marketing campaign. Although viral content varies from business to business, most campaigns possess distinctive characteristics. Therefore, you should keep these features in mind when evaluating whether a campaign has the potential to resonate. Here are the characteristics of viral marketing.

• Viral marketing is organic. Most of the time, it requires saying the right thing at the right time. This way, content can spread organically. Additionally, businesses must closely follow social trends.

• It cannot be repeated. People have short attention spans for hot topics and trends. For this reason, brands should avoid repeating viral campaigns and exhausting a popular trend. A trend that is popular right now cannot maintain its popularity for years. For example, brands do not do the "Gangnam Style" trend today.

• It tends to be striking. Viral marketing must be bold. However, you should take care not to go viral for the wrong reasons.

Advantages of Viral Marketing

It is useful to examine the details that can serve as an answer to the question of why viral marketing is necessary for your business. A well-crafted viral marketing strategy can bring many benefits to your business. So, let’s take a close look at the advantages of viral marketing.

1. It increases your brand awareness

The impact of viral marketing on sales is immense. Therefore, it allows you to increase brand awareness. It can be used by firms of all sizes. Since it is among low-cost marketing methods, it is particularly suitable for small businesses.

By increasing your brand awareness, you can potentially gain thousands of new fans or customers. You secure the chance to reach a large following.

2. It reduces your advertising expenses

A well-planned viral marketing campaign makes it easier to spread your message to your potential audience, thereby reducing your advertising expenses. Its costs are much lower, especially when compared to traditional advertising costs.

This is easily visible when viral marketing examples are examined. Furthermore, due to its promotion of word-of-mouth marketing, it can help you increase your customer base at a low cost.

Thanks to your viral marketing campaigns, there is a probability that your future initiatives will reach wider audiences. This allows you to achieve stable and consistent growth.

3. It makes you look authentic and reliable

Viral marketing makes your brand or business appear authentic and reliable. Since there is no risk of privacy violation, it is found trustworthy by consumers. Besides, content spread through viral marketing enhances brand authenticity.

It reduces the likelihood of your brand being perceived as invasive and annoying. At the same time, accepting or rejecting the message delivered by your brand is left to the recipient's discretion. In other words, it carries no risk of privacy violation; it merely generates interest and leaves the purchasing decision to the buyer.

A strong impact is observed in these types of marketing campaigns because a consumers' friend, whom they like, can share the content of the brand running the viral marketing. Consumers are significantly influenced by content shared by someone they know.

Disadvantages of Viral Marketing

Although viral marketing is a high-impact strategy, it does have some disadvantages. These drawbacks must be considered by businesses so they can display a more balanced and sustainable approach. Now, let’s take a close look at the disadvantages of viral marketing.

1. There is a possibility that your message is perceived negatively

If people share your content in a positive light, your brand goes viral within a short time. However, there is also the possibility of people perceiving your message negatively. This causes your brand to become famous in an undesired way. Meaning, a negative word-of-mouth strategy can yield negative consequences for any brand.

2. It is quite difficult to measure the success of campaigns

Measuring the success of a viral marketing campaign is quite difficult because there is no metric to gauge it. It is virtually impossible for a business to measure the increase in sales volume driven solely by a viral marketing campaign.

3. Future campaigns are affected by previous failed attempts

Customers must not believe that viral campaigns will compromise their privacy and security. If they do, they will not allow your campaigns to spread, causing your company's marketing mission to fail. At the same time, your brand reputation could be damaged. In other words, your future viral marketing campaigns can be negatively affected by your previous failed initiatives.

How to Do Viral Marketing?

Nowadays, brands exert effort to attract attention and reach wide audiences. Viral marketing makes it easier for brands to reach their goals. However, to achieve these targets, diligent steps must be taken. Hence, they must know very well how viral marketing is done.

1. Define your target audience

You should start by defining the target audience you will direct your campaigns to. Understanding who you want to influence helps you personalize your content. In short, you must appeal to your target audience.

For any of your content to go viral, you must know how to make it resonate with your target audience. You should look at your data to understand what resonates with your target audience.

This way, you get the chance to learn the answer to the question of how to do viral marketing. For example, with Spotify Wrapped, users can review their activities on the platform, allowing them to see which songs they listened to throughout the year.

Through this, the brand secures the chance to run a viral marketing campaign that appeals to its target audience. Therefore, you should thoroughly research the dreams, hopes, and values of your audience.

2. Create creative and shareable content

You should create compelling, engaging, and shareable content. Your content should include humor, emotional connection, or surprising elements. Consequently, you should make sure to make use of strong visuals.

For example, you should tailor your campaign in a way that your audience will care about. You must ensure your audience shares your content on social media. Furthermore, your visuals need to align with your brand.

3. Select the platforms where you will share your content

You must choose the platforms where you want to share your content. When selecting a platform, you should look at where your target audience spends most of their time.

Platforms like social media, video-sharing sites, and blogs enable your content to reach wide audiences.

4. Collaborate with influencers

Before sharing your content, you should collaborate with influencers. At the same time, you should also utilize methods such as posting in relevant communities.

Thus, your content reaches wider audiences and can boost the viral effect. However, you should not forget that you need to proceed with consistent strategies.

5. Encourage sharing and engagement

To facilitate the sharing of your content, you should add sharing buttons. Additionally, people must share your content with their friends. That is, you must encourage sharing. This way, your brand awareness increases, and you get the chance to reach vast audiences.

Furthermore, you should encourage users to engage with your content. Interactions such as comments, likes, shares, and hashtag usage ensure your content reaches more people.

6. Track the performance of your campaign

You should monitor and analyze the performance of your campaign. You must look at which platforms you receive the most engagement on.

On the other hand, you should observe what type of content is more popular. Based on the performance data you monitor, you must react instantly to improve or direct your campaign. You should emphasize the factors that boost engagement.

7. Ensure continuity

Just viral content may not be enough for your campaign to be successful. Regular content production is necessary for the long-term impact of your brand.

You should also use reward mechanisms to encourage users to share the content. Incentives such as contests, discounts, or free products can increase your number of shares.

What Should You Consider When Creating a Viral Marketing Campaign?

There are several factors you need to pay attention to when creating a viral marketing campaign. You should proceed by keeping these factors in mind. Here are the points you need to consider when creating a viral marketing campaign.

• You must make sure you thoroughly understand your target audience. You should tailor your content to match their interests.

• You should take care to keep your messages simple and clear. Complex messages do not spread effectively.

• The nature of viral content is unpredictable. Therefore, you must be prepared for unexpected situations. You should proceed ready to respond quickly.

• Your campaign must always respect ethical guidelines. You should make sure it does not disturb your followers.

• You should develop long-term strategies. That is, you must think about how your campaign fits into your overall marketing strategy for a sustainable impact.

What Are Examples of Viral Marketing?

Oftentimes, no one can determine whether their campaign will go viral. Not all viral campaigns require a massive marketing budget. For this, you need to examine campaigns that have gone viral in a timely manner. So, let’s discover inspiring viral marketing examples from different sectors and eras!

1. Nike- Just do it

Nike first used the "Just Do It" slogan in 1987. The powerful and impactful tone of the slogan was highly effective in the growth of the Nike brand. Now, this slogan is associated with Nike worldwide. In fact, the slogan is printed on most of the brand's products.

People who hear and read the Just Do It slogan can relate the slogan to their own circumstances. This helps the slogan to be successful. The Just Do It campaign produced videos for years.

https://youtu.be/zWfX5jeF6k4
Nike Just Do It video

2. Snickers- "You're Not You When You're Hungry"

Similar to the Nike brand, Snickers used a slogan that could be associated with its brand forever. Countless funny advertisements were made where the actor behaved differently and changed character because they were hungry.

So, using the slogan and turning it into comedy is genius. This means that the Snickers brand went viral not only with its slogan but also with many of its advertisements.

https://youtu.be/wqCP0HoUzz0
Snickers made one of the best Valentine's Day commercials of all time.

3. L'Oreal- "Because you're worth it"

L'Oreal created this slogan to support women. It has been campaigning for over 50 years using this slogan for women's health and beauty. The campaign continues to this day.

First designed in 1971, this slogan was one of the first to bring women's empowerment to the forefront. It has been translated into around 40 languages worldwide for everyone to use.

https://youtu.be/mjcd6Xu4MYU
You can check out the viral L'Oreal commercial here.

FAQ

What Are the Main Elements of Viral Marketing?

The right person, the right message, and suitable conditions are among the core elements of viral marketing. These three elements are interrelated.

Which Digital Method is Used for Viral Marketing?

The digital word-of-mouth method is used for viral marketing. It allows you to take the word-of-mouth marketing strategy to wider audiences through digital platforms.