What Is Viral Marketing?

If your job is more or less related to the marketing world or you own an online business, you have probably heard the term viral promotion. However, what exactly do you mean by viral marketing? How does it work? And what are the viral marketing examples?

Keep reading this article to find the answers to the above-mentioned questions.

Viral marketing: what is it?

First and foremost, let’s figure out what is a viral promotion.

Usually, the term denotes a digital marketing strategy that involves people spreading the information about your product to each other in a fast way. So, the details about your company spread from one potential customer to another just like a virus.

In other words, it is word-of-mouth marketing, often realized by people who post and re-post the commercials on their social networks.

A pre-condition of viral advertising

There are different viral marketing techniques. However, one basic pre-condition has to be met to make viral strategies work, which is giving the right message to the right people in the right environment.

So, let’s figure out what is meant by the term ‘right’ when it comes to viral messages, people viral marketing depends on, and the viral environment.

• For a successful viral campaign, a message has to be interesting, engaging, and memorable. It can be a viral video, a viral message, a viral blog post, or any other content people would want to share.
• To make your viral marketing efforts efficient, your message has to be spread among people who are specialists in the field related to your business and have many social connections.
• The environment for efficient viral marketing includes not only social media websites where they are taking place but also the right time and context for launching it.

Only if all the above-mentioned criteria are met you can aim at creating a successful viral marketing campaign.

How does viral marketing work?

Here are the steps you’ll have to take to create viral content that would reach your target audience:

1. Run a detailed analysis of your potential customer before initiating viral campaigns. Use social media reporting to think of the following questions: who is he, what is the problem he wants to solve, and how or where he might come across your commercial.
2. Create a message that will match the requirements that we’ve discussed in a previous sub-section of this article. Try to make it as appealing to your potential customer as possible.
3. Share your message in an environment where it might be easily noticed by social media influencers you are aiming at.
4. Finally, wait till one social media user spreads the message you have just shared to the mobile devices of numerous other users, who, in their turn, will do the same.

Keep in mind that, despite the fact that the above-mentioned steps sound as easy as one-two-three, you won’t be able to turn them into successful viral marketing campaigns unless you involve all your marketing skills and professionalism. So, sometimes it might be better to leave the task of running a viral promotion of your business to the professionals in the viral advertisement sphere. Additionally, an approach to virality that is growing in popularity is the use of a media release distribution service – another effective way for businesses to get their message across to social media users.

Additionally, an approach to virality that is growing in popularity is the use of a media release distribution service – another effective way for businesses to get their message across to social media users.

Examples of viral marketing campaigns

Now you know what viral marketing is and how does it work. Therefore, it’s high time to check some examples of efficient viral videos and promotions.

The Ice Bucket Challenge

One of the prime examples of viral promos that might come to your mind is the challenge that went viral in 2014 when people were pouring a bucket of cold water over themselves in order to boost awareness of the ALS disease and initiate donations to its research.

COVID-19 Song of Phua Chu Kang

Another more recent example of a viral promotion is a song by Phua Chu Kang which appeared right after the outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic and aimed at spreading vaccination awareness in Singapore.

Final notes

All in all, running a viral campaign might become an effective business strategy to promote your business.

So, give it a try and turn your commercials into successful campaigns!

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Interesting related article: “What is Digital Marketing?”