Viral marketing: who is it suitable for and how to launch it

 What are we talking about? Viral marketing is the planning, creation, and implementation of advertising that is distributed by users, customers, and ordinary people who have seen the material. To do this, you need to evoke emotions and choose the right content, format and topic.

 What to pay attention to? Viral marketing requires a creative approach and planning of the technical part: the choice of channels and methods of distribution, and after the launch of the campaign, the evaluation of results and adjustments.

The concept of viral marketing

Viral marketing is a strategy for publishing promotional materials so that content consumers participate in the popularization of a particular brand. The very name "viral" refers to the disease, as it seems to "infect" consumers, forcing them to be the spreaders of the "disease".

This result is achieved with the help of such a phenomenon as sharing - the active distribution of content to a large audience.

The foundation of viral marketing is eccentric publications that cause strong emotions in users.

For example, anger, shock, interest, bewilderment, or confusion. That is, the content provokes a certain reaction from the audience and captures its attention. Next, enthusiastic users begin to share the news that excites them. The effect of the so-called "word of mouth" is triggered.

The main task that viral marketing pursues is to expand the customer base and popularize the brand name. At the same time, its specific content and active distribution are firmly fixed in the memory of users and give quick results with high efficiency. Its functions:

• Audience growth. Due to active reposts, the number of new subscribers is added quite quickly.

• Improving consumer attitudes towards the brand. Timely reactions to important newsbreaks and humor increase audience loyalty.

To promote content more actively, marketing specialists resort to the services of popular personalities — bloggers, stars, or actors.

Pros and Cons of Viral Marketing

This promotion strategy, like any other, has a number of advantages and disadvantages. Main advantages:

• Fairly low budget. In the vast majority of cases, viral marketing does not require large promotion costs. Moreover, regular users distribute content for free.

  This is a guarantee of greater benefits than buying expensive advertising on television or integrating in a video from popular bloggers.

• Favorable attitude of subscribers. The ability to evoke strong emotions in the audience keeps the interest of the public for a long time. If the sources of the newsbreak are trustworthy persons, for example, relatives or friends, then the trust of the audience and the interest of new subscribers will be ensured. The main thing is that the provocation was planned by professionals.

• The ability to conduct completely legal promotion on the territory of Russia. Viral marketing often exploits scandalous and sexual topics, which completely excludes the possibility of its use on television. On the Internet, censorship is much milder, although major social networks and browsers exercise some control over advertisers.

• No time limits for advertising. Viral marketing content lives on as long as users remember it, which doesn't apply to any other ads. In addition, in this case, it is difficult to calculate the time of user activity and interest in a particular topic.

  According to some experts, viral content remains in the information field for several more years, and therefore brings profit for several years.

Now let's note the disadvantages:

• Inability to limit yourself to viral marketing alone. It is necessary to use other methods of advertising, as well as competently combine them with this strategy. No matter how good viral content is, it may not be enough to advertise a brand.

  It is worth noting that the quality of products must correspond to what is stated in the advertisement, otherwise the effectiveness of promotion will decrease sharply.

• The need for constant warming up of the audience. People's attention in the age of operational information quickly cools down. At the same time, in order to achieve the specified coverage, you need to periodically renew the interest of subscribers. The difficulty lies in the fact that maintaining attention through new scandalous newsbreaks requires a lot of work.

• Difficulty in controlling the distribution and impact of advertising on the audience. Viral content is built on scandalous news, so the consequences of its impact can be unpredictable.

• A great influence of chance on the success of an advertising campaign. The public's reaction to specific content cannot always be clearly calculated. Therefore, the will of chance intervenes in the matter. Even building a clear, detailed strategy cannot guarantee a positive outcome. Therefore, within the framework of an advertising campaign, several marketing strategies should be used at once.

Characteristics of viral marketing

The main characteristic of viral marketing is that it may not be perceived by users as intrusive PR. Website visitors cannot ignore it, as they do with advertising banners on websites.

In 2015, the buzzsumo.com information portal published the results of a study on the impact of viral marketing. During the study, more than 100 million publications were analyzed.

And although it was not possible to derive a universal formula for success, there were certain factors that can affect the effectiveness of marketing:

• Reaction. Viral advertising should provoke emotions. And the brighter the response, the more successful the advertising will be.

• Publication format. According to research, the most shared types of posts are images, infographics, video content, quotes, interactive followers, and entertaining facts.

• Relevance of the topic. Most often, it is hype topics that are distributed, but this may also depend on the target audience. There are also reasons that are always relevant. For example, the themes of animals, sex or touching stories.

• Format. Short but capacious text or videos capture attention much more effectively than huge hard-to-read posts or long videos.

Viral marketing techniques

Let's look at effective viral marketing techniques that will help you turn your customers into active promoters of your brand.

People themselves should want to distribute content

At the moment, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions that make content go viral. Even the large studies described above have not been able to identify a guaranteed formula. However, there are some regular coincidences that can be traced in almost all successful cases.

Now you can easily find books describing viral marketing, which formulate the main strategies for such promotion. Among them is "Idea-virus? Epidemic!" Seth Godina describes the factors of advertising distribution:

• understanding by users of the main message of advertising;

• possession of contextual data;

• a sense of benefit from the distribution of content;

• trust in the disseminator of information.

For example, Nietzsche's philosophical works are difficult to understand, and therefore spread less quickly. Or the South Korean hit Gangnam Style, which instantly captured the minds of a large number of people due to its fervor and clarity.

Buzzsumo has published a major investigation into viral content. As mentioned earlier, experts did not derive a universal formula, but they found some patterns. As a result of the study, they identified 14 viral marketing factors that affect the speed and effectiveness of distribution:

• Catchy and surprising headlines should be exciting but easy to understand.

• Popular topics.

• Motivating content.

• Eye-catching images.

• Content that evokes tenderness.

• Humor.

• Criticism of the mainstream.

• Easy interaction with subscribers.

• Content about safety rules.

• Success stories of popular personalities.

• Secrets of achieving your goals.

• Content for self-development.

• Health and beauty themes.

• Advice in relationships.

Ensuring easy popularization of advertising

To make content easy and fast, you need to make it easy to share. People are more willing to share news if it is easy to do.

To do this, several conditions can be met:

• Explain the mechanism of reposting to users.

• Work on displaying content on websites.

• Attach the Like and Share buttons.

• Do not force users to register to watch content.

The book we mentioned above was also distributed by viral marketing. Moreover, the distribution mechanism was described on the first page, which helped it reach a large audience.

Formulate the message of distribution

The meaning of advertising, no matter how pleasant and beautifully described, can be completely altered by users. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize the correct information and encourage it to be disseminated.

To "seed" the virus

For a full-scale infection of the target audience, you need to recruit a certain number of distributors. To ensure a large audience coverage, marketers "seed" the virus. How to do this will be written below.

Types and channels of viral marketing

There are several strategies for starting a promotion:

• The method of "word of mouth". Its essence is that one satisfied consumer of the product passes on his positive impressions to others without any additional payments from advertisers.

  This method has an undoubted advantage in the form of a low cost of costs, but there is also a disadvantage - word of mouth is not subject to any control and can lead to an unpredictable result. The main thing that a brand can provide is a satisfactory quality of the product.

• Talk about the product. Discussion of goods and services by users can also provide quick and free advertising. The main incentive for distribution is the impact on the emotions of consumers. Then they will participate in the discussion of your brand on their own initiative. But, as in the previous point, the situation can quickly get out of control.

• Scandal. This is one way to apply the first two points. To launch scandalous news, you need to publish something controversial or specific in the opinion of the audience.

  Scandals are often caused by ambiguous statements by popular personalities, leaked disputes among brand employees, or dirty details of the personal lives of celebrities. This method is dangerous because it can lead to a backlash or boycott from consumers.

• Influence of influencers. Familiar faces play an important role in the public's acceptance of the product. If a popular personality inspires confidence among the target audience, then his opinion will have a positive effect on the distribution of advertising. However, this method requires more costs than the previous ones.

• Promotion of advertising with the help of funds. For example, you can launch contextual or targeted advertising, shoot viral video content, or buy integration.

  This method has the greatest distribution efficiency. Moreover, it opens up space for creativity. However, it is worth remembering about censorship on popular sites.

These items make up social viral marketing. All of the above methods can be used in combination. In addition, there are many different strategies for launching viral ads. Often these are modified points listed above. The choice of methodology depends on the target audience of the brand.

What criteria can be used to select sites for sowing:

• Orientation of the interests of the target audience. Sometimes poor choice of launch locations hinders brand promotion due to complete ignorance by consumers. For example, it is useless for people who are interested in the topic of health to advertise alcoholic beverages.

• Age. Different generations have different interests and collection sites. There is even an opinion that Tik-Tok is mainly for teenagers and young people, and for Odnoklassniki there are pensioners and elderly people.

• Habits and behavior. If the brand's subscribers use mainly email newsletters, then they can be used for seeding.

What platforms are suitable for launching viral ads? There are different platforms where your content can get promotion. The above methods are only an impetus for promotion, and then it all depends on the channel through which the advertisement is distributed.

Social Media

On these platforms, there are only a few ways to get feedback - likes, dislikes, and reposts. Sometimes there is an opportunity to put reactions on social networks. For promotion, of course, it will be useful to stimulate a positive reaction in the form of likes and reposts. However, you should not do it obtrusively.

Reposts are the most effective way to promote advertising, as it makes it possible to expand the reach of the audience. To increase the number of shares, you need to motivate people to share content.

Distribution

For promotion, they use some kind of "chain letters" to subscribers - superstitious messages that are sent to several people to get rid of some kind of "curse". Usually, in these letters, it is recommended to send this to 10 or more acquaintances. You can use similar mailings, only not with a negative, but a positive effect, such as discounts and promotions.

The appropriate channel is chosen depending on the location, positioning and goals of the brand, as well as its audience. For small organizations, a few reposts on local social networks are enough.

Viral marketing on Youtube

To work with this platform, it is necessary to first optimize the process:

• Write down metadata — title, description, tags. This will help users find the video and get them interested in watching;

• Select or upload a video preview. An attractive picture will help increase organic views;

• add subtitles to get a higher ranking and priority in the search;

• To achieve viral distribution of the video, you need to connect other channels: publish the video on the website, in the blog, announce it in an email newsletter, sow it on social networks.

Stages of developing a viral marketing campaign

The success of a viral campaign depends on the coordinated work of all its elements. From choosing an idea to selecting distribution channels, each stage requires careful analysis and planning.

Defining the Main Task

You must clearly understand what result you plan to get. Different goals require different promotion methods.

Consumer Definition

Before selling a product, you need to understand who its target audience is. To do this, you can analyze their social group, age, gender, and so on.

Imagine a person who may need your services or products. Try to predict his reaction to the content offered.

Think carefully about viral marketing methods, because sometimes scandals and excessive hype can cause rejection among the audience, which in turn will negatively affect the distribution of advertising. You can give space to creativity and try to direct it to get a positive reaction.

Concept Creation

To create more original ideas, you can involve several people, preferably specializing in such tasks, brainstorm, and the idea will come by itself.

Choice of performers

Not always even the most successful idea can be implemented on your own. Lack of experience or basic knowledge may affect. A competent performer knows more about the mechanism of news promotion and is able to achieve a better effect.

Creating news content

There are two ways to follow here: formulate ideas yourself or entrust the work to professionals. To transfer the task to specialists, it is necessary to clearly formulate the terms of reference and take into account their proposals.

If you decide to develop the concept yourself, then it is worth calculating many more details. For example, the script, the selection of actors, the organization of the filming process, and the like.

The placement of advertising is also of great importance. A promo should grab attention, but not get boring.

Advertising launch channels

After launching viral marketing, you should not let everything take its course — you need to monitor its effectiveness and warm up the interest of the audience. A system of incentives and awards can be introduced. For example, provide discounts on products when reposting or raffle prizes among subscribers.

Maintaining the interest of the audience is carried out mainly at the initial stages, then, when a sufficient number of people are "infected", the spread will go by itself. The main thing is to launch correctly.

The response of popular personalities has a very strong influence on the distribution of the product. The opinion of a blogger with a large audience is guaranteed to lead to a surge of interest.

Moreover, on the modern Internet, you can find services that specialize in launching viral advertising.

Analysis and work on mistakes

During the development of an advertising campaign, a marketer must track its effectiveness and impact on users. The opinion of the audience can be read in the reviews. Based on the analysis of the feedback, it is important to note the errors and, if possible, correct all the identified shortcomings.

Assessing the effectiveness of a viral campaign

How to conduct it?

• Calculate user interaction.

• To compare the statistics of reactions and reposts for viral and ordinary publications.

• Count the number of influencers and communities that participated in the distribution of advertising.

• Determine interest in publications. To do this, you need to compare the number of comments and reactions with views.

• Mark users' opinions. Count the number of positive and negative reviews.

• Determine the number of clickers.

• Calculate the growth of subscribers.

• Estimate the number of mentions and links to the brand

• Count the number of visitors at the initial stages of launching viral advertising.

There are 2 stages to determining the effectiveness of an ongoing campaign:

• Stage 1: intermediate (the first days after launch). The dynamics of content distribution and the reaction of users are calculated.

• Stage 2: final. Reach, traffic, and conversions are evaluated.

To evaluate a viral campaign, as in other types of marketing, key performance indicators or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are used.

The focus of the indicators that are subject to evaluation is determined by the tasks set. In order to determine the growth of the audience, conversion, popularity, and user reactions are analyzed.

Any direction has its key characteristics. They are divided into 4 types:

• interest;

• Passion;

• impact;

• Realization.

For example, let's consider a popular video.

1. Watch time and audience retention.

   These parameters are important for determining user interest. Do they watch it to the end? Are they turned off at the very beginning? Based on these indicators, you can draw a conclusion about the content and its promotion. If viewers turn off the video at the initial stages, then this video does not arouse interest.

   YouTube Analytics provides this data. To do this, you need to find the "Audience retention" item and select either the entire channel or a specific video.

2. Relevance to the target audience.

   A parameter that characterizes getting into the interests of the brand's target audience. On YouTube, you can view this under Demographics.

3. Viewing efficiency.

   It is impossible to determine the success of an advertising campaign by the number of views. As mentioned earlier, users may not watch the entire video.

   Number of Effective Views = Target Views x Average View Duration in %.

   Example: Number of targeted views = 1,000,000. The average watch time is 58% (this indicator is indicated in analytics in the "Audience retention" section). In this case, the number of effective views will be 1,000,000 x 58% = 580,000 views.

4. The price of effective viewing.

   Effective view price = video creation costs + promotion costs / effective views.

   The lower the indicator, the better.

5. Virality.

   Viral Rate = Total Views / Number of Paid Views.

   A video can be considered viral if this ratio is greater than one. The higher the ratio, the better the video went viral.

6. Number of references.

   This metric shows the number of people who reposted a post from one platform to another. Moreover, the nature of the link can be both positive and negative. It is worth taking this into account.

7. Engagement.

   Engagement = likes + comments + links / number of shares x 100%

   Comments can be critical. In any case, they show the interest of the target audience.

8. Brand conversion.

   This is an indicator of how many searches there were related to the brand and their growth compared to the period before the launch of viral advertising. There is a possibility that users may not go to the brand's page, but to the creator's social networks.

   To track such indicators, there are services such as Google Analytics and Google Trends. The latter allows you to view the number of searches on a certain topic in a specific period of time.

   Google Alert can also be extremely useful.

9. Popularity.

   Share of mentions = brand mentions / mentions in general (brand and competitors) x 100%.

10. Impact.

    Brand Impact = Positive Brand Mentions / Total Brand Mentions x 100%.

11. Efficiency.

    Utility coefficient = the number of useful actions from those who watched the video / the number of useful actions from all in total x 100%.

The effectiveness of a viral campaign is evaluated, first of all, by the trust of the audience, then by popularity. The last point is successful sales.

4 mistakes in working with viral marketing

1. Lack of interest in the campaign.

   The main key to the success of any publication is the ability to evoke emotions.

   Users are more willing to share information when it evokes an emotional response in them. This is how they maintain communication, find parallels with their own experience, and look for accomplices. The most effective posts are those that provoke a surge of positive emotions.

2. The uselessness of the idea.

   The audience will be imbued with a creative innovative idea and ignore information garbage that does not make sense.

   Serving with humor will give a great advantage. Useful information aimed at solving any common problem will also help.

3. Undeveloped design.

   A person perceives visual information much more efficiently, so working on the design of advertising is of decisive importance. Even a good and useful idea can be presented poorly if you choose an unsuccessful design.

4. Not the right period.

   Information must be submitted at the right time. Untimely launch of an advertising campaign can lead to the audience completely ignoring the content.

   It is also important to plan a schedule for submitting information. To do this, the following is taken into account:

   • season;

   • weekdays or weekends;

   • time of day;

   • current information background.

Viral Marketing Examples

The rules on which many marketing campaigns are now based are built on the experience of successful corporations. Below are examples where viral marketing has either popularized a brand or increased sales.

Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign

The company that produces the most famous carbonated drinks in the world released several batches of soda, on the labels of which the names common in each country were printed. People who found bottles with their name on them posted photos themselves.

This promotion led to a surge in the popularity of an already well-known brand and significantly increased sales.

«The Man Your Man Could Smell Like» Old Spice

This company is known as a manufacturer of hygiene products for men. She made waves in the marketing industry with a commercial called "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like."

At the moment, the number of views of this video is several million, which could not but lead to an increase in brand awareness and an increase in sales of its products.

«Dumb Ways to Die» Metro Trains

An Australian train company has released an animated video "Dumb Ways to Die" to improve safety on road tracks. The video raises very important topics for life, and therefore its distribution was extremely useful for the public.

The video and the song sounded in it became extremely popular on Youtube and gained millions of views.

 «ALS Ice Bucket Challenge»

The reason why this campaign was launched was the task of raising funds to combat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. But her success exceeded all expectations. A huge number of popular personalities took part in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and as a result, it became one of the most famous campaigns in the history of the Internet.

«The Blair Witch Project»

The promotion was launched in order to draw attention to the premiere of the film "The Blair Witch Project". The positioning was based on the fact that the film was written based on real events, which introduced an element of mysticism and mystery. As a result, an amateur film with a small budget paid off many times over and went down in the history of world cinema.

Nike — «Dream Crazy»

Nike specializes in the production of sporting goods. Many of her promotions were successful, but special attention should be paid to the campaign with the participation of Colin Kaepernick under the slogan "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything." Although this message caused a controversial reaction, the pace of sales of this company increased significantly.

Apple — «Shot on iPhone»

A huge corporation for the production of technical innovations has launched a campaign with a call to take pictures with new phones and share the resulting images. In this way, users themselves demonstrated the quality of the new cameras.

Frequently Asked Questions About Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is one of the most effective ways to attract new customers and increase brand awareness. But how do you incorporate viral marketing into your marketing strategy? Let's look at the questions that will help you integrate viral marketing into your business.

Can small businesses on a budget benefit from viral marketing?

They definitely can. One of the advantages of viral marketing is its low cost.

What books to read about viral marketing?

• SetGodin "Idea-virus".

• Steve Jurvetson and Tim Draper "Viral Marketing".

• Justin Kirby, Paul Marsden "Word-of-mouth marketing".

• Russell Goldsmith "Viral Marketing".

Who can use viral marketing?

This tool should be used with caution, as it may not be suitable for everyone. Moreover, it cannot guarantee 100% effectiveness. However, there are factors that can help you understand that viral marketing is right for you:

• Availability of social networks and a live audience.

• Goods or services that do not fit into the censorship policy of some sites.

• Trust and loyalty of subscribers to specific publications.

We wish you to be able to open a dream business, and we hope that you helped with understanding the topic of viral marketing.