The term “Viral Marketing” would have been a foreign term to so many in years past, but with the expansion of technology and social media in the last decade, viral marketing has taken off. Even if someone is unfamiliar with the ins and outs of marketing the word “viral” is known to virtually every person who is connected to technology. Viral videos, viral memes, and even viral news have been all the rage and anyone can explain that something that goes “viral” is spreading like wildfire and being passed around or shared. Marketing strategists have utilized the wonders of viral marketing to expand and promote their brand. It is undeniable that viral marketing gets the word out about a product or brand.
What exactly is Viral Marketing? Simply put, viral marketing is a strategy that spurs individuals to share and pass on a message about a brand, product, or service by word of mouth or through sharing via digital means such as social media, internet, email, mass media or through media.
The end goal of viral marketing is to get a potential consumer to hear the marketing message and spread it to everyone they know; friends, family, acquaintances, and really anyone that will listen. This creates a tidal wave of growth in the number of people hearing or seeing the marketing message. In the end, marketing teams hope that this will create new customers. The prospect is that producing a viral marketing message will encourage and create organic naturally occurring growth through the word-of-mouth, or digital sharing of the message and the rate at which it is spread will also exponentially increase as more people pass it on. Viral marketing can grow a company’s reach and its customer base and that’s what it’s intended to do.
Example
A perfect example of a viral message was the ALS bucket challenge which started in 2014. Three young men diagnosed with the disease doused themselves with ice cold buckets of water and the videos began to circulate at a colossal rate. Soon there were social media users, and people of all ages, participating in the ALS bucket challenge and posting their videos to social media. In turn viewers would watch the videos and share and reshare them until millions of dollars were being raised to various ALS charities across the globe.
It’s worth mentioning that viral marketing is not planned out like a typical marketing campaign as it is unpredictable and sometimes volatile. It can backfire and ruin a brand if the message and timing are not right. As with the ALS bucket challenge, no one knew what a massive effect this viral message would have on the entire world. That being said, there is no specific formula for viral marketing. It usually “just happens” and sometimes the ideas that “just happen” tend to be wildly successful. So a marketing campaign can only go so far in planning a viral message, instead a marketing team can plan to create a very powerful message in hopes that it will go viral.
Social Media
One of the main reasons viral marketing has become more prevalent in recent years is because social media has been the foundation or perfect environment for growth of viral marketing. Social media is essentially where humanity meets, shares, and exchanges info, ideas, opinions, and anything else that they want to release to the world. Social media has a constant flow of memes being shared. Memes in definition are messages that are captured in a picture or videos and are typically highly amusing. They are worth sharing because many times they are humorous and relatable therefore more people want to share with others. Social media is the breeding grounds for memes and many viral marketing messages are spread through these means. Along with memes, social media is constantly engaging users with “likes”, “follows”, “shares”, and forwards. Viral marketing thrives on social media because it is a force that can proliferate just about anything that is posted.
Accidental and Deliberate
There are two types of viral marketing strategies; viral and accidental. As it sounds, accidental viral marketing “just happens”. This is when a message that is created grows and spreads unexpectedly and it boosts a brand because of its massive success. On the other hand there is deliberate viral marketing, but even that has its limits. Deliberate viral marketing consists of planning a message just as you would with any marketing strategy, except both accidental and deliberate viral marketing focus on the three factors of the message, messenger, and environment. All three of these areas must be weighed to create impactful and influential results. Any size company can attempt to build a viral marketing message, the only downside is that this type of campaign is more difficult to measure. It is so heavily reliant on people spreading the message, and with messages being shared in split seconds globally, all of these factors can be hard to capture and assess.
Pros and Cons
The advantage of viral marketing is that, if successful, can produce tremendous results. A company, product, service, or brand can turn into an overnight sensation and success story within a mere matter of minutes. Viral marketing messages are also hard to forget thus creating lasting results that may continue to grow a brand or keep consumers coming back for more.
Some of the downside of viral marketing as mentioned above is that this type of campaign is harder to measure as opposed to traditional marketing campaigns. Another con is that sometimes the message does not speak to or influence the masses as intended and rather than a positive emotional response, some people may feel confused, offended, or downright angry. This can be detrimental for a brand and it may be hard for a company to bounce back after a viral disaster. Humans tend to share negative news just as much or more as the positive.
The Crux of it
The bottom line is that viral marketing can boost a brand in big ways. It’s hard to measure, but can still be “planned” to an extent. Social media is definitely the biggest habitat for viral marketing success. The message needs to appeal to the people and they can’t help but pass it on from there.
