Try it yourself: Visit Famoid.com to grow your audience.
What exactly is viral marketing?
Taking its name from viral infections and the epidemics that ensue as they spread, the term viral marketing is used to describe internet content that spreads rapidly.
Viral marketing uses web content intending to convince the audience to share the app or website with their family and friends, which then in turn re-share with theirs. This spreads much like a ‘viral disease’ does from person to person and can go on indefinitely.
The capabilities that this shared content has is that the company’s user base and audience, or both, proliferate. This direct response marketing increases exposure for apps and websites and the message that the company wants to get across is seen by an ever-increasing number of people.
The reason for going viral
Since more people are now on the internet than ever before, it is obvious that that’s where marketers want to concentrate their efforts when getting a company’s message or content across. Out of a total world population of 7.5+ billion people, the internet has 4.4 billion users that spend an average of 142 minutes per day on social media. An incredible 60 million messages are exchanged every day on Facebook, Messenger, and Whatsapp. On social media alone, Facebook has more than 2 billion active users, followed closely by the 1.5 billion of YouTube. Between them, Instagram and Twitter have over 1 billion users. These and other social media platforms all have the potential audience to make a video or post go viral in no time.
However, nothing goes viral on its own without the necessary tools and knowledge. With so many years of online sharing marketers now have a better understanding of how video and images need to be designed for them to go viral.
How does Viral Marketing actually work?
The principles behind viral marketing are really quite straightforward. The first step is to create material that will be so enticing that the social media platform user will immediately want to share with everybody.
Secondly, it must be easy for the user to share the content and that’s why the marketer has to provide the mechanism for sharing. This is usually a ‘Share’ button. From the moment the share button is pressed by someone, the audience begins to grow as this continues to be shared by the new audience.
However, because of the sheer volume of shared material going online every minute, it is very difficult for every video, photo or post to go viral and that is why the content has to be so special that it stands out. For most companies the goal of their viral marketing campaigns is not to increase sale, that is always welcome though, but to increase their brand awareness or a marketing buzz for a brand or product. This is one of the most important elements for building trust and loyalty for a brand and its how companies get to be dominant in their market.
What does viral marketing cost?
If the price of running a continuous ad campaign on TV, or any other mainstream campaign for that matter, is taken into account, then viral marketing is much cheaper. Moreover, viral marketing has the added benefit of allowing advertisers to target specific demographics according to the product and could include certain age groups, gender, area and so much more. These highly effective campaigns can be achieved at a relatively low cost and viral marketers know that they will reach the exact group that is targeted.
How to go about the research and planning of a successful viral marketing campaign?
As we mentioned earlier, online viral marketing campaigns do not happen by chance but careful research and goals.
Understanding the audience
Viral marketing is more than just producing something cute or funny. The marketer needs to have a deep understanding of the demographic audience to be reached. The targeted group of consumers will usually have similar likes and dislikes, wants and needs. It is also important for marketers to understand which emotions will get the audience to take the trouble to share the content since that is what viral marketing is based on. The best emotion for inducing sharing of content is the element of surprise, but so do admiration, inspiration, and happiness. If negative content has to be used, then the inclusion of one of the three emotions that induce sharing should also be included.
Getting the message or goal right
There should only be one primary message on each marketing campaign and the message should accomplish the goal of the campaign. If a campaign goes viral, it reaches its goal of creating brand awareness and trust. Any negative reactions to a campaign can have a damaging effect on the brand.
Getting the research right
Testing the content on a focus group or, something similar is the best way to know that the targeted market will be willing to share it. It is also important to research which social platforms are preferred by the audience that it is intended for.
Keeping an eye on the campaign once deployed
The actual numbers of watching a campaign go viral are addictive, but there is a lot more information that is needed than just the basic numbers. Social media reporting tools can manage the content; provide in-depth audience engagement numbers, reach, competitive brand analysis and much more. These are the statistics and numbers that provide the insights that allow for the refinement of the viral marketing efforts and even for even better follow up campaigns.
Why FAMOID.com is the top viral marketing tool
Besides reading and following this helpful guide the internet is an unpredictable place to run a viral marketing campaign without help from the experts. Famoid is the ultimate tool in viral marketing today. Providing excellent social media services, they offer reliability and an Active Support Team that is available 24/7 to provide instant solutions. This is the perfect place to start looking for those wanting to run an unforgettable, attention-grabbing viral marketing campaign that nobody will forget.
The two most important aspects in starting a viral campaign are the size of the audience where a viral idea is released and off course the content itself. An ad may by super funny and sticky, but if only 5 people sees it, the chances to go viral is rather small – yet release the same ad in a pool of 100K follower – and chances are much bigger to go viral.
Starting with a large base of Facebook, Instagram and Youtube followers makes a difference in viral marketing. So how do you grow your audience? How do you get more followers? It may be easy for Guy Kawasaki to tell marketers how – but he was a Google employee that started with a major boost from Google Plus. When starting from scratch, you need a potent tool to first build a sizeable audience.