What is viral marketing?
Viral marketing is a strategy in which business owners encourage their customers to introduce their brand, products, and content at no cost.
This method is very similar to the spread of a virus in an environment, with the difference that in Internet business, the virus is the content, slogan of a brand or products and services of a business.
In fact, by running viral marketing campaigns, you can put your brand name on the tongues. By distributing viral content and content related to your business, you can put your name in the audience’s subconscious and the general public. In the continuation of this article, we will look at viral marketing and explain its benefits in Internet businesses.
What is Viral Marketing?
Viral marketing is the strategy used to convey marketing messages from one person to another. Using this strategy, every customer is encouraged to share the content of a business. Without the slightest cost to the owners of that business, every customer becomes infected with the viral content of a particular brand and shares its products and advertising slogans with others.
Just like the mechanism of a virus, this strategy uses the feature of exponential growth to distribute and disseminate the content of a brand among thousands or millions of people. The company’s customers try to personalize the content with their desire. Or publish the products of that company without being aware of doing so! In other words, with the help of viral marketing, the customer does his best as a marketer to promote your brand awareness (Brand Awareness) without receiving any money.
The type of content produced in this type of marketing is not very important and important in the context of its activity, i.e., the Internet. The viral content you design can be an educational article, a short animation, or a trivial Instagram challenge. But keep in mind that your viral content should encourage people to share it with others.
Some believe that the simpler the viral message and content. The better it stays in people’s minds, while others believe that the deeper the viral content. The more people are willing to share it with others.
The Benefits of Viral Marketing
Advanced Customer Listing
Customer lists are very useful in the field of offline marketing. Suppose you sell pizza, so you want customers to share their positive experiences of eating your pizza with other people. Of course, the number and quantity of customers and the quality of your customers effectively attract other people. So with the help of viral marketing, you can get an advanced list of your customers. For example, a customer (A) who is completely satisfied with your products introduces you to his friend (B). He becomes your new customer, and if he is satisfied with your products and services, he introduces you to his friend (C). Slowly In this way, you have obtained B and C customers from your old customer, A, and by continuing this process, you will have a long and advanced list.
Impressive growth in a short time
Have you ever wondered why this type of marketing is called viral marketing? In answer to this question, we must say that because its mechanism acts like the spread of a virus, it increases customers exponentially. When exposed to the public, the content produced in viral marketing spreads rapidly everywhere, and in a sense, it can be that this content is contagious. As a viral disease has a very high potential for spread and spread, you should expect a significant increase in the number of your customers after implementing viral marketing strategies.
Earn credit
This method is done through your customers so that your brand will be known by many people in a short time, which will naturally increase your credibility. In this way, each customer is like a link in a chain that takes your business content to the next link and creates a huge chain of customers that leads to the credibility of your business.
Save on advertising costs.
To be better seen on the Internet, you need to use other methods besides viral marketing, which will naturally come at a cost. But by following the rules and tips of this type of marketing, you will gain a large audience in a short time so that you will not need to use other methods. In other words, you are so exposed to new contacts on the Internet that you will not need to advertise your business.
How does viral marketing work?
You do not need complicated steps to do this. Just create a compelling video or photo and post it on the internet. First, you have to introduce the desired content to a few people, and then, with a little patience and reflection, the users will do the necessary work by sharing that content.
In some cases, the viral content release occurs randomly and, once pervasive, triggers a positive wave across the Internet. But to introduce a brand verbally, you have to plan more carefully to achieve the desired result. For example, you can use two methods to introduce a promotional video: In the first method, the content is presented directly so that the audience is aware that they are watching promotional content. But in the second method, the main purpose is hidden in the published video and is injected indirectly into the audience’s subconscious.
Now that we are familiar with the concept of viral marketing, its benefits, and how it works, we turn to the features of the content produced or the viral content:
Features of viral marketing content
One of the main elements of viral marketing is its content so that it can be widely disseminated or viral in a short time. In other words, if the content produced does not have viral marketing features. No matter how hard you try to publish and promote it, the results will not be visible. The following is an example of 10 important features of viral content:
Astonish the audience
People like to surprise their friends and acquaintances by sharing content (photos, videos, podcasts). They are interested in publishing educational and new content, especially if it challenges the ideas of themselves or their friends. A 2013 Brian Carter poll on Facebook shows people are crazy and in love with compelling content. Looking at the first place of shared content in 2015, we will find that its attractiveness is the key to its spread or virality.
Alzheimer’s enemy beer! (Shared about 1 million times)
The closing nights of 2014 and close to Christmas, the publication of this medical content in an online magazine in London was so attractive to the people that they shared the content to celebrate the New Year holidays.
Use Trends
We all know how influential trends are, so you can increase the connection between yourself and your audience by commenting on topics or incorporating them into your content. In other words, try to use popular and up-to-date topics in your content to attract the audience as much as possible. For example, in 2015, most of the content produced had a zombie and science fiction theme.
Sea voyage with zombies! (Sharing about 1.5 million times)
Fox News is very popular, but this post was so widely shared by people that Fox News will never come close to this level of sharing!
Be inspiring
Motivational and inspirational quotes (motivational pictures and speeches) are content on the Internet that has become very popular. Inspirational content comes in many forms, such as story form, sports, etc. People are not eager to share inspirational quotes.
51 beautiful sentences in world literature (shared about 4 million times)
Articles that are indexed are at the top of viral content. For example, the Buzz Feed site is a great resource for such posts that you can use to generate content.
Use great photos
Listed content with amazing photos is one of the ideal types of content. Google has recently turned its attention to photos of one content, prioritizing content that contains photos.
52 tourist places to visit in 2019 (about half a million times shared)
This article ranks fourth in the New York Times because it is cataloged. In addition, high-quality photos of tourist places worldwide are included in it.
Use of animals with salt
An article with photos of kittens, dogs, or small pets is very appealing to the audience. For example, some videos make special clothes for domestic cats or make interesting videos about dogs nursing their babiTheythey get millions of subscriptions for their content.
Controversial content
Creating controversy and usual tricks increases interaction but sometimes causes division and division. However, people like to show that they are part of a group or support a particular point of view by sharing this type of content. In fact, in this way, they prove their loyalty or belonging.
Health and fitness tips
In the last decade, paying attention to health and having a beautiful body has been one of the main concerns of people. Access to such content without paying financial costs provides very positive points in health and fitness to the audience.
12 sports movements to have a beautiful body (shared about 1 million times)
This article related to the fields has been prepared in the form of a list to encourage the audience to read and use photos of fit people.
Personality, color, and tests
People love quizzes, especially if they find out about themselves. People like this type of content because they can easily share it with their friends. Most of these tests ask about a person’s personality traits to share to see the results. This material is published quickly, especially if the test results show a positive person.
Color test (shared about 5 million times)
This type of test made a lot of noise on Facebook in a way that attracted you from the beginning. You have to share to show your rank and score in this test to others. It is what increases the number of subscriptions. The following link contains examples of this test for your use.
Channels publishing a viral content
In the process of virilizing content, it should be that the secret to success in viralization is to convey a quality and appropriate message to the right messengers in a secure and appropriate environment. Therefore, we will continue to try to examine these three keywords:
Message
More engaging and memorable messages are better content for viral marketing. You can make a simple message more memorable, interesting, and effective by applying very easy solutions. This unique message should be as simple as your ad content and encourage the audience to share.
Messenger
To get a message viral, we need three types of messengers: marketers, influencers, and salespeople. Market Specialists are always in the pulse of the market, and whatever happens, they are the first to know. Influencers are also audiences who have a lot of social connections, are ubiquitous, and are very popular with people (you can read the article What is Influencer Marketing to learn more about this model of marketing). If needed, sellers are also people who receive the message from marketers and make it more attractive, and then give that message to influential people to spread.
Environment
The environment is one of the influential elements in viral marketing. Because the audience is very aware of their environment, small changes lead to great results. So you have to choose content that fits the publishing environment, values, and attitudes common in that environment.
There are many channels and methods for spreading viral content that can attract many people. For example, publishing advertising content via email, social networks (Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook), and video-sharing sites such as Aparat significantly attract the audience and customers.
Different methods of viral marketing
Value viral marketing
In this method, the high quality of a product causes the customer to introduce that product to another person. You can not attract customers to your business by publishing viral content in this method. But your product’s quality and first-class nature is the main feature of this type of marketing.
Misleading viral marketing
In this type of marketing, you persuade your customers to introduce products by offering rewards as a business manager. He acts as your salesperson and receives rewards (discount codes, free products, and commissions) for introducing the brand, selling products, and attracting customers.
Critical viral marketing
In this method, the person should feel that other people’s needs will be met by sharing your product or service. For example, using your product has been so useful to him that he thinks the needs of others will be met by using it. So try to share as much of your business content with others as possible.
Unpleasant viral marketing
This method is actually on the other side of the viral marketing coin. The customer tries to encourage others not to buy and use it due to the unpleasant experience and low product quality. You should produce high-quality products so that you do not get into this type of marketing because you will quickly lose all credibility.
Conclusion
In recent years, the world of advertising in digital marketing has become very specialized and complex in such a way that strange concepts have emerged in it. Viral marketing is one of these strange concepts that, despite its name, is very simple to implement and familiar with its various stages. In addition to running viral marketing, it will miraculously increase your customer engagement by sharing viral content shared by ordinary people. So try to incorporate this type of marketing into your organization’s marketing strategies.
