In marketing, we all dream about achieving viral success and receiving an exponential amount of “buzz” for our individual campaigns. From time to time we hear about creative successes, such as the Moonfruit “win a MacBook” campaign on Twitter. What does it take to go viral and is it even something you can plan for, or does it just happen?
Fundamentally you need to be able to create a passion, a reaction or a significant feeling in your target audience to act as a catalyst. This means that you have to create anger, laughter, concern, surprise, need or a combination of these to ensure that your couple of seconds of product fame will turn into a focus of attention. Remember that it has to be all about arousing emotions.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make, however, is to start off by coming up with a weird and wacky idea and by focusing too much on the bizarre or the extreme. It is important to focus on emotions, but not fundamentally good for long-term image to shock, scare, repel or repulse potential clients! It is true to say that “shocking” almost always means viral exposure, as in the “guy who miraculously avoided being squashed by the out-of-control bus” video, but you want to be able to portray your business in an always powerful and positive light.
Remember that viral campaigns need not be restricted to one medium. Indeed as we know, social marketing is most effective when several different platforms are interconnected. While you may be focusing on social marketing to get your ball rolling, don’t be afraid to plan press release campaigns or other off-line initiatives to enhance and to back up.
If you believe that you have come up with a neat angle for your product, service or brand, don’t be ready to rush it out to the waiting world. Ask yourself the question – are you really ready for a viral explosion. You must prepare as if this campaign will really take off. The very objective is to make sure that you get a lasting benefit from what will effectively be a shorter term spike. As such, will you be able to capture the contact details for everyone who visits your primary website or social media sites as a consequence of this buzz? Moonfruit estimated that their US traffic (they are a UK based company) increased over 1000% as a result of their viral campaign success.
How do you plan to “go viral?”
Matthew Toren
“Small Business, Big Vision provides a framework for you to unleash your driven and relentless passion to achieve unprecedented growth.”
I think a successful formula of viral marketing includes entertain, education, and collaboration.
you should have someone videotape terrorists cutting off your head with a butcher knife while you’re wearing a t-shirt with the “new brand’s” logo on it. that’d be great.
mobile marketing is set to be the next big thing- it is more effective than any other type of marketing because it is so personal, ie if you receive a text message, you are bound to read it, even if just out of curiosity.
That seems a little extreme gift ideas, but it will definitely stir some attention. The last viral thing I remember was Chocolate Rain. A company could have easily seized on the success of that song but nobody jumped on board.
Some funny jokes.. cartoons.. artistic videos and ads.. prizes don’t really work. these days it is getting increasingly difficult to get even close to viral
i use social networking and try to provide people with quality content.
Well, the only thing I can say is that once you go viral you can get tremendous amounts of traffic – and money… but is is difficult to get it right and/or find a “viral” subject…
oh…, and by the way I do agree with one of the guys who just commented about mobile marketing… that’s the next big thing for sure, but how to master it right?
I would say so. It hurts the U.S. economy because they send the majority of that money back to their “home” country. That limits the money that is in the flow of the economy.
Social marketing is the best strategy for viral marketing.
I agree with Sytropin and the chocolate rain example. Perhaps instead of doing it yourself, coming up with a strategy of piggy-backing the already-success of something viral would be a good way to go.
With the whole “google-ads in youtube” thing going on now, I think people are finding more innovative ways of piggy-backing current successes.
With social marketing, my studies have pointed me in the direction of creating a social network between the different mediums. Apparently it’s working well for some, but I’ll keep you posted on my own progress :).
Hey Matthew! Really nice post. I am still yet to fully educate myself on viral marketing, but as you highlight, it is certainly something you want to head towards, because that explosion in business growth is what every internet marketer is chasing.
That is a good post for newbies thanks.
When going mobile, unsolicited text messages can be reported to proper authorities and our mobile number can be blocked for spamming. That’s one thing to consider when using mobile technology for viral marketing.
Isn’t one of the keys with viral marketing to treat it like a slightly more profitable lottery – put in lots of good entries and over time odds are (are they) that one will come up trumps, rinse and repeat.
There are some other keys as well where from you can get some success as you are looking for.I am really happy to see here about this.But people need to understand about this.
Really nice post. I’m still yet to fully educate myself as viral marketing, but as the highlight, is definitely something you want direction, because the explosion of business growth is what every Internet marketer is pursuing.
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cool post for viral marketing techniques
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social networking is best.
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