Viral Marketing is one of the strategies that can be used by a brand or company in which a single objective is expected to be met: that the customers or users themselves spread the messages both on the Internet and in other media.
Viral Marketing depends on a high rate of person-to-person passage. If a large percentage of recipients send something to a large number of friends, the overall growth makes the snowball form very quickly.
What company wouldn’t love to see their messages spread significantly around the world? It’s the most fun and successful way to advertise.
So this type of marketing seeks to reach the maximum number of people possible but in the shortest time possible.
When we refer to reaching users through different media, we mean the Internet, word of mouth, radio or television.
When you hear that some material is viral it is because it has achieved a simple objective: that everyone talks about it and shares it with their colleagues and family.
Every viral content that we see out there usually has a very well designed strategy behind it, in which on the one hand, it is necessary to be lucky to viralize, but on the other hand, creativity and previous preparation are also relevant.
Let’s do an exercise and think of some material that has been viral and that we have loved. Was it luck or previous preparation?
Many of these contents that have been viral correspond to a particular brand. That’s why we want to leave you with the best examples of this type of marketing so that you can have some inspiration.
What is Viral Marketing?
Viral Marketing is the application of a set of techniques through Internet channels, but supported much in Social Media, in order to increase sales of products and services of a given brand, as well as optimize its positioning on the web.
This concept was coined in 1997 by Steve Jurvetson. After understanding this definition, the different businesses have been committed to propagate their different messages in an exponential way among prospects or people interested in their products or services.
Viral content usually comes in different formats, but the most popular are videos or interactive games.
They are not always associated with a brand. Remember the famous picture of the dress that some saw as blue and others saw as gold? This image went viral and was not associated with any brand. It was just a girl who uploaded it to Tumblr asking for her friends’ opinion.
However, any format is valid in terms of Viral Marketing: from written news, an email, software, etc.
The essential thing is that businesses understand that Viral Marketing is not a goal in itself, but part of a strategy that aims to encourage people or users to share their messages with their friends.
On the other hand, social networks are the perfect ally to make a viral strategy work, since Social Media tools manage to group many people with the same interests.
In this way, if a product or service content is liked by these users, this content will be of value to them, increasing the chances that they will share it and make it viral.
So, in short, Viral Marketing is the one that gets the interest and purchase of a certain brand through messages that spread and multiply like rice.
This means that people share it and comment on it quickly and from person to person, so the big goal is to get users themselves to promote such content.
However, there are many marketers who claim that this type of marketing can be a double-edged sword, since it is the users who take control of the viral content.
So with this, a brand risks the message being misinterpreted or parodied, as in the so-called and famous “memes”.
On the other hand, a viral campaign can also do great wonders and give successful results for our brand.
How does it work?
To execute a Viral Marketing campaign only a few steps are needed: make a video and post it on the Internet, see in which media it can be spread and wait for users to like it and share it by all possible means.
There are times when a content goes viral by accident: some user uploaded it and suddenly it becomes very popular on the Internet. That was not their goal, but because of things on the web, people liked it or, rather, disliked it and spread it.
However, for the dissemination of a message in which a brand expects it to go viral, there are two main types: the perceived and the covert.
In the case of the perceived message, the consumer is clear that it is advertising content.
And in the case of the covert message, the user does not know what brand it is until the end of the material.
In the case of covert messages in which the brand reveals its identity at the end, great care must be taken to ensure that the recipients do not feel cheated or deceived.
In any case, it is necessary to avoid 100% spamming the transmitted messages. The best strategy is to wait for the right moment without being intrusive and wait for the best of luck so that the content goes viral.
