Viral marketing is the new buzzword in the digital marketing industry that means to promote a product contagiously. The term viral here takes its essence on how information is spread rapidly from one person to other just like a viral infection. It is either spread by word of mouth or sharing through social media posts and mobile networks. The techniques around viral marketing include creating videos, an offering of a valuable service or a product, creating an emotional appeal and enabling easy sharing and downloading.
The three aspects of viral marketing when executed effectively results in a successful viral campaign:
• Message: The message that you convey through a viral campaign should be effective, enticing and memorable. When it has some appeal to the audience then only it has the potential to go viral.
• Messenger: The intended message that needs to go viral should reach the three types of messengers that are market mavens, social hubs and salespeople. Market mavens are the individuals who are usually the first people who come across new postings. Social hubs are the people who have an exceptional number of social networking connections. They act as a bridge between the product and the new audience. The last ones are the salespeople who are tasked to modify a message in such a way that it amps up it potential to go viral and they further forward it to social hubs.
• Environment: It is essential that when you launch a viral campaign, then it should align with the time and the environment. For instance; if you want to promote a furniture brand then you should know that the chances of sales are more during the festive season.
Viral marketing utilizes the following channels:
1. Web search engines and blogs
2. Polling and contest
3. Target marketing web services
4. Television and radio
5. Influencer marketing
6. Search engine optimization
7. Social media optimization
8. Industry-specific organization contribution
Roles of social media:
Social media has a pivotal role in viral marketing as the number of social media users is increasing each passing day exponentially. They spend more time on social media than on their email accounts. So, if they come across a post on their social media, then they are more interested in looking through it and sharing it with their friends and family.
