- What is Viral Marketing?
- How Viral Marketing Works
- Advantages of Viral Marketing
- Case Studies of Viral Marketing Campaigns
- Steps to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign
Q. What is viral marketing?
A: Viral marketing is a strategy that encourages individuals to share a marketing message, leading to rapid and widespread dissemination of content through social media, email, and word-of-mouth.
Suppose you are an entrepreneur, small business owner, or a marketing professional looking for a great marketing strategy. It’s likely you’ve asked of the questions:
“What is viral marketing?”
It’s one of the most popular advertisement strategies and has enough marketing buzz to show for it. And for great reasons, too.
When done right, the benefits of viral marketing spread through all ranks of an organization’s sales and marketing efforts. It makes marketing effortless, helps save substantial costs, greatly expands the organization’s reach, and lays a solid foundation for seamless and organic customer acquisition and retention.
More importantly, it is a non-intrusive form of marketing—something that the modern customer absolutely appreciates.
Hence, it’s crucial for small business owners to adopt viral marketing strategies as part of their business growth approach. Leveraging the power of the people to push your campaigns across channels and niches that you might not have ordinarily covered extensively.
In this article, you’ll learn:
- How viral marketing works
- The benefits of viral marketing
- Examples of successful viral marketing campaigns
- How to create viral marketing campaigns
But first things first: What is viral marketing?
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What is Viral Marketing?
If you ask 10 people this question, you will likely get 10 different answers. The idea behind the concept of viral marketing is well encapsulated by Cyberclick’s viral marketing definition:
“Viral marketing is a marketing action that is able to generate interest in a brand or product (and therefore potential sales) through messages that spread quickly from person to person.”
Picking this viral marketing definition apart, you’d notice that the pieces of the definition fall into two main themes:
- Marketing: Marketing actions geared towards creating buzz around a brand, product, or service with hopes of generating sales.
- Virality: Creating enough interest that invariably encourages the target audience (and even individuals outside your mark) to spread your marketing messages rapidly—from one person to another.
For viral marketing to be successful, it must be organic and voluntary. There is no relentless persuasion from your end to get your audience to interact with and push your message.
Viral marketing materials and content typically contain messages or graphics that spur strong emotions in the audience to share them with their network.
In turn, some members of their network may also find the material interesting enough to share within their network, usually via social media, word-of-mouth, and emails.
It goes on and on, from person to person and network to network, until your marketing campaigns become incredibly widespread.
Although viral marketing seems to be a recent marketing buzzword, the concept has been around since pre-1990.
Marketing experts point to “Marcus is coming” as one of the more popular pre-90s viral marketing examples. The marketing team of Marcus Montana, an Australian pop singer, flooded thousands of posters with the inscription “Marcus is coming” all around Sydney. This generated some buzz and discussions around the air of mystery surrounding the advert.
Ever since, we’ve seen many marketing campaigns launched in a similar manner. Agreeably, the video-centric social media era changed how viral marketing happens, but the fundamentals remain pretty much the same.
How Viral Marketing Works
There have been many times when a social media post goes viral. The original poster might not have put much thought into structuring the post to ensure that it would appear in everyone’s feed, but it does anyway.
While this scenario paints a better picture of an “organic” spread, it is not the sort of chance you always want to take when marketing your products.
Marketers and business owners must put more thought into their viral marketing strategies to at least set the gears in motion for organic dissemination.
So, if you’re wondering how to create viral content, you must start by understanding the mechanisms driving virality.
Mechanics of Viral Marketing
Successful viral marketing is a marriage of numerous elements aimed at capturing the target audiences’ appeal.
The higher the appeal, the higher the likelihood of people sharing them—even in the absence of direct intervention from the brand.
Therefore, when creating your viral marketing strategies, you should have a checklist to confirm that the necessary elements of this marriage are present.
Thus:
- Social currency: This refers to the value that your content has when it is shared. How would sharing your content affect the individual’s social status and identity? Will it make them seem knowledgeable, responsible, entertaining, or in the know?
- Emotions: This element borders a bit on the principles of emotional contagion theory, which suggests that an emotional state can be transferred from person to person, leading to the spontaneous spread of emotions. Remember the trendy cat videos of the late 90s and early 2000s? People shared them because they thought they were cute and wanted their family members, friends, and colleagues to also see something cute and maybe cheer them up. So, the question is: What about your marketing materials can trigger a strong emotional response that will make your audience want to share them with their network?
- Triggers: Associating your marketing campaign with things people interact with or experience daily or seasonally could influence them to engage and share your content. This practice is evident in how breweries attempt to associate their products with after-work relaxation and football matches via entertaining, share-worthy ads.
- Public visibility: If your product can be seen, then it can be sold. The same applies to marketing the products; your marketing campaigns should be where the people are, and only then would your audience share them. Hence, the use of social media and hashtags in viral marketing.
- Storytelling: A good story easily combines all the elements above to appeal to your audience’s sensibilities and compel them to share your content in their circles.
In addition to these elements, it is also necessary to consider the practical value—in essence, the solution—that your content offers. And embed it in your messaging to make your audience feel like they are sharing something of value.
Advantages of Viral Marketing
- Cost-effectiveness: B2B businesses usually spend about 2-5% of their revenue on marketing, for B2C businesses it’s often as high as 5-10%. The burden of marketing and customer acquisition costs is reduced significantly when your audience handles a huge portion of your promotional efforts. Think of it this way: how much would it cost you to reach 10,000 leads? Now, project how much could be saved when a user with thousands of followers shares your content on their feed. Some of them may even share it with thousands more—with the cycle continuing unlimitedly for as long as your campaign is still a marketing buzz.
- Wide reach: Building on the point above, viral content has the potential to reach a large, international audience quickly, even beyond your target market. This could differentiate your business from other small businesses, plant your influence across regions and demographics, and propel spontaneous business growth.
- Non-intrusive: Marketing strategies that harness the power of algorithms and user data to share campaigns with an audience sometimes end up making the target audience perceive the brand as intrusive and bothersome. This is especially true now that people are rightly criticizing over-surveillance and oddly intrusive ads. With viral marketing, the user is more or less a voluntary participant in your marketing campaign, casually coming across it in their network and opting to share it of their own volition. Not because it was imposed on them at every turn.
- Brand building: Viral marketing is inarguably a great way to build your brand. Appropriately combining all the vital elements of viral marketing, including public visibility, storytelling, and emotional appeal, creates a brand image that portrays compelling values that transform the audience into your ally. The alliance between a business and its customers and potential customers is an age-old recipe for effortless brand building.
At this point, you are probably wondering if there are instances where brands have effectively reaped all the benefits of viral marketing outlined above.
Well, successful viral marketing examples abound.
Case Studies of Viral Marketing Campaigns
Let’s look at four case studies of viral marketing that took the internet by storm.
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
In 2014, three young individuals with Lou Gehrig’s disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), who barely knew each other but were connected through social media, spearheaded the virality of the ice bucket challenge.
The challenge, launched by the ALS Association, aimed to propagate awareness of ALS and drive support for the ALS community.
It encouraged people to take a video of them pouring ice, water, or confetti over themselves. Then, share the video and encourage others to do the same for ALS awareness.
Although the challenge had been around for a while, it finally took off when Senerchia partook in it, shared it on their social media feed, and challenged their friends to partake.
Pat Quinn came across the challenge on his social media feed through a mutual friend he shared with Senerchia. He took the challenge and shared it on his feed.
The video popped into Pete Frates’ feed, who was his online friend. Pete Frates took on the challenge and received massive support from his friends and family, who were doggedly keen on spreading awareness.
They engaged with the challenge in every way possible until it spread further across their networks. It became so widespread that celebrities, influencers, and even Bill Gates and George Bush took the challenge.
And the rest is history.
The challenge spread to 159 countries, with over 17 million participants and over 10 billion views.
The result?
Global awareness of ALS, $115 million for the ALS Association, and $220 million for global ALS research.
IHOP’s IHOb Campaign
On June 4, 2018, the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) made a tweet on its official X account:
“For 60 pancakin’ years, we’ve been IHOP. Now, we’re flippin’ our name to IHOb. Find out what it could b on 6.11.18. #IHOb”
This was followed by a couple of tweets that drummed up more buzz and encouraged people to guess what the “b” stood for.
In general, many conversations started around IHOP and where rebranding could be taking them. IHOP leaned into the noise and fueled it some more.
Some days later, the company revealed that the “b” stood for burgers. Then, it reverted to its old name.
Being that they were largely known for pancakes, the online stunt was targeted at letting customers know that they also serve burgers.
As a result of their viral marketing strategies, IHOP got:
- 1.2 million tweets in the first 10 days.
- Over 100 brands and celebs to spread their brand awareness through numerous conversations
- 42.6 billion earned impressions
- 27,082 articles written about them in a few days
- $113 million in earned media.
More importantly, they sold more burgers than they had ever sold pre-campaign.
Dollar Shave Club’s Launch Video
Dollar Shave Club was founded in 2011, and by 2012, it was a hit among young men.
Why? Viral video marketing.
With only a budget of $4,500, the company made a slapstick ad that was very engaging and funny while focusing its message on the practicality and values of its product.
Going against all odds, the ad encouraged the audience to stop buying razors from big-name brands with unnecessary features, change their razors as often as necessary, and save lots of money on high-quality razor purchases by signing up for their $1 monthly razor-by-mail service.
The video went viral for being engaging, funny, and blunt.
As a result, the video has gained over 28 million views thus far. In many circles, Dollar Shave Club now serves as a lesson on how one viral video can catapult a company into a billion-dollar company.
Oreo’s “Dunk in the Dark” Tweet
Ask some marketing experts “what is viral marketing” and what makes it work. Don’t be surprised when they say something like “saying the right thing at the right time and at the right place.”
That was exactly what happened on February 3, 2013, when a blackout occurred during the Superbowl game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens.
In an excellent show of quick thinking and wits, Oreo’s marketing team posted a tweet within a few minutes:
“Power out? No problem.”
Emphasized by an image of an Oreo in the dark, with the inscription: “You can still dunk in the dark.”
The tweet immediately gained thousands of engagements across X and also spread to other social media platforms.
The organic spread of the post led to increased brand visibility, more media coverage, and drove more positive buzz around the company.
As a result:
- The post gained over 10,000 retweets, 18,000 likes, and 5,000 shares in the first hour. It did similar numbers when it got to other social media platforms, even briefly holding the World Guinness Record for the most Facebook likes in 24 hours.
- It won multiple awards, including the CLIO Awards and the Cannes Lions
- While targeting the American audience, it was the subject of thousands of headlines across more than 100 countries
The ad was so impactful that it’s not unusual to hear something like, “What’s our Oreo blackout moment?” during a marketing team meeting.
The most interesting part? Oreo didn’t pay a dime to drive the campaign.
Steps to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign
As mentioned earlier, a marketing campaign or a post can go viral, even when the poster didn’t imagine it would.
But as a marketer or small business owner, you don’t want to leave the success of your campaign totally to chance.
Now, you might argue; Oreo did it, why can’t I?
It might interest you to know that “Dunk in the Dark” was a team effort involving 15 marketing professionals who worked around the clock to create a campaign for Oreo’s 100th birthday at the time.
They already had their market research in place and were waiting for where to apply the results.
And that brings us to the steps to creating a viral marketing campaign:
Beyond trends and needs, it’s also important to assess feedback and engagement on previous campaigns to know what garners the most interest among your audience.
This could be as simple as determining if videos or memes get the most engagement. Maybe, as we’ve seen among fast-food chains, light banter on social media with your competitors is what gets your campaign to go viral.
Wrapping Up: Viral Marketing
Given everything you’ve read, how would you respond when someone asks, “What is viral marketing?”
However you choose to approach your viral marketing definition and subsequent viral marketing strategies, ensure that it has all the right elements that contribute to organic sharing and spread of content.
Further Reading:
- Technologies Powering Virtual Office Spaces
- Empowering Independence: A Guide for the Modern Independent Business Owner
- Maximizing Customer Value: A Guide to Customer Retention Analysis
- Green Marketing Definition: What It Is and How It Works
On a lighter note, and considering the idea of organic sharing, you could describe viral marketing as a marketing campaign for the people and by the people.
Besides this article, you should take more time to examine how companies in the viral marketing examples provided in this post refined their online marketing tactics to spur virality.
Also, examine how they tapped into the benefits of viral marketing at the peak of their marketing buzz and afterward. Merge the strategies and lessons to create your own viral marketing campaigns and boost your brand awareness.
