6-highly-operative-viral-marketing-techniques

RyanMouddine
5 min readMar 9, 2022

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Introduction To Viral marketing Techniques

Viral marketing is now defined as the rapid sharing of an idea, a portion of this idea contains a marketing message about buying a product or service. Viral marketing techniques wouldn’t make much of an impact unless it has got an emotional appeal. It could be humor, shock, sympathy, surprise, bewilderment, curiosity or astonishment. viral marketing experts opine that unlike traditional mass-market campaign formulas that have been tried and tested over the years, there is no formula for success in a viral marketing campaign.

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Let us study much more about Viral Marketing in detail:

The millennial guys are all looking for some surprise, shock, excitement, thrill once in a while and now with the explosion of mass media and social media, a picture, video clipping, an infographic or a shocking tweet can spread like a virus across networks to people living in geographically different places and become the center point of discussion. It’s somewhat analogous to the virus that spreads fast along with computers and networks by replicating itself when a user opens an application.

A wardrobe dysfunction of an actress, a newsreader tapping on the desk and happily humming a tune not knowing the camera is still on, an old lady setting nursery rhymes to the tune of Carnatic music- Sa re- ga-ma-pa, a bridegroom’s embarrassment as a dhoti slips during his wedding are all videos that people instantly share and discuss, have a big laugh over it in private conversations and social media. Or it could be the slip of the tongue of a popular politician or an awkward speech from a public figure.

What is Viral marketing Techniques?

When the technique of ‘viral’ is applied to marketing in a professional it is called viral marketing techniques. It is any technique that induces users to share a marketing message multiplying exponentially its visibility and effect. The most quoted example of viral marketing techniques is related to Hotmail owned by Microsoft which markets its service and advertiser’s messages in every email sent.

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Viral marketing techniques

Top 4 Viral marketing techniques are as follows

  1. Imagine the bewilderment created by the video which shows the Torro Rosso’s F1 car being dropped by helicopter into a ski slope and then raced. The team was sponsored by energy drink Red Bull. According to Allen St John, a popular writer on sports and entertainment does not win races or get noticed on performance but it generates fun and excitement enough to get noticed otherwise. That’s what the marketers ultimately want.

2. The success of Hotmail was in giving the service free. Free email services, free software, free mobile apps that will pay off in the long run. Free services attract more interest among users and will be shared extensively. Free services can use their reach to develop advertising opportunities and e-commerce opportunities. The trick is in generating interest in readers. The Hotmail started it all with the classic.

3. When a firm is seen as a responsible corporate citizen that adds to brand value.
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that went viral set a new trend in charities and using online celebrities to strike it rich. It was one of the biggest viral campaigns ever. The campaign urged people to dump a bucket full of ice water on themselves, take its video and tag friend s to join in. The campaign succeeded in raising $100 mn for the ALS Association. It attracted the interest of globally-renowned people like Mark Zuckerburg, Martha Stewart, Justin Timberlake, Oprah, Bill Gates who all poured a bucket of ice water on themselves and posted videos. Challenged App is now available for companies to create similar challenges, create a video and post it.

It may not sound surprising to hear from viral marketing techniques experts that more challenge-wise viral campaigns are set to be launched thanks to the availability of apps for the purpose.

4. What if you create a video that is engaging, interesting or funny and it gets shared? Where does your brand benefit? The classic example was the ‘ReTweet to Feed a Hungry Child’ campaign of Kellog’s UK. The Twitter message hardly contained 140 characters and despite being popular for its charitable activities, the tweet didn’t succeed in creating a wave. Those who didn’t know of its charity activities saw it as an attempt to set up a viral marketing campaign that held the hunger of children hostage. Kellog’s attempt miserably failed and they had to apologize. The company tried to push a brand message without informing the audience what the message was all about.
The tweet read: “RT to help promote the our#GiveaChildbreakfast campaign. Click the link to learn how we help those in need: URL of the website” Here the failure was attributed to the lack of a message and focusing on the vital part of it. There should be a strong brand message, the viral part will take off on its own with a bit of push.

Conclusion — Viral Marketing techniques

As a strategy, viral marketing techniques has been a success and most of them appear to have used the online medium in conjunction with social media to great effect. For such a campaign, there are a lot of ingredients that need to go into it. Fun, humor and excitement are all good if there is an underlying brand message to convey. Otherwise, people will see the humor, surprise element or sensational stuff in it and share it. However, it will not add value to the brand.

The viral marketing campaign is mostly inexpensive and simple most often taken on mobile phone cameras and uploaded or taken using amateur camcorders. Intimate moments, surprising moments, caught on camera types all needed the presence of mind of the observer and one moment of hesitation would have resulted in those shots and scenes being lost forever.

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