Concepts of Viral Marketing
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Concepts of Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing can be defined as a method of creating hype about a piece of content, product or a service in a more attention-grabbing and memorable way. This form of marketing uses social media platforms, video contents, spreading the word about an article, product or service of a brand rather than just creating an advertisement and broadcasting it on TV. A content is said to be viral when it spreads rapidly as well as extensively from one viewer to another. When social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube are involved in sharing, texts, videos and images to millions of audience, it goes viral in minutes. In simple words, Viral marketing can be defined as a process of letting people do your marketing work without them even acknowledging it.

Presenting the most effective and time proven techniques and concepts of viral marketing:

Target Audience:

This is the first step towards developing a viral campaign, you must find out who are your targeted audience and determine their presence online. You must put efforts on it, as nothing can go viral on its own. Your message must reach the right people, it must create the interest so that they share it with others. The channel you plan your campaign on, is equally important as marketing on a wrong channel will hinder your ability to reach the targeted audience which in turn will nullify the efforts you put to create the hype.

Enable Easy Sharing:

Content doesn't go viral if it couldn't be downloaded or shared. It won't go viral by people merely watching it. Therefore, you must keep it mind that your content should be available for download, sharing as well as embedding. When it's easily shareable it'll go viral all over the internet. Your content will be accessed from websites, blogs and other video streaming platforms. From the marketing perspective, you must aim to simplify the message in order to increase it's meaningfulness, this will encourage more people to share it with the others.

Be Unpredictable:

If you want your marketing campaign to be noticed, you need to be unpredictable. Try to be a little different with your marketing campaign every time. People won’t notice you if they know that someone has already done it. Stop trying to make it look cool, it's cliche. Don't try to promote your product that it's great. Surprise them instead, be unpredictable with your presentation.

Prefer Video Content:

It is a time proven concept that, video content tends to get more viral than its counterparts. A video has a capability of making your viewers more engaged with your product and services. For an instance, if you upload a video on YouTube or Vimeo, then it is shared to your friends and if they find it entertaining and interesting they'll share it. Eventually your video will become popular, and if everything works well then it'll end up spreading all over the internet. If the video is outstanding, then the people will include it on their websites and blogs. This way, your audience will not only watch your video on platforms like YouTube but will also see your video on different sites. This will enhance it's popularity even more.

Offer Services For Free

“Free” is the most powerful word in marketing vocabulary. Why? Because no one says NO to free services. It can be observed that mos of the viral marketing programs tend to offer some of their products as well as services for free, in order to attract attention from the customers. Freebies capture the visitor’s attention. Then these viewers observe other services that you're selling, which increases their desire to buy.

Add Emotions:

For making a significant impact, an emotional appeal must be present in your campaign. As the experts suggest, viral marketing is all about emotions. The only way to include emotional appeal is by creating something which is full of emotions, either with love or with hate. You must either be a complete idiot or present yourself as a genius to entertain. For creating the hype you must aim to create something that'll make the viewers happy or extremely angry.

Skipping Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing is focused in promotion of the product. This approach focuses on presenting the insights on how good the product is and includes influential personalities like athletes and filmstars promoting the features of that product. But, unfortunately this doesn't seem to work at all! People expect something that's more interesting and has a high entertainment value in it's story. Hence, we must focus on creating a an interesting story while running a marketing campaign, rather than focusing solely on the product/services or even the company.

Social Reach

This is yet another effective viral marketing concept. Using influencers of your niche to recommend your product or service on social media platforms makes it easier for your brand to reach more potential customers. Contact and reach out for the influential personalities of your industry and convince them to try your product or content, but make sure to not directly ask them to share it, as they’ll share it normally. The more important thing here, is to offer a highly unique content that is able to genuinely profit their fans/followers, and you must leverage this aspect so as to get your content broadcasted by them.

Reinforcement of Content:

The message that went viral once could be easily forgotten. People came across your campaign. They might even think that it's interesting, unique, and you touched their emotions on a high level. Eventually you have their complete attention. But, is your job really done? The answer is NO! It just started. When you have their attention, its the perfect time to act. Just give them more of it. Make series of content delivering the same message. This would be entertaining as well as a perfect marketing strategy to completely hold their attention on your product. Therefore, it's efficient to have a series of viral messages to strengthen the efficacy of your campaign.

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