What is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing referred to marketing techniques that use social networks to increases brand awareness and engagement. Viral marketing can also be used to achieve other marketing objectives such as product sales through word-of-mouth, video clips, ebooks, images or even text messages.

The Anatomy of Viral Marketing

Successful viral marketing requires that marketers create successful viral marketing programs. The goal of these programs is to identify goals and opportunities. For example, a sample viral marketing programs can be designed to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create viral messages that appeal to them.

Viral marketing can now use a collection of online social media tools that can make a viral campaign or message immensely powerful. Social media has made it easy to create and execute a viral marketing campaign with 1,000 times greater impact than what you get from regular traditional advertising channel. Viral marketers now have access tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Digg, and Flickr. Millions of people use these social networks on a daily basis, and with social media connection, viral marketing has become a true virus, spreading across the social media landscape.

Five Keys to Effective Viral Marketing

What are the key ingredients of an effective viral marketing campaign? While there are no set rules, here are some of the standard components that can help you implement an effective viral campaign.

Identify Audience

It is a two-step process. The first step is to identify your target audience – people who you intend to target and expect them to respond to “call-to-action” as a result of your viral marketing campaign. The second step is to individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and tweaking the viral messages to make sure it appeals to this segment.

Viral Content

Don’t confuse viral marketing with online advertising. While both serve the same purpose, they are designed and executed very differently. For example, you don’t want to create 30 seconds commercial and share it through viral channels. Traditional marketing is about promoting your product, while viral marketing is about your target audience. You must establish a strong emotional connection with your audience. Make sure your content is targeting your audience and not your product and services.

Make Strong Emotional Connection

The most effective viral marketing campaign is the one that appeals to our emotions. Your campaign needs to invoke a strong emotional response. This means that some people will really like it – while others will likely get angry.

Easy to Share

Viral marketing is all about your audience, so it makes perfect sense to allow them full control over your content. They should be able to share, download or embed the content in a commonly usable format. Your audience should be able to publish your content instantly and effortlessly.

Allow Feedback

One of the critical components of viral marketing is making a strong emotional connection with your audience. Allowing comments is one of the most effective ways to make this connection. Connecting with people through comments is like talking back and forth. To make this feedback process more effective, you also need to participate yourself actively.

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