How much do you know about viral marketing ?

What is Viral Marketing?

Thousand and thousand of video being uploaded online and social media everyday. Videos are being shared thousand times with the speed of light. What exactly is viral marketing ? Do they do any harm to businesses ? Let’s find out !

Viral marketing is businesses create a video content that talks about that product. After which it shared multiple times from one viewer to another on exponential rate. Viral marketing is one of deadliest strategy to use that helps marketers spread their message quickly to their consumer. It works the same as biological virus which spread from one person to another in order to create a “BOOM” effect on social media. Viral marketing would spread from a person to another to create substantial awareness.
https://www.smartinsights.com/online-pr/viral-marketing/

According to statistics, 45% of B2C marketers believe visual content is their most important type of content. (Content Marketing Institute, 2017) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics) This depict that there are increasing in number of customers who appeal to viral marketing as a form of “attraction” for them to do purchase with businesses.

Advantages and disadvantages of using viral marketing

Advantages of using viral marketing

1. Low Cost !
   Company only required to pump in initial advertising in regards of the production cost. When the desired target audience expose to your advertisement, they will do all the work for you by sharing your advertisement from one person to another. Businesses at this point in time will just have to sit back and relax.
   Your brand or product will be aware by your customers in no time !
   https://www.viralagency.com/5-advantages-of-viral-marketing/

2. The “BOOM” Effect !
Businesses takes a long and whining road just to reach the success of being viral or known in the market. Good news is we have a shortcut where it will bring your businesses a head-start by creating the “BOOM” effect by using viral marketing.
https://www.viralagency.com/5-advantages-of-viral-marketing/

3. More Customers !
Viral marketing helps businesses to prosper by creating more lead to the potential customer segment by getting them to remember you. This could be catastrophic to the competitors as the customer will remember your viral marketing campaign which make a great impact on your brand category. As a result, this would generate more sales (Ka-ching) to your businesses.
https://www.viralagency.com/5-advantages-of-viral-marketing/

Disadvantage of using viral marketing

• Not Repetitive !
  Businesses or brands unable to repeat the same viral marketing from the previous year. They are generally cannot be repeated simply because the content is familiar to the target audience and they might not be attracted unlike the traditional marketing campaign can be repeated.
  https://www.ecommercewiki.org/topics/57/viral-marketing/articles/717/what-are-the-disadvantages-of-viral-marketing

• Negative marketing buzz
  Businesses might craft their viral message in a way to communicate with their customer. Different individuals have different ways of interpreting the message, as a result, some of the messages is being interpret as negative message at the target audience perspective. This may result as a huge impact on businesses in terms of their brand and reputation.
  https://searchcustomerexperience.techtarget.com/definition/viral-marketing

• Hard to measure
  Most of the viral campaign have a hard time to measure in terms of media reach or exposure as well as desired target audience. The number of click may not indicate the right amount of reach to the desired target audience. Media reach to the target audience are rather generic and complicated as businesses are unable to find out what’s their demographic.

Real life examples of successful viral marketing

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge started back on 2014. The campaign is to help to raise funds for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Disease. The challenge is to pour a bucket of ice water over the head and challenge minimum 3 person to do the same, at the same time make a donation to ALS Association.

This Viral Marketing campaign have involve numerous celebrities to take on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge such as Bill Gates, Tim Cook, Oprah Winfrey and Mark Zuckerberg. With this viral marketing campaign, ALS have raised about USD $115 million with the span of 8 weeks. This are some of the video of ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

#Bottle Cap Challenge

Bottle Cap challenge started 2019 and existed within the martial arts community. The viral started after Kazakh Taekwando fighter Farabi Davletchin posted back on social media and started nominate to continue the trend. After a while it went viral and numerous celebrities took up the challenge.

Even though this is not marketing related content went viral on Internet, this has show us the power of using viral marketing. Below are some of the video of #Bottle Cap Challenge .

In my opinion, viral marketing does help businesses to create the “BOOM” effect on the Internet to have a head-start in creating brand awareness. At the same time, there is a risk of having a failed viral marketing if the content of the viral marketing campaign is not properly craft which may result significant impact on to the brand and reputation.

In conclusion, viral marketing can be a powerful tools that allow marketer to boost the brand awareness on a particular product which causes a catastrophic effect on the brand category. Not only that, it also help to catches the desired amount of attention to your brand as well. Thus, it is important to adopt it efficiently to boost your businesses.

Thank you for reading my blog hope that you may share your opinion too on viral marketing ! Feel free to comment at the comment section below.