Viral marketing is the new age technique of encouraging individuals- anyone and everyone to pass on a marketing message to others. This results in an exponential growth in terms of exposure and influence of the marketed content. The strategy is termed ‘viral’ marketing because they make use of rapid multiplication to carry on the content to a great number of people.
Before the advent of the Internet, this strategy was referred to as word-of-mouth/creating a buzz/leveraging the media/network marketing. Hotmail.com is a viral marketing success story. They gave away free email addresses and services by attaching a tag at the bottom of every free message sent ‘Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com’. This worked like a charm and Hotmail grew exponentially.
What clicks with viral marketing
Free giveaways
People cannot resist getting something free. So, this is a wonderful marketing strategy that pays off very well. You can provide coupons for products or services. Apart from these, free email services, free information, free “cool” buttons, free software programs ( ones that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the “pro” version) are a huge hit with target audiences. Viral marketing is a slow and steady process that pays off. Free services generate a lot of interest and gets people to explore the content. Ergo, your marketing job is done.
Enticing content
What does mankind want? Most internet users want to kill boredom and be cool. People want to be popular. Understand human emotions and wants. This helps you develop marketing content that will be loved and spread around.
Exploit man’s need to be a social animal
Man is generally social. This helps viral marketing strategies. If one is impressed with something he finds, he tells others in his network. These people pass it on to their respective networks. And so on. A lot of marketing strategies exploit social networks and ask people for permission in order to send out promotional mails to others in their mailing list.
Scout for other’s resources
There are authors who give free content to internet magazines and periodicals. Through this, marketing content is sent out. The periodical needs articles and you need to market content. That’s a win-win situation.
Be happy if people want to copy your content
The best form of appreciation comes in the form of plagiarism. If someone wants to copy your content, permit them. Of course, specify that they have to include the copyright statement. Otherwise, it becomes illegal.
Viral marketing’s best buddy- YouTube
The best example of viral marketing platform today is Google’s YouTube. Everyone knows how Gangnam Style became a huge hit in a matter of days through YouTube. If a video is interesting, people tend to share the same in other platforms. As number of viewers multiply, the content becomes popular.
Why viral marketing
The best advantage of viral marketing is that is very inexpensive and it generates a lot of interest in your product/service. That being said, it is not easy to garner mass interest unless the content you come up with is extremely interesting.
Here is more on Social Media Marketing.
