You wake up one day and decide to check your social media stats. To your surprise, you discover that you have very few followers. You ask yourself, why am I not getting any engagement with my posts? Then, you find out that many of your followers are suspicious-minded people who only want to be entertained. What a letdown! You have wasted a lot of time and effort getting followers only to realize that most of them aren't interested in your content. Before you spend another dime on getting more followers, you want to make sure that you are following the right people. Are these people really interested in your content? Are you sure that you are not wasting your time and effort? You decide to research more about viral marketing, thinking that it might be the key to growing your jual followers audience.
What is viral marketing?
Put yourself in your reader's place for a minute. Imagine that you are a person who is on the fence about purchasing a particular product or service. In order to make a good decision, you need to learn more about it. So you do a little bit of research, and you discover that there are multiple viral marketing campaigns about the product or service that you are thinking about purchasing. This might seem like a good idea at first, but when you consider the possibility of being tricked, you decide against it. After all, why would you want to support a company whose marketing ploys might be out to trick you? So you decide to continue your research and discover that viral marketing is a type of marketing that makes a product or service popular through a viral campaign, often referred to as a ‘viral'.
This scares you a little bit. You never really trusted this form of marketing, and you don't want to get scammed, so you decide against making a purchase. Is this kind of behavior normal? No. It is not. You are supposed to be helping people, not lying to them. But what if a lot of people are already convinced that your product or service is worth investing in, or that it is a good idea, and you just need to spread the word?
This is why you need to be careful when you choose who you follow on social media. You never know what kind of person you are following until you see what they post. Often, people's true colors will come through in their online behavior. You don't want to be following someone who might turn out to be a scammer. So you decide to filter your followers based on keywords, and you unfollow those who don't seem to have a genuine interest in what you have to say.
How does viral marketing work?
There are multiple ways that viral marketing works, but there are basic principals that underlie this method of marketing. To put it simply, if you want to be successful with a viral campaign, you need to understand how people are more likely to act when they are passionate about an idea or product. So you, as a marketer, will need to be passionate about what you are trying to promote.
For example, let's say that you are an adult beverage brand looking to promote your new flavor of gin. You have a viral campaign that you want to promote, but you don't have the budget to hire a reputable public relations firm, so you decide to do it yourself. You post a link to your flavor of gin on social media and ask your followers to try it out. You expect that, as a brand that is already known to their audience, your customers will be more amenable to trying out your new flavor.
But what happens when your followers don't like your product? Some people might think that your flavor of gin is strange, perhaps even disgusting. So you start to get angry messages from people who don't appreciate your efforts. You feel bad because you have put so much effort into reaching out to people who might end up not being interested in your product. To make matters worse, you discover that many of your followers are bots that like, comment, and share fake content. This is when you realize that your efforts have not been in vain, but rather, have led you to a better understanding of your target audience.
Choosing the right platforms
The first step in understanding viral marketing is to identify the platforms that you will use to spread the word about your product. It is important to choose platforms that already have an established user base. If you want your product to be noticed, you should not start from scratch and aim to build an audience.
This is why you should look for platforms such as Instagram, which already has over 1 billion active monthly users, or YouTube, which has over 3 billion monthly active users.
Once you have chosen your platforms, it's time to move on to the next step of getting your product or service known.
Research the target audience
The next step in understanding viral marketing is to do some research into your target audience. You want to choose industries that you are already engaged with, or in which you have experience. For example, if you already run a blog for your personal brand, then choosing to promote a pet products brand might be a good idea.
Sometimes it can be difficult to know exactly who your target audience is, so you can choose to spread the word to a select group of people or to use social media to find a broader base of supporters.
Deciding who to target is not an easy task, and you have to make sure that you choose the right people. It is important to understand that, in choosing this group of people, you are not being discriminatory. You are simply trying to choose the audience that is most likely to be interested in what you have to say. For example, if you are an eco-friendly brand, then fans of your favorite YouTube channel who are also interested in green living might be the perfect audience for you to reach out to.
Creating content for your target audience
The next step in understanding viral marketing is to create content that is relevant, interesting, and, above all, shows how your product or service is beneficial to the target audience.
This step is critical, and it is likely to determine the success or failure of your viral campaign. If your content is not good, then no one will want to try out your product or service, even if the general public seems to love your brand.
When you choose a product or service that you know very little about, it is difficult to know what kind of content to make. After all, you don't want to appear incompetent by making false claims or offering incomplete information. This is why it is important to do your research before committing to create content for a viral campaign.
Determining how much to spend
Once you have created content for your target audience, it's time to determine how much you are willing to spend on your viral campaign. This decision is likely to be the most difficult part of your plan. You have to ask yourself, is this content worth spending money on, or is it just a waste of time?
There are many factors that you need to consider when deciding how much you should spend on a viral campaign. Larger budgets are likely to attract more attention from potential customers. However, you also need to consider how much you are willing to spend, and the size of your audience on the various platforms.
If you want to maximize your investment, then you need to determine how much you are willing to spend, and then choose a platform that has the largest audience. For example, if you want to promote your pet products brand on Instagram, you might choose to spend $100 per month, as opposed to $10 on a random YouTube channel that you found.
It's also important to consider how much demand there is for your product or service in your chosen market. If there is high demand, then it is likely that people will benefit from your efforts, and this will translate into more interest in your content.
This is why it is important to determine how much you are willing to spend, as this will give you a better idea of how much return you can expect from your investment. However, you also need to be aware that sometimes the most effective form of marketing can be the cheapest. For example, did you know that sometimes you can get the most out of your product by simply showing it be used in a video?