When we talk about a virus, it’s something that creeps up to your computer system and multiplies in seconds. The next time you open your computer, it’s already filled up with something that makes everything crash. When you incorporate this idea in marketing, it’s a very powerful tool that makes everything possible. From making lots of profit and being popular in online communities, you will be able to get a lot of benefits using viral marketing. So, what is viral marketing and how do you incorporate it to your business?
♠ Viral Marketing
It’s a very powerful marketing strategy that compels customers to give or pass advertising materials to their friends, family members, and colleagues. It multiplies fast and it’s an efficient way of promoting anything – brands, products, idea, and services. It provides something that people can use for free and in return, they have to promote products or brands to other people. Good examples of a viral marketing campaign are brands that offer free email service that can only be signed up for an invitation only. That way, more and more people will have to forward and receive email invitations containing the brand.
When you do a viral marketing campaign, it will put your name or brand on a great place in the industry. Videos are often used since it allows people to input the idea on a detailed way at a fast pace. Once it become viral, it will multiply in millions in days of web exposure. Most of the time, viral marketing campaigns are planned. Sometimes, web campaigns happen by accident.
♠ Good Examples of a Viral Campaign
♦ Quality
The use of great technology and nice editing offers a great experience to the viewers. It is also ideal that the video isn’t shaky and the audio is clear. The best thing is – you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to create a nice and informative video for your business. With the technology nowadays, lighting equipments and high-def cameras isn’t that expensive anymore.
♦ Consistency
YouTube is a great place to start your viral marketing campaign. Always remember to be consistent to make people come back over and over again. This is done by producing not only one, but multiple videos about your product, brand, or services. Keep the production continuous – providing unique contexts, to build up loyal followers on the web.
♦ Brand
Building a brand on a web channel is quite a challenge – butt it will always create a great deal of traffic over time if done right. Incorporate your brand in a smart way; get it working immediately on your videos right from the start.
♠ Optimize Your Viral Marketing Campaign
The highlight of a viral marketing campaign is a great return of investment. You can always spend a thousand bucks for it but the returns can’t be compared to the amount you have spent. Here are some of the things that you can do to optimize your viral marketing campaign.
♦ Incentives
Incentive offers – this is how viral campaigns work the best. It encourages individuals to forward email messages to others. However, you don’t want to have a spam-like distribution so you might want to cap the incentives. Avoid open-ended incentives if you don’t want to end up with problems – financial, customer service, and privacy.
♦ Personalize
It’s all about experience – you don’t really respond to emails without any knowledge about its source. So, you have to make it personalized and make sure that it’s coming from a recognizable source. That way, people who receives emails responds – causing traffic and everything.
♦ Analyze the Results
As done in any marketing campaign, tracking the result is very important. This will provide information about the results of your campaign – if it’s effective of not. It will also give you an effective tool to broaden the horizon of your campaign over time.
There are still many ways to have an effective marketing strategy that might guarantee positive results over time. Following these steps is very important to jumpstart your viral marketing campaign. Knowing about the advantages and limitations is also necessary to have a solid idea to make it more effective in the future. Check out great examples of a good viral marketing strategy and incorporate it with your own business, brand, product, or services. Knowing the trend and people you want to reach out – their behavior and characteristics, is a good way to start your campaign. Take a look at the things that most people are doing nowadays and provide reasonable incentives along the way.
