Viral Marketing: Pros and Cons of Going Viral

Viral marketing refers to a marketing approach that, either intentionally or unintentionally, spreads a shareable piece of content to a substantially large audience.

In the past, this was mainly done through literal word-of-mouth marketing. One person would positively talk about a product with someone close to them, which would lead to that person purchasing the product and doing the same. With the advent of the internet, millennials and Generation Z began to make these referrals through online social media platforms. This has led to marketing messages spreading to far more people at a far faster rate than at any other point in history.

Examples of viral marketing campaigns abound, but the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is one of the most prominent successes over the last decade. In the summer of 2014, the ALS Association encouraged people to pour a bucket of ice water over their heads to raise awareness about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. After more and more people (including celebrities) recorded videos of themselves doing so, the nonprofit ultimately raised well over $200 million in donations to help fight ALS.

While viral marketing is always a dice roll, it still comes with several key benefits. Consider these three advantages of viral marketing strategies:

1. 1. Cost-effectiveness: Successful viral campaigns are low cost because numerous people spread your marketing messages for free. In the age of social media, people can like or share content so readily you can sometimes forgo most of your ad spend budget if a particular piece of content starts to spread rapidly.
2. 2. Increased brand awareness: When something goes viral, small businesses and startups can increase brand awareness to a greater scale than they might have ever thought imaginable. An exceptionally viral campaign stretches far beyond the initial target audience into the mainstream of pop culture itself.
3. 3. Potential exponential growth: Viral marketing techniques can lead to real-time growth that’s difficult to replicate. They rely partially on the luck of the draw, but knowing how to tailor your marketing strategy to specific social media channels and users puts you at an advantage to achieve exponential growth.

Viral ad campaigns come with a few innate disadvantages. Here are three to consider:

1. 1. Difficulty in quantifying success: It can be difficult to decide on marketing metrics that determine when a marketing strategy goes from successful to truly viral. Any successful marketing strategy involves some element of word-of-mouth spread (either in real life or online), so whether or not it achieves virality is ultimately subjective.
2. 2. High element of chance: It’s hard to guarantee a viral campaign under any circumstances. All you can do is ensure you use the right digital marketing methods to set yourself up for success—the rest must necessarily be left to chance. You can mitigate this by studying as much as you can about how algorithms work on each social media platform you plan to use.
3. 3. Potentiality for a backfire: Sometimes viral advertising spreads widely but for the wrong reasons. Consider the number of times something trends on social media because of how much people dislike it. This takeaway from unsuccessful viral marketing efforts over recent years suggests it’s worth treading cautiously.

Viral marketing is as much a matter of skill as it is a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Keep these five tactics in mind to bolster your chances of creating a viral marketing campaign:

• Analyze social media data. The more you know about social media networks, the better positioned you are to execute a viral strategy on any of them. Keep an eye on popular hashtags. See what appeals on social platforms to specific demographics. Utilize what is pertinent from more traditional marketing strategies along the way.
• Keep up on current trends. There’s plenty of viral content to look at on social media platforms at all times. Use these trends as case studies to see what information you can glean. Tailor your own campaigns according to themes you tease out in the viral marketing campaigns that are popular at any given time. Just remember to balance out these trends with a sense of originality, too.
• Settle on a clear message. When it comes to viral marketing, try to settle on a clear brand message you want to convey. It helps if it touches on something in the current cultural zeitgeist. Something too abstract or obscure is unlikely to catch on and become a viral message.
• Try multiple marketing techniques. Keep your options open when trying to initiate a viral campaign. Your best bet is to do so through social media marketing, as these platforms enable sharing so well. Still, there’s no reason to stop including SEO (search engine optimization), emails, or text messaging in your overall marketing strategy. Video marketing, whether on social media or a hosting platform, can also prove very likely to spread virally.
• Use humor. Think of how many viral videos you’ve seen that have made you laugh. Marketing content with humor can help you achieve similar ends. Laughter is one of the most positive responses a piece of marketing can encourage in a potential customer. Use memes and other types of content to show your brand can laugh at itself and other elements of life in the twenty-first century.

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