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9 Proven Viral Marketing Techniques Every Successful Marketer Is Following

When people think about VIRAL MARKETING, they think that it’s an almost impossible thing, Right?

Many people think that it requires spending thousands of dollars and lots of time to create amazing content and it still needs a hell of a lot of luck.

But, today I will share with you few super simple viral marketing techniques that will help you to drive more traffic and sales.

These techniques don’t require lots of time, don’t involve with spending large amounts of money and they absolutely do not rely on luck.

If you do not use online viral marketing techniques or not familiar with them at all, then you are putting your own business at a disadvantage by missing out on millions of potential visitors to your website or blog.

Before explaining the viral marketing techniques, let me describe what the Viral Marketing is all about.

What is Viral Marketing?

I believe we have all heard the phrase “It went viral”.

But, what does that mean?

Viral Marketing is a method of creating buzzwords or marketing pieces that are attention-grabbing and memorable in our modern, always-connected world.

This method of marketing utilizes social media, text messaging, videos, and other person-to-person methods to spread information about an article, product or service instead of just creating a commercial advertisement and putting on radio or TV.

When something goes viral, it’s spreads extensively and rapidly from one person to another.

With the Platforms like Facebook and YouTube, sharing videos, images and stories to thousands even millions of people, can happen in minutes.

Viral marketing simply is the process of letting other people do your marketing for you without them even realizing it.

Hope you got the idea about viral marketing and now I will jump right into the viral marketing techniques 🙂

The Best Online Viral Marketing Techniques

Viral Marketing Technique #1: Target the appropriate audience and channels

The very first step to develop a viral marketing campaign is to find out who your targeted audience are and where your target audience lives online.

Nothing goes viral on its own, you need to send the right message to the right people. Your message needs to create the interest, if you want them to share with others.

The channel is equally important as because if you are marketing in a wrong channel then you won’t be able to reach your targeted audience. If you are unable to reach the targeted audience then you won’t be able grow the interest.

Let me give you a specific example here-

If your targeted audience is women aged 18-24, middle-class, single then it might be a good idea to incorporate Pinterest into your marketing channel to go viral.

Because, Pinterest is a marketing network where 80% young women is active there.

Viral Marketing Technique #2: Create videos

Another excellent way to go viral is by making a video. A video can make your viewers engage in your product and experience.

If you add a video on YouTube or Daily motion, then you can share that video with your friends. If they find it interesting and useful they will share it as well.

Eventually, the video becomes popular, it can end up spreading all over the internet.

Moreover, if your video is really interesting then people will embed your video on their websites or blogs.

As a result, people will not only watch your video from video sharing platforms but also they will see your video from different websites. This will make it even more popular.

The thumb role for making a video viral is the more shocking, memorable or funny your video is, the more likely it is to go viral.

Let me give you an example of a funny viral marketing video which went viral.

Viral Marketing Technique #3: Offer valuable product or service for free

Who does not like something valuable for free?

I don’t think so you will get many people who would say they don’t want to get something valuable for free.

That’s why, “Free” is the most powerful word in a marketer’s vocabulary.

Most viral marketing programs offer valuable product or service for free to attract attention.

Wilson’s Second Law of Web Marketing is “The Law of Giving and Selling”. (WILSON, 2012)It means once you give away something, you sell something.

By giving away something valuable you may not profit today or tomorrow but if you can generate people interest on you then you will profit soon.

But how?

Here is the process-

Free generally attract the visitor’s eyeballs. Eyeball then see the others desirable things that you are selling and increase their desire to buy!

Eyeballs bring sales opportunities, valuable email addresses and advertising revenue.

That means if you want to earn something; first you should pay for it.

Offer-Valuable-Product-or-Service-For-Free

Viral Marketing Technique #4: Create emotional appeal

Viral marketing can’t make much of an impact unless it has got an emotional appeal. Viral marketing is 100% about emotions.

That’s why this is the most effective technique among all viral marketing techniques.

Now the question is how you can create a very strong emotion?

Here are some of the points you have to follow to create emotion. You need to-

  • create something which is filled with love or hate
  • either be an idiot or a genius
  • create something that will make people happy or insanely angry

Here is an example of emotional ad with the title “Love Has No Labels”, that went viral in 2015.

The emotional drive of any viral campaign must be strong enough to succeed in grabbing attention.

Viral Marketing Technique #5: Do something unpredicted

The title explains itself.

If you want people to notice your marketing campaign, you need to do something unpredicted – something different.

People won’t bother to have a look if they know someone has done it before. People always want to see or learn new things.

Forget about trying to make it looks cool – everyone does that.

Forget about trying to promote your product/service as just being great – others are doing that too.

Let me give you an example here, an unpredicted advertisement is one the most effective viral advertisements.

A bear being attacked by a man. Was it expected?

No, Not at all!

See the interesting video below 🙂

 

Viral Marketing Technique #6: Enable sharing, embedding and downloading

Nurses advice at flu season, stay away from people those who are having cough, don’t touch your eyes, mouth or nose, and wash your hands often because the viruses only spread when they’re easy to transmit.

Similarly, if your message or content is easy to share, download or embed then it will be spread as fast as virus does. That means you need allow people to:

  • share your content or message easily
  • allow people to easily embed it on their own sites
  • download the content

Moreover, from a marketing standpoint, you should simplify your message so that people can easily understand which will encourage people to share with others. Everything you do to make that easier is going to improve your campaign.

Allow sharing-embedding-downloading

Viral Marketing Technique #7: Don’t Focus On Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing is all about promoting your product or service, giving the insights how good is it, how it will help you and possibly using movie stars or supermodels.

But do you think people care about you or your product?

No, not at all!

People always expect something good with interesting story.

Let me give you a real example here-

When Sony made their Bravia TV advertisement, the product was not even seen throughout the advertisement but yet everyone remembers it.

Therefore, focus exclusively in creating a good and interesting story, rather than focusing on you, your product or service and your company.

Viral Marketing Technique #8: Social Outreach

Social outreach is another effective viral marketing techniques. It’s easier for you to reach more people when influential individuals in your industry are recommending your product or service, or putting your content in front of your target people.

Reach out to influencers in your industry and ask if they will be interested to give a try your product or service, or to see your content but don’t directly ask them to share your content, as they’ll normally spread it if they find it useful for their followers.

Let me share with you my personal experience on social outreach. Recently an article has been published in our blog with the title “Best SEO Tools For 2016 Recommended By Industry Experts” and I have notified them their recommendations have been featured in our blog post. Many of them have shared this article into their social networks.

The important thing is to offer a very unique content that can genuinely benefit their followers/readers, and leverage that aspect to get them to share your content.

So think about it, if the industry experts shared your article or recommend your product or service then others will share it too 🙂

Viral Marketing Technique #9: Reinforcement

A one-time viral message can quickly be forgotten.

People just have seen your campaign. They think it was interesting, unpredicted, their emotions has reached a high level – you grab their complete attention.

You might think your job is done.

If you think so then it may not be a good idea as I said at the beginning one time viral message can be forgotten quickly.

Now what will you do?

As you already grab the people attention now you need to act. One of the easiest ways of doing that is to give them more.

I will take progressive insurance ad campaign as an example. Think about progressive insurance and their long running ad with their spokesperson Flo. People may not have required insurance when they first saw the progressive ad. But, after seeing few versions of the same message, people will remember the name progressive when they need insurance.

Therefore, having a series of viral messages will strengthen the effectiveness of your campaign.

To recap, viral marketing techniques are always changing as they have everything to do with trends.

By implementing the above 9 proven viral marketing techniques you can make your marketing campaign or content viral.

If you have any viral marketing techniques of your own, please feel free to share in the comment below 🙂

(GrowthFunnel_Code)

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Comments (1)

  1. Word-of-mouth marketing (WOM marketing) is when a consumer’s interest in a company’s product or service is reflected in their daily dialogues. Essenti 1698 ally, it is free advertising triggered by customer experiences—and usually, something that goes beyond what they expected. Word-of-mouth marketing can be encouraged through different publicity activities set up by companies, or by having opportunities to encourage consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-marketer communications. Also referred to as “word-of-mouth advertising,” WOM marketing includes buzz, viral, blog, emotional, and social media marketing . Word-of-mouth marketing differs from natural word-of-mouth references to a company s products and services in how it may come as the result of a promotion, encouragement, or other influence by a company, otherwise known as seeding. When a diner has a wonderful time at a restaurant because their expectations were exceeded and later tells tweets about it, or when someone had a great experience using a product in a new way and tells everyone they know about it, those are examples of word-of-mouth marketing. Also, word-of-mouth marketing does not stop at the first interaction; it tends to lead to a cascade of follow-on interactions.

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