The holy grail of internet marketing is figuring out how to make something take on viral behavior on the web. Essentially, the definition of viral marketing is marketing that spreads like a virus – in other words, spreads by itself without you having to be involved. If any one person could unravel the secret to successful marketing, this great enigma of online marketing, that person would become an almost instant millionaire. If you want to try and make your own viral campaigns, then that is a worthwhile endeavor to pursue. Here are several timely guidelines to get you off to a good start in this potentially explosive-results area of marketing.
You will just about never see something become viral that everybody is totally familiar with, and that really makes sense when you think about why people pass it around. It doesn’t matter what kind of viral marketing campaign you’re running – ultimately you should try stand out of the crowd in every possible way. People are tired of seeing the same old rehashed stuff again and again, and they will help you make your viral marketing campaign a success by spreading it by word of mouth, because after all that’s what it’s all about. Viral marketing is contradictory because most viral events seem to be something that was caught as a coincidence, yet viral marketing is about intent. As far as targeting a particular market, most if not all viral events are just broad-based and appeal to people in general.
Obviously there has to be something to capture the minds of people with your campaign.
Any viral video or anything else must contain something that hooks their attention if only for a brief moment or two. It is hard to predict which particular niche audience will take off with a viral idea. We have seen viral videos work pretty well such as one in which an actress was the central player, but maybe it was viral because she was in it. The basic litmus test that you can do is by asking yourself if you yourself would find your offering interesting. Realize that it is very difficult to do this on purpose, and it takes experience and knowledge of psychology, we feel, to do it with intent.
A controversy is what it is because people are talking about it – if you can create or capitalize on a conspiracy that you’ll be able to truly create a viral marketing campaign that needs no external push to spread around. So start paying attention to all types of news, even the more unsavory kind can work very well. Naturally and obviously you cannot, or should not, make up fake news stories because eventually that will back-fire on you. Remember that it is much easier to have smaller successes with viral marketing, and even those may be bigger than regular campaigns.