Viral Marketing – The Key Factors For ‘Going Viral’

Wondering how your company can benefit from Viral Marketing?

These ten steps will set you on your way to ‘going Viral’.

Step 1: Appreciate The Meaning Of “Going Viral”

What does it mean to go viral? Going viral is when an image, video, piece of information is circulated rapidly and widely across the Internet.
Content on your website could very well go viral and if you implement this step your content could potentially be seen by millions of people.

Step 2: Understand The Limits Of Going Viral

Before getting too optimistic about your viral marketing campaign, you must first understand the limits of going viral.
Not everything you create will go viral, but after each campaign, you will learn the best ways to optimize your content for better results going forwards.

One share doesn’t make it viral.

Step 3: Know Your Target Audience

To go viral, you must start understanding who you are targeting. What does your target audience like? What are the most responsive to?
A good tip to take forward- find relevant respected advocates who already have a vast following of your target audience to support and share your content. Reach out.

Step 4: Offer Incentives For Customers

Content-based marketing goes hand in hand with viral marketing. Offer valuable information; best practices in your industry, warning of threats to your business sector or How-To guides with instructional content.
Promotional campaigns also add to your viral marketing potential. Contests offering a discount or free valuable material are great incentives that boost your potential of going viral.

Step 5: Make Sure People Can Find Your Content

Once you have established your viral marketing idea, it is necessary to plan how your campaign will be shared. This means you need a strategy for your content to be amplified.
One tip to take forward could be adding a call to action in your content asking people to share, comment or like the post.

Google is the main search engine on the web right now so it’s important to get your business optimised so your content is easily accessible. Not sure how to do this? Take a look at our blog post on search engine optimisation (SEO).

Step 6: Make Yourself Known

It is vital that your content is correctly optimised for search engines and is easily accessible to your target audience. Remember that your competitors are also ranking for the same keywords and targeting the same audience as your business. This further highlights the necessity to be unique. A call to action will increase the likelihood of engagement on social network sites; more engagement means more impressions. Make sure you are on the first page of google as customers are less likely to find you if you are on page 10.

Google Adwords is a great way of doing this. Take a look at our tips on how to improve your Adwords campaign.

Step 7: Utilise Trusted Channels

Your campaigns won’t always go viral so it’s imperative to ensure your content is constantly being published and promoted on trusted channels.

Try and reach out to popular websites and bloggers who influence your target audience. If your content is seen on a trusted and well-respected channel it further validates its quality and increases your viral potential.

Step 8: Don’t Overdo Promotions

There is a fine line between promotion and spam. Ensure you are subtle with promotion and not force-feeding content into the face of your customers.

Try and space out your promotional material so you are only implementing viral marketing periodically. Avoid negative responses by retaining the element of surprise with your viral marketing.
If your followers realise you are trying to go viral you’ll notice an immediate decrease in amplification. So be sure to implement step 8 when planning your viral marketing campaign.

Step 9: Fine Timing

Timing is key when creating a viral marketing campaign. When sharing your campaign online make sure you have researched your target market and their most active period online.
Knowing this information is important as it constantly varies as your following grows.
Using online tools like Google Webmaster can help with your initial research and guide your planning process. Results will be completely different for every business so make sure you know yours.
Once you know your target audience’s most active period you can then publish posts at these times and increase the chance that your viral marketing campaign will be successful.

Timing can make or break a promotion.

Step 10: Optimise for conversions

Certify that your viral marketing results in leads and sales.

Ultimately, implementing viral marketing is time and money invested and any investment requires a monetary return.

Be available on every platform and accessible via all standard methods (Phone, Email, Fax) as well as on all social media platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, etc).
Take a look at all the social media platforms your business can benefit from.

The validity of your planning will result in highly qualified leads engaging with your content with conversations registering interest and people purchasing your product or service. If you need any help with your website whether it be content, building or WordPress please do get in touch with us on the form above. Have a great day 🙂