Viral Marketing is an excellent way to gain a potential of millions of visitors. Viral marketing is an intentional advertising campaign that provides content in one of many forms (video, pictures, text, games, etc..), in which people are inclined to share with others. It's "viral" because successful viral marketing campaigns spread rapidly from person to person. The campaign can either be directly or indirectly related to the service or brand that you want to promote, meaning that the viral content can have something or nothing to do with the service/brand.
Formulating a Viral Marketing Campaign
One of the corner stones of almost all viral marketing campaigns is that they're either unique, or highly entertaining in one shape or form. Here is the thought process that goes into formulating a viral marketing campaign.
- First consider your website's industry. Is there anything ultra-unique / entertaining that you could create that has to do with your industry/niche?
- Put it into place. Do what it takes to create the viral content. Whether it means shooting/spoofing video, pictures, text, etc..
- Subtly promote your product/service at the end or within the content.
- Promote your campaign. This means submitting it to every social site out there and trying to get it as much forced recognition as possible. If it's good enough, it *will* catch on!
Examples of Successful Viral Marketing Campaigns
- Guys backflip into jeans
This video, while it looks 100% amateur, was created by Levi Jeans. The video at the time of me writing this has 5.5 million views, and is estimated to have reached a total of 100 million views through other sources of media.
- Awesome Guitar Player
Viral marketing in its simplest form. This is just a video of an awesome guitar player, with an advertisement stating he learned from a particular website. 62 million views! Yeah, I can guarantee you they received quite a few orders as a result of this video.
- Diesel XXX Commercial
A more raunchy type of ad, but none the less has generated millions of views.