Why do some brands go viral?
And no, it’s not luck. There are key reasons behind viral success. In this article, we will discover how relatability, social media strategies, influencer partnerships and timing all contribute to creating content that spreads like wildfire.
The Power of Relatability
The key to turning a standard marketing campaign into a viral ‘phenomenon’ lies in its ability to be relatable. If the audience feels that personal connection with the content, they are more likely to engage with it through shares, likes and comments, which helps propagate the campaign’s message extensively.
When creating content, you should focus on creating campaigns that evoke emotional responses and highlight everyday experiences. This alone can significantly amplify the impact of your marketing efforts.
Emotional Appeal
At the heart of shareable content lies emotion. Campaigns that spark feelings such as joy, amusement, and awe have a greater chance to spread virally.
The Cadbury’s Gorilla commercial, for instance, tapped into the emotion of joy to become memorable and achieve widespread circulation.
In a similar vein, We Buy Any Car’s advertisement used comedy to induce laughter and smiles, underscoring joy’s role in their communication strategy. Content that aligns with an audience’s values or supports certain causes tends to strike a stronger chord and promote sharing.
The potential for a brand’s campaign to go viral is significantly increased by humour and emotional engagement. Sharing becomes more frequent when people experience powerful emotions like wonder through content, which also has the effect of creating deeper connections with viewers.
Shared Experiences
You can build community and increase your user interaction by tapping into shared experiences.
Brands often get affirmative reactions from their audience when they relate to contemporary trends. A widely circulated post about a certain dress, which saw a substantial surge in popularity due to mass sharing and conversations.
By fusing common experiences with present-day trends, brands boost participation among users and promote the sharing of content.
By aligning yourself with viral memes, hit television series or topical events, brands enhance how relatable they are. Content that is both relevant and timely can align with an audience’s values and collective experiences.
Adopting this strategy not only creates a sense of community but also increases content visibility through word-of-mouth promotion and the concept of social proof.
Using Social Media Platforms
Modern viral marketing campaigns thrive on social media platforms down to its ease in shareability.
Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are great environments for these types of campaigns. It’s essential to grasp audience behaviours and current trends to maintain relevance and interact successfully.
When a brand actively engages with its followers, it not only increases visibility but also builds loyalty among them. Crafting timely marketing efforts is essential when boosting engagement levels and encouraging shares, both factors that significantly contribute to attaining that ‘viral’ status.
Capitalising on topical events can elevate the potential for content to go viral.
Platform-Specific Strategies
Each social media platform has unique characteristics and audiences that require tailored strategies.
For instance, the NBA captivates TikTok users with creative content, while Mejuri showcases products through customer stories on TikTok for social proof. Milk Bar leverages popular memes and formats to engage its TikTok audience.
Humour and memes are effective strategies for brands seeking to go viral on TikTok.
Viral marketing can reach consumers beyond traditional campaigns, broadening audience reach. With video content being the most effective at capturing attention on social media.
The Role of Influencers
Influencer marketing can expand a brand’s visibility.
When influencers become viral, they set the tone and steer conversations within their market. Brands associated with these viral figures often see rapid engagement in their campaigns through increased likes, shares, and commentary.
When endorsed by influencers, brands may witness enhanced credibility that builds trust among potential customers. Viral marketing campaigns frequently utilise social media influencers as initial carriers due to their large followings.
But, with every good thing, there are often risks involved. It’s important to remember that if a brand chooses an influencer who fall into controversy… This can lead to negative reactions against the brands themselves.
It’s also important to choose the right influencers, as 67% of brands who partnered with the wrong influencer saw no significant impact on their reputation and sales.
Celebrity Endorsements
Celebrity endorsements are a whole new playing field. These partnerships massively elevate a brand’s credibility and spark interest among consumers all across the globe.
When brands employ celebrity endorsements, they harness immediate recognition and capitalise on the star’s popularity.
Big names like Coca-Cola utilise this approach effectively by using famous personalities for endorsement deals. The inherent recognition and trust that come with celebrities help your brand emerge prominently in that marketplace.
Creating Shareable Content
Don’t worry, you don’t immediately have to sign brand deals with celebrities to create viral content.
You can start by understanding your target audience so you create content that resonates emotionally. Additionally, visually appealing and easy-to-digest content greatly enhances shareability. Consider posting audio-visual content, especially videos as these effectively engage social media audiences and captures attention.
It doesn’t hurt to throw in some humour whilst your at it, as this also boosts the likelihood of it being shared.
Visual Appeal
High-engagement visuals like interactive graphics or animations significantly boost content sharing. Incorporating humour and taboo subjects, as seen in Manscaped’s commercials, enhances memory. Posts should include bold, funny, wild or inspiring elements to capture viewers’ attention.
Humour and Creativity
Humour and elements of surprise getting incorporated into marketing strategies is another key elements.
By exploring different forms of comedy, brands can discover what truly engages their audience. Not only does humour serve as entertainment, but it also creates favourable emotional bonds with the audience, rendering the content more unforgettable and likely to be shared.
Timing and Context
Both timing and context are essential for viral marketing campaigns. Properly timed content can boost visibility whilst brands arriving late to trends will face negative attention due to audience fatigue.
Oreo’s campaign during the Super Bowl power outage is a prime example of effective real-time marketing.
Knowing the optimal times to post on various social media platforms can greatly impact a brand’s reach and engagement. Posting during peak activity times helps reach the maximum audiences.
Capitalising on Current Events
Brand messages that resonate with current events increase their relevance. When brands demonstrate an understanding of the context and time-sensitive nature of events, they appear more relatable and relevant to a wider audience.
Content that is designed to be shareable harnesses emotional resonance, relevance and entertainment value, spurring users into sharing it.
Engaging in prevailing conversations and employing trending hashtags can significantly boost a brand’s visibility on social media platforms. This approach doesn’t just capture the audience’s interests. It also improves a brand’s recognition, potentially creating a viral sensation.
Optimal Posting Times
Each social media platform operates with optimal windows for achieving maximum audience exposure. To put this into an example, posting on Instagram is most effective between 9-11am. By tapping into these intervals, brands can boost both their reach and interaction levels.
By strategically releasing content during these peak periods, the likelihood that active users will see, and engage, with the content rises. When this approach is paired with captivating material, it sets the stage for potentially viral instances that can amplify a brand’s visibility and influence significantly.
Case Studies of Successful Viral Marketing Campaigns
Effective strategies are showcased through the success of viral marketing campaigns, offering valuable lessons for other brands to enhance their marketing tactics.
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge exemplifies a successful viral marketing campaign. Its main goal was to raise ALS awareness and encourage donations, raising an impressive £220 million for ALS research. If you haven’t seen the trend, participants dumped ice water over their heads and nominated others, creating a chain reaction of participants and donations.
The campaign’s success stemmed from its simple, engaging concept, celebrity involvement, and widespread video sharing across social media. It created that sense of community and urgency, encouraging participation and message spreading, ultimately leading to one of the most viral hits the internet has ever seen.
Oreo’s Dunk In The Dark
The “Dunk In The Dark” campaign by Oreo stands out as a prime example of viral marketing. Triggered by an unexpected power outage during the Super Bowl, the brand disseminated a tweet that displayed an image of an Oreo cookie set against a monochrome backdrop with the clever caption “You can still dunk in the dark”. Despite being cost-effective, this tweet spread like wildfire across social media platforms, earning thousands of likes and shares.
This particular marketing stunt’s effectiveness stemmed from its quick-wittedness and timely delivery. By seizing upon a momentous live event, Oreo crafted a message with humour and relevance that struck a chord with its audience.
The Risks and Rewards of Going Viral
Marketing campaigns designed to go viral can be great, yet they also carry certain risks.
Achieving success in these campaigns can lead to expansion into new markets and increased revenue due to their reliance on audience sharing, which renders the outcome uncertain.
Efforts at creating a successful viral marketing campaign sometimes backfire if the messaging becomes distorted or misinterpreted, or is perceived as spam.
When producing content with the intent of going viral, it’s crucial to strike a fine balance between originality and propriety so as not to provoke an adverse reaction from the public.
Despite these possible challenges associated with viral marketing efforts, launching a victorious campaign that captures widespread attention often brings rewards that greatly surpass any accompanying risks.
Advantages
- Cost-effective visibility – Viral marketing provides widespread exposure at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.
- Minimal ad spend – When executed well, viral campaigns often require little to no advertising budget.
- Global reach – These campaigns can connect with potential customers worldwide, offering substantial international coverage.
- Brand awareness boost – Successful viral marketing significantly enhances brand recognition and engagement.
- Broad audience engagement – Viral content spreads rapidly, allowing brands to reach diverse demographics across the internet.
Disadvantages
- Risk of misinterpretation – Messages can be misunderstood, leading to backlash and reputational damage.
- Negative buzz – Viral campaigns can generate unfavourable attention, making public perception recovery difficult.
- False advertising risks – Misleading claims can undermine trust and hurt brand credibility.
- Consumer privacy concerns – Privacy issues may deter sharing and negatively impact brand reputation.
- Influencer reliability – If an influencer’s popularity declines, the campaign’s effectiveness may decrease.
- Overuse of influencers – Too many influencer partnerships can lead to audience distrust and negative perceptions.
How to Prepare Your Brand for Viral Success
Strategic planning, creativity and engaging with your audience are key elements in priming your brand to become viral.
By looking to successful viral campaigns as examples, you can refine your efforts to draw in a fresh customer base.
For marketing campaigns to succeed. Structured planning and tactical execution are essential. Combining word-of-mouth strategies with paid advertising allows for the best promotion of your content. Carrying out these plans effectively is vital for meeting the expectations of all involved in the process.
Building a Strong Brand Identity
Establishing a distinct brand voice is crucial for forging deeper connections with customers.
Conveying the core values of the brand gives your brand voice the ability to resonate among its audience, thereby developing bonds with consumers. Maintaining this consistency in communication across various platforms reinforces the recognition of the brand.
The maintenance of a relatable voice that is consistently presented on different channels is indispensable to building a strong identity for your brand that appeals effectively to consumers. Such an established foundation proves instrumental when creating content tailored to embody the method of your brand and attract the intended target audience.
The Verdict
In a nutshell, viral marketing campaigns are dependent on multiple elements such as their readability, capacity to emotionally engage audiences and effective utilisation of social media platforms.
The production of content that encourages sharing coupled with strategic timing are vital aspects for levels of impact.
