Viral marketing (if someone missed an article about “partisan” marketing, read here), having conquered offline space, is rapidly gaining ground in the web environment. This type of advertising promotion has long proved to be effective both among professionals and amateur enthusiasts.
But how far do viral advertising and marketing techniques go? And is it worth using viral promotion methods, choosing them as the main marketing tool?
Viral marketing
Viral marketing involves the spontaneous distribution of content in the media space myadpcard. And what can make a consumer of information/products/ services share something with friends or acquaintances?
Uniqueness, unusual, non-standard content of the product, whether it is a fascinating author’s picture, comic book, book or video clip.
All kinds of the prize draw, lotteries, contests are also related to viral advertising – all of them have one goal: to draw attention to the main object of advertising (site, product, service, etc.).
Viral distribution is the natural distribution of content that is transmitted literally “from hand to hand”, from user to user.
A high-quality “virus carrier” is capable of showing stunning results literally on the first day after the launch of the campaign. For example, an interesting viral video, with the correct organization of an advertising campaign, is capable of gaining from 50,000 views or more on the first day.
An important point: the viral product must be copyrighted and bring some dividends (most often, traffic to the creator’s website).
Viral Marketing: Pros and Cons
Among the obvious advantages of viral marketing are:
- long-term – the life of the virus carrier is practically unlimited, unlike traditional advertising methods
- lack of strict censorship framework
- low cost of the advertising campaign (or even its cost-free implementation)
- The absence of signs of traditional advertising, which increases consumer confidence and the conversion of the entire campaign.
Among the shortcomings can be noted:
- lack of guarantees – it is impossible to 100% predict the success of a virus product
- difficulties with copyright – there are cases when a successful viral advertising campaign changed course and began to bring traffic to the pages of a completely different project
- High competition – thousands of new videos are posted on the same video hosting sites daily, which means that the chances of hitting the target are less than 0.1%. Is it a lot or a little? Perhaps the prospect is not the rosiest.
Viral Advertising: Media Performance
How often do you pick up books by unfamiliar authors? Watch movies by unknown directors? Do you choose a hairdresser and a dentist on the recommendation or at random?
Viral advertising can be presented in the form of demotivators, comics, photographs, and videos, books – in text or audio format. But are viral ad-media the same performance? Hardly.
One of the most effective “virus carriers” today are videos. It is this kind of content – accessible, informative, diverse, that is in demand by the audience brought up in the fast-food industry. There will always be a short, intriguing video dedicated to:
- sexual relations
- humor
- life hacking
- non-standard, causing emotions (from fear and shock to laughter) situations
- empathize
- The investigation.
Well, of course, no one canceled the fact that videos with children and animals gain the most views, provided that they have something to watch.
It is traditionally believed that a viral video should be created in a home version – without signs of professional shooting and other additions. And it justifies itself because amateur video arouses greater confidence in the audience.
Another option for viral advertising is product placement, when the desired product or brand becomes part of a single whole – a movie, video, online game or television show, or is made an object of a parody (photo-toad).
Well, of course, you should not neglect such viral marketing opportunities as ambient advertising, where anything can be used as a medium appvalley- from the floor and ceiling to the trunk of a tree or the forehead of an advertising hero. In this case, the desired effect is achieved just due to the shock reaction of the audience.
And the ambient tricks blend in nicely with the more traditional. For example, you can shoot a mini-video in the quest style, where the same element (website address or brand name) is repeated in the
