Viral goods. Viral marketing. Benefits of Viral Advertising

13.11.2019

Until recently, viral marketing in
Internet advertisers responded unflatteringly. Some considered this
promotions are ineffective, others are not solid, others are not at all
had an understanding of the technology for the production and spread of the virus.

By
According to the creator of the studio "Antimult" Natalia Ovchinnikova, today
ideas about viral marketing are qualitatively changing, and
the use of a flamboyant and imaginative virus becomes the only
an opportunity to stand out against the background of the general mass of on-line advertising.

A few years ago, viral marketing (a method
promotion on the Internet when information about a company or product
distributed by consumers themselves through personal recommendations - E.A.)
developed spontaneously, and its effectiveness could only be judged
intuitively. Today, specific distribution schemes have already been developed
virus, tools have been created to measure the effectiveness of the campaign,
so viral marketing becomes the same full-fledged way
promotions like any other. An interesting point is this: if earlier
Viral marketing has been used mainly by companies whose
products are targeted at a youth audience, now use
Viruses do not shun even reputable firms.

cartoon format

Success Criteria

The second criterion for the success of viral marketing is small amount of virus. This is a formal requirement - short, concise animations are better "digested" by users.

Distribution strategy

The scope of viral marketing is unusually wide: the launch of new brands and products,
increase in awareness trademark and support for awareness of
product or service, increasing the loyalty of the target audience,
sales promotion, Internet support for BTL and promotions. But what
Whatever the purpose of viral marketing, it must meet a clear
organizational system. The structure of the viral campaign is
from the following steps:

- Choosing a strategy. Any strategy follows
from tasks. Therefore, at the initial stage, we need to decide what we
want to achieve viral marketing: attract a large number of
visitors to the site or to inform about the release of a new product? From
tasks will depend on which blogs to distribute information in
which sections, for which audience, etc.

- Making a virus. At this stage, we choose the form of the spread of the virus. What will it be: an animated video, a flash toy, or maybe a website?

According to our calculations, in order to provide
good traffic to the site or links (say, 300 thousand unique
visitors per month), 7-10 active users are enough, who
will carry out viral marketing at the initial stage.

- Measuring, tracking the results of a viral campaign.
The last step in running a viral campaign is to evaluate it.
effectiveness. Calculating statistics is easy. If the virus is hosted on
website, we program the portal in such a way that it is possible to
track who and how comes to the site: from what resources, how often and
etc. There is, for example, the SpyLock system, with which you can
record this data.

But the most important thing in viral marketing is to make
a bright, memorable thing. Only in this case it is possible to build personal
emotional relationship with the consumer, achieve a high degree
the involvement of the Internet audience in the distribution process (as
practice shows that more than 50% of users re-view
virus) and, finally, get the desired PR effect from a viral campaign.

Hello guests and readers of my blog, today I will write about pretty interesting topic for every person - viral marketing! Do not rush to close the page, do not be afraid of the word virus, this virus not dangerous at all and absolutely legal!

Marketing it is also not at all difficult, you can verify this by reading this article. I will give examples, tell you what viral marketing is, how to use it and why. To be honest, I accidentally got such an effect, though quite small, but nothing, I didn’t plan it.

What is Viral Marketing?

By tradition, I do not load you with complex terms about viral marketing from Wikipedia. Let's say you liked the video, you gave a link to this video to a friend, and that one to two more, and the next one to 3 more, and one of them has his own blog in which he posted this video and hundreds more users will see this video and share with their friends, and those again with theirs, etc. So it turns out such a viral effect, which is called viral marketing.

Viral marketing is obtained as a result of the fact that people like it and they share the information received. Similar example can be seen in the film “Pay It Forward”, there is a great example of such marketing, though this virus was launched by a boy who received the task of making the world a better place from his teacher, or rather, “how could he make it better, what is important he can do”? The guy came up with a system: you do something good for one, and that one for three more, the next for three more, etc. True, the film is not about marketing, but it is worth watching. The guy came up with great marketing, which can be said to be viral!

Below is a frame from the film, as the guy talks about his system, which was then called utopia.

Utopia is an ideal world, but this does not exist. That is, his plan would work with 100% fulfillment of all conditions, but who will fulfill all the conditions?

Viral marketing - 5 basic rules!

Since viral marketing is a “scientific move”, there are rules and requirements for success. Below you can find out what rules you need to follow in order for your viral marketing to be successful.

loud name

Naturally, the first thing the user sees is the name, it EXTREMELY important! In the book “Read and Grow Rich,” the author described the story of how one person cannot sell his book, but as soon as he changed its name, it sold a million copies. Yes, you yourself think about what you “peck”? I would rather watch a video with the title “the most funny video about animals” than “funny animals”. There are a lot of funny animals, but not a lot of the funniest ones! . People want to get the best, high quality, fast, tasty, impressive, everything. most! Taking an article as an example, which of the two would you read? You need to create such a viral slogan in order to create high-quality marketing.

1. Credit cards are dangerous for you!;

2. Plastic captivity.

From the title it is clear that two articles are about the same thing, but the second article clearly makes you want to read the article, so if you also add “Plastic captivity or how not to fall into a hole” (or something like that), it would be better, I think . This rule must be followed in order to create good, viral marketing.

Watch the video clip on how a word can change a person's life!

For those who are not friendly with English:

The inscription on the cardboard at the beginning of the video:

"I'm blind. Please, help!"

The blind man asks what she did with his cardboard? To which the girl replies: “The cardboard is the same, the words are different”

The words that the girl wrote:

Viral marketing is free!

It is important that marketing be free, free means viral very often! Paid - not viral and bad marketing. If you make people pay for your content, it cannot be viral, which is passed from one user to another. Users will be happy to share with their friends interesting articles or video, but if it's free. No matter how much they have to pay, the very idea that it NOT free, can push the user away, that's how you get a viral effect. If necessary, it is desirable to include the word “free” in the title. “ Free courses of English language ” will be more popular than just “ English courses". "Cheap" and "not expensive" - it's good that nothing causes this positive effect like the word "free". Use "free" for good viral marketing.

Interesting and high quality

I say right away that you should not even try to promote an article or video where you are not doing anything interesting or useful to people! Think about people, they should enjoy or benefit from the information received, and if your texts and videos do not make any sense, why would anyone watch it? Despite the fact that marketing is a thoughtful move, it should not be devoid of emotion and usefulness, as it must be viral.

About each of them!

Viral marketing should catch everyone! Here you can make a VKontakte site an excellent example, or rather! Let's say I have noticed statuses more than once that let me know that “something” is happening not only with me, but also with thousands of other people. Once I was marked in a photo with the inscription “Let your back straight and stop leaning your head on your left hand!”, and just at that time I was sitting like that, it was a surprise for me, and a very funny coincidence! After I read the comments, I saw that dozens of other people had the same thing happen! I even wanted to send this photo to my friends to make them laugh. Here is a great example of what successful viral marketing is!

Playing on emotions

Use people's beliefs to create viral marketing. People have always defended and will defend their beliefs, even when they feel that they are wrong, many of them continue to argue in order not to lose face. This is where I carried out my viral marketing, which I mentioned at the beginning of the article. On one of my sites, I wrote an article about a very scandalous person, Alexander Nezvorov, if you know such a person.

The article, as it were, consisted of two parts, the first - told how good and well done he was, the second - BUT he does this and that, and this is very bad! All this is mixed with dubious facts, videos and a loud article title. The article has not been optimized, but is still the most popular on my site, and even someone from Wikipedia put this article on it.

As you can see, I gave people fruit for debate and reflection, and a loud title will clearly lure people to read the article, where they will discuss this topic, and there will be such a “war” between “for” and “against”. Surely there was such a thing as “Hello friend, here is a link to the article, look! I’m thinking that this dude is wrong, what do you think?”. That's how I got my viral marketing!

Viral marketing is a game of emotions! There was also a video in the style of “playing on emotions”. I saw a cat, as if doing heart massage to a cat that was hit by a car a minute ago. It was as if he tried to awaken her, but he did not succeed ... One people, with tears in their eyes, said - “this is love, someone else says that animals do not have feelings”, and the second “this is just biology! The cat was trying to copulate with the cat”, this comment could not but cause a refund and disputes began, interest in the video rose. Now I understand that it could only be a marketing ploy of professionals, they know how to organize viral marketing.

I found this video, though I thought it was more popular, maybe I saw it on another site, I don't know.

The video is really touching. As for me, this is quite a viral video, although it does not have a large number of views.

Well, that's actually all I wanted to tell you about viral marketing, in the future maybe I'll try this "trick", but that's all later. I will definitely tell you about my experiment with viral marketing, subscribe to RSS, so as not to miss this or you can do it as a thank you for the quality material! If you subscribe to blog updates, you will definitely receive useful information, I promise you!

Cookies for today:

An example of viral marketing!

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Viral Marketing

Viral marketing- common name various methods distribution of advertising, characterized by distribution in a progression close to geometric, where the main distributor of information is the recipients of information themselves, by forming content that can attract new recipients of information through bright, creative, unusual idea or using a natural or trusted message.

In the “pre-Internet era”, the methods of the so-called. word of mouth, through personal communications, focus groups, promotions in print, on television, etc.
marketing technique using existing social networks to increase brand/product/service awareness,
methodological principles specific to e-mail marketing, which are based on the encouragement of an individual to transmit a marketing message to others, the potential for exponential growth in the impact of this message. Like viruses, such technologies use every opportunity to increase the number of transmitted messages. Promotion with the help of viral content can take a variety of forms - videos, photos, flash games, a call from a video clip (WOW-call), even just text (for example, jokes).

Due to the fact that the majority of the population has a low level of trust in advertising in general, and even more so coming from a manufacturing company, the main principle of viral marketing is that the person receiving the informational message must be sure that it comes from a person who is not interested, for example, from an acquaintance, or an unfamiliar, but in no way affiliated with advertising campaign. For example, a person will readily listen to positive feedback about a product from a “real person” and, most likely, will buy this product. And vice versa: when he sees an advertising video for this product, he will ignore it, since it is widely believed that advertising embellishes the quality of the product.

Etymology of the term and history of occurrence

The reference to biological terms is not accidental. Indeed, an event or action can be considered viral when the process of disseminating information begins to obey the biological laws of the spread of viruses, that is, any recipient of information is sincerely interested in it and imbued with the idea of transmitting it as quickly as possible a large number friends using the most efficient channels (most often online messengers and social networks). The process of spreading viral information is thus akin to viral epidemics - it spreads rapidly, exponentially, it is difficult to stop it, and relapses often occur (it seems that interest in information has faded, but it is rising with a new wave of distribution). It is believed that the term "viral marketing" was popularized in 1996 by Jeffrey Rayport in his article The Virus of marketing .

Viral Marketing Examples

One of the first known examples of the use of viral marketing on the Internet is the Hotmail campaign, when each letter written by a user was accompanied by a message from the company, urging email recipients to start free mail on Hotmail. An excellent example of the use of a virus to advertise the training company bestrong was once a comic site fast-die.kiev.ua, which allegedly offers suicide pills to its visitors. Already on the second day of the site's existence, its audience was more than 40,000 unique visitors per day.

Among Russian examples of successful viral marketing was a website for StarHit magazine, implemented using WOW-call technology - an automated call from a video clip. The essence of the project was to give the visitors of the promo site the opportunity to feel like a star. The girls left their personal data on the promo site (name, number mobile phone, photo, hair color), clicked on the “OK” button, after which the video was launched: at the Starhit editorial meeting, the question of who to put on the cover was decided. One of the proposed options was to make a cover with a photo of the participant. To get consent, Andrey Malakhov called the participant directly from the video. Campaign was held for 4 months, and its results were more than 170,000 unique users of the promo site, about 165,000 calls and almost 3,000 works published on blogs and social networks.

viral video

On the this moment almost every big company trying to make his own commercials qualitatively so that they have a viral effect. Video advertising is the most effective tool for achieving a viral effect, as it has more opportunities to interest the audience. Famous companies can use viral videos as an announcement: on the eve of the new Fashion Show, Victoria's Secret released a remake of the video for the Maroon 5 song "Moves Like Jagger" with the participation of their recognizable models. Interactive viral videos are also popular now to develop the action in which the viewer can take part.As an example of a Russian-language video - an advertisement for "Exo" ice cream, in which the singer and actress Anna Semenovich performs various actions with fruits, the names of which the viewer can enter in a special line.An English-language example of such an advertisement is a video about the bear's birthday and the Tipp-Ex proofreader, in which the main characters traveled in time.The viewer could enter the year in which they should have been transported, depending on this, the further development of the plot changed.

Channels for seeding viral advertising

Seeding is the initial placement of viral content. The most common seeding channels are:

Viral marketing in Russia

The first viral video in RuNet was created by the Cupid dating site in 2005. The first commercial viral video "Sysadmin" was invented by the digital agency Affect for the client "Corbina-Telecom" in the same 2005.

The most famous viral videos of Runet are the videos "Revolt of one manager" (Affect), "Hellish squirrel" (Znamenka), "D.A. "(leading "Europe Plus").

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing is the use of "flying ideas" to push them to the masses. This is a controlled rumor, a kind of material that by its nature attracts attention, causes discussion, and thereby helps the business in sales. At the heart of such marketing is the need for people to communicate, exchange information. And if the marketing message is really worthwhile, interesting and unusual, then it, like a virus, will quickly spread among the desired audience through itself (without the involvement of extraneous resources like the media).

Key Elements of Viral Marketing According to Yona Berger

He described the basics of viral marketing in his book “Contagious. Psychology of word of mouth. How products and ideas become popular, by Professor Yona Berger of the Wharton School of Business. In his book, he formulated the main elements and methods of viral marketing:

social currency. The public loves to share information that shows its desire for development, education, and new knowledge. Such links to useful articles on a social network, blog or website improve the image of the resource owner in the eyes of the target audience;

emotions. Users love to share information that evokes strong emotions. A significant part of the viral content refers to such human emotions as anxiety, anger, delight. But the sadness caused by the content is unlikely to contribute to its further promotion;

publicity. If users see that someone they know has already taken some action, it becomes easier for them to repeat it;

practical value. As noted above, the practical use of an advertising message has a significant viral potential. Such content is rapidly spreading, as it not only helps to solve life's problems, but also increases the importance of the person who distributes it;

stories. People love good stories, they like to retell them and pass them on to each other. Tell your audience an interesting tale with your product in the lead role, intrigue the audience, make them wait for the continuation of the story.

Four Reasons to Use Viral Marketing Techniques to Advertise Online

How to create a viral marketing campaign?

There is no magic way to make an ad go viral. Marketers don't have an arsenal of proven technologies, and they never will, because spreading information is too unpredictable. But the successful experience of viral marketing in Russia shows that there are several conditions that increase the likelihood that content will go viral.

Eight Viral Social Media Marketing Tools + Examples

1. Images.

These are photoshops, demotivators, memes. You can create your own viral image based on the product or adapt popular memes. Also in marketing, humor, children and cats are still viral topics.

More than 48 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Only 1 million videos get 1 million views, and only 50 - 100 million views. So not every video goes viral. But if they want to share the video, it quickly spreads beyond the social network.

3. Applications.

The most famous example of a viral application is Instagram. The app appeared in App Store October 6, 2010, and six months later it was downloaded by 70 million users. Today, the number of registered users exceeds 1 billion.

Here are some more successful examples of viral marketing in apps:

4. Infographics.

It should contain valuable information that is visualized and therefore well remembered. Instructions and life hacks work great here.

5. Articles.

In social networks, marketers recommend writing stories in the genre of storytelling. These can be accusatory articles, sentimental stories about the fate of a person, the destruction of common truths and texts, after reading which you want to say: “He literally expressed my thoughts!”. Viral articles should either provide unique information that is not found anywhere else, or speculate on hot trending news. Relevant and useful content in the spirit of "The most complete instructions for a stroke."

To create a viral article in the social. networks, use topics that have a high potential for controversy. The issue at hand should be easy to discuss. People prefer to discuss hot topics. Moreover, social networks are more willing to give out posts with a large number of comments in the feed. However, it should be taken into account that the willingness to start discussions that hurt feelings depends on the specifics of the brand. For example, you can discuss female driving in car groups, feeding animals vegetarian food in a vegetarian group, etc.

6. Incentivized viral: promotions, contests.

This is a way of viral marketing on the Internet, when users are promised a bonus for reposting or some other action. It helps not only to advertise the product, but also to increase the loyalty of the target audience.

You can run a selfie contest on Instagram. For example, let's take the fictional coffee shop "Coffee", which plays a liter of cappuccino. What conditions? Take a picture of yourself against the background of a coffee shop sign, post the photo on your page, mention @kofeek, put the hashtag #coffeegiftlitrcappuccino and try your luck in the draw.

7. A series of viruses in marketing.

How to get people talking about a product and waiting for a new release? Make a TV series about him, like Blendtec, which sells blenders, did. In every issue of Will It Blend? users were shown a new experiment in which they tried to grind a product using the device. In the end, it came to the iPad - it turned into powder.

A great viral marketing technique because it demonstrates the power of a blender. It is immediately clear that he will definitely cope with nuts and ice.

8. Interactive.

When developing viral marketing strategies, marketers use people's love of interaction. Invite users to take part in the campaign, as Sberbank did. First, he launched the “What kind of cat are you?” test, and then an online housewarming cat delivery service. Sberbank's digital campaign quickly spread across the Internet and became one of the most popular in Russia in 2015.

The true reason for the success of a viral campaign is extremely difficult to determine. And it is all the more difficult to repeat this success, even using the same methods.

But the basis of viral marketing is content. Make it as awesome as you can. Even if your content does not get a million views, it will win the love of the public. The more cool content, the more loyal users you will get.

Use viral marketing techniques and you will see the effect!

We have released a new book, "Social Media Content Marketing: How to get into the head of subscribers and make them fall in love with your brand."

More videos on our channel - learn internet marketing with SEMANTICA

Main distinctive features viral advertising is the naturalness of the message, which contains information about the product / service, as well as a unique and extraordinary idea that is sure to attract the attention of the audience. This type of advertising got its name "viral" due to the fact that it is transmitted from person to person.

How and by whom is viral advertising used?

Today, the viral campaign is actively used by large and medium-sized companies. It is especially relevant for global corporations, whose products are known almost all over the world. These enterprises have already reached a high level of skill in carrying out such advertising campaigns.

The main forms used in viral advertising are: audio recordings, videos, photographs, original newsbreaks and rumors, short informative texts and news, flash mobs. Content is written in such a way as to evoke emotions in the audience. Preferably positive.

Pros and cons of viral advertising on the Internet

First, let's look at the advantages of viral marketing:

If we talk about the advantages for advertising customers, we can note the absence of any restrictions, even there is no special censorship. This opens up opportunities even to promote specific categories of products, such as adult products/alcohol/tobacco and so on. And again, it is worth emphasizing the duration life cycle which is three years or more.

Of the minuses, the following can be noted:

It is not easy to plan and predict a campaign. Today, it is almost impossible to determine whether the campaign will be successful and whether the "virus" will spread, it is impossible to calculate at least the approximate speed of its spread. This is due to the fact that the main role in the distribution is played by a live audience, users. It is difficult to predict their behavior.
The cost of a good idea and the preparation of a viral product can be high. It's not enough to come up great idea, it must also be implemented with high quality, otherwise the whole effect will be lost and will not make sense.
Audience limitation. Unfortunately, viral advertising on the Internet covers only Internet users. If you are promoting goods/companies/services that are more aimed at users who rarely visit the network, it is better to abandon viral marketing.

Viral Advertising Examples

Such advertising is designed for a male network user, he will obviously be interested in such a “motorcycle” and he will pass it on to his friends.

Here's another one good example. The pizza is so hot that even the cat lay down on it to warm up. Well, how can you not be touched and send to a friend.

And here is an interesting Hugo Boss banner. It is clear that this is a montage. However, many take it at face value and share with friends.

Speaking of videos, you should definitely check out Android's "Friends Furever" video. It was shared 6,432,921 times in 2015 alone, when it first appeared. This speaks of a huge success.

How to run viral ads

First you need to analyze target audience on which Internet resources they spend most of their time. Perhaps these are social networks or video hosting, etc. Then a viral marketing strategy is drawn up, since the matter is not limited to the publication of one material. In this case, you need to take into account all the features of potential customers.
Content development. This is the most difficult stage: you need to work out the material in detail and create a high-quality advertising product that can boast of high potential.
Spreading. After the advertising message is ready, it is necessary to distribute it on the network. If the ad is really interesting, it will be viewed by thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of users of the World Wide Web. Advertising of this type allows not only to attract new customers, but also to force existing customers to make a new order.
Monitoring. As you know, we do not control what we do not consider. It is necessary to constantly monitor the process and monitor the availability feedback. You need to get statistics on the prevalence of the virus in order to see the picture and draw conclusions about the effectiveness.
Grade. It is necessary to calculate indicators such as demographic data, the number of unique views, activity peaks, feedback tone, comment volume.

It will be useful to use the principles of compiling viral advertising. This tool is designed to attract the attention of the audience and transfer it to the product / product.

You can do this through:

Scandals. Incredibly, but fights and scandals are spreading on the Internet at breakneck speed.
Shock. The public needs to be shocked, to break the current rules, to do crazy antics.
Laughter and humor. Advertising messages with a touch of humor spread much faster, as we all love to laugh and want our acquaintances to smile more often.
"Mimicry". These are our beloved kittens, puppies, small children. All this cannot but cause emotion, along with it, the desire to share.