Viral Marketing: How Does It Work?

The term viral can be defined as the rapid circulation of an image, video, or piece of information from one user to another. Virality is often considered by many to be random, and this is true a lot of the time. But not in the case of most viral advertisements; these instead go viral not because of luck but because of the genius marketing campaign behind it.

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Now you're asking yourself - "How do we make things go viral?" - and the first step is to find out why certain ideas spread. Not all things are viral by nature, in fact most things aren't. It's been estimated that only 1 in 1,000,000 things go viral.

Social transmission is the transfer of information or behaviours throughout a group of individuals (Alleydog, n.d). When it comes to transmitting information throughout social groups, word of mouth is an extremely important characteristic. Its been said that 92% of people would trust a recommendation that has been made by friends or family.

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The next stage in understanding how and why things go viral, is to understand the principles of contagiousness outlined by Jonah Berger. This theory outlines six factors that can work both on their own or in collaboration with each other. The factors all work to explain what and why makes things go viral. The six stages are as mentioned.

Social Currency

We as humans tend to find enjoyment in sharing our thoughts, opinions and interests with our peers verbally and/or through social media. This links directly to the previously mentioned word of mouth marketing; thus, allowing something to 'catch on' and begin its viral outbreak.

Triggers

A trigger is something that causes something else to happen. It's said that if something is at the top of our minds it is also at the top of our tongues; basically, meaning if we are thinking about it we will be saying or doing it.

Triggers commonly are correlated with word of mouth marketing. There is a difference between immediate and ongoing word of mouth. Immediate is when information is shared instantly after an experience has occurred. whereas, ongoing is when conversation about something occurs a long time after the experience has been had.

This can increase the likeliness of an advertisement being viral as if utilised correctly businesses ad campaigns can be not only on people's minds but stay in their minds over time.

For those who are interested in an example of a trigger; this video I found explains it well.

Emotion

Emotions can be very useful when it comes to making something spread over the internet. If we care about something enough, we will share it. Although there may be individuals who share content that gives them a negative emotional reaction (anger, anxiety etc.) the majority of individuals who share content based of their emotions, do so because they have had a positive reaction (excited, amused etc.). People don't share facts they share emotions.

To target emotions, you can have an advertisement that are beautiful and heart-warming or the opposite. If you are trying to target the positive emotions of the individuals browsing the internet, you are doing it correctly.

Public

Humans copy other humans and it is something we have been doing since the beginning of time. Hundreds and thousands of years ago when one ape starting using bones as a tool the others followed, and currently when a human sees another human doing something cool, they also follow. This conformity has allowed countless products to thrive in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

The perfect organisations that prove that the public can create a viral campaign for a business is Movember. A lot of the people who partake in Movember are those who have a friend or family member who announced they are partaking. There is no randomness to the over 2 million posts under the Movember hashtag on Instagram.

Practical Value

Similarly, to things that trigger positive emotions being shared, things that are useful also get shared. We all love seeing things that give us little tips on how to make our lives easier. There's a very obvious reason as to why Pinterest is an ever growing social media platform and the 5-Minute Crafts YouTube channel has over 67 MILLION subscribers.

There's literally nothing else to this. Our mentality is very simple if we think it's useful, we will share it.

Stories

If your advertisement has a story to it then it will be remembered and shared. Stories are personal and trustworthy. Seeing a car commercial that shows a family go on a camping trip is more engaging and memorable than a car commercial showing a still image of a car with information pasted on the screen.

A viral advertisement needs a catalyst, and that catalyst is a great story that can be shared. A personal favourite of mine that I remember from when I was a kid is AAMI's ingenious Rhonda and Ketut love story that took place throughout their 52 week campaign.

This very well could be the most memorable 'story' in any advertisement I've seen in my life and it ended almost 7 years ago. That's how you know you've told a good story with your campaign that will do nothing but increase the likelihood of going viral.

Thanks For Reading

Thanks for your time. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below.

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