Maximizing Impact: Strategies for Viral Advertising Campaigns

There’s that one advert that seems to have a space in your mind. Maybe the advert has a comic undertone, passes a message that resonates with you, or starts and ends with a catchphrase that seems to stick to your mind. Well, all these are what a viral advertising campaign can accomplish.

Growing brand awareness and generating sales all come with brand visibility. And you can accomplish all that by creating a viral advertising campaign.

There are lots of techniques to help you create a viral advertising campaign. In this guide, you will discover ways of creating a memorable campaign that sticks in the mind of your audience. You will also discover why your advertising campaigns should go viral.

1. What are Viral Advertising Campaigns?
2. Why is Viral Advertising Important?
3. Examples of Successful Viral Advertising Campaigns
4. How to Create a Viral Advertising Campaign?
5. Tips for Creating Successful Viral Advertising Campaigns
6. How to Manage Your Viral Advertising Campaigns?
7. Wrap Up

What are viral advertising campaigns?

As an internet user, you must have witnessed content that spreads like wildfire. Such content is said to have gone viral. Viral content comes with its upside — some of which is the increase in the target audience engagement, brand awareness, and possibly the company’s sales.

In simple terms, viral advertising is an advertising campaign that generates lots of momentum and goes viral. Interestingly, there is no formula for creating a viral campaign. It’s almost always sheer luck — and nothing can be done to influence the process.

Nothing beats a viral advertising campaign. For a campaign to be viral, it has to generate massive momentum, recognition, acceptance, and influence in public.

Why is Viral Advertising Important?

Viral advertising is a sure way of generating leads, increasing brand awareness, and boosting conversions at a lower cost. Here are reasons why viral advertising campaigns are important.

• Affordable Ad Costs: Viral advertising campaigns rely on consumers to spread your brand messages. You only have to spend on content creation. Once your campaign kicks off, you’ll likely not need any extra funding to push it.
• Brand Credibility: When consumers share your brand message, people within their circle of influence will most likely perceive such a message as credibility. This will, in turn, boost your brand credibility.
• More Reach: Viral advertising campaigns get your brand messages to a wider range of audience. A single campaign may spread wider than you anticipated. It may seem slow at first, but when it goes viral, it becomes fast-paced.
• Increased Brand Awareness: Viral advertising campaigns create buzz around your product offering. And that will most likely increase your brand awareness in the marketplace.
• Boost Engagement: Viral advertising campaigns prompt customers to create and share content about your brand. Such exercises typically lead to an increase in customer engagement and brand loyalty.

Examples of Successful Viral Advertising Campaigns

Over the years, there have been lots of successful viral advertising campaigns. This section shows you some of these viral advertising campaign examples.

• Just Do It

Nike is associated with the “Just Do It” slogan. The slogan came to the limelight in 1987 — and it has been the most effective in generating the necessary buzz around the Nike brand.

Nowadays, the slogan is printed on multiple Nike products. It typically appears around the Nike logo. With the slogan, Nike could relate to their target audience. And anyone who hears (or reads) it can easily relate it to their unique circumstance.

Throughout the long term, the “Do what needs to be done’ motto plays a crucial impact in making Nike’s promoting efforts circulate the web. Anyone can relate to it — and that broadened the target audience.

• Halloween Advertising

You’ve probably noticed the intense rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. For decades, these two brands have launched some subtle attacks on each other during their campaign. One such is the sleek bashing that was launched by Pepsi in their October 2013 campaign.

During the campaign, Pepsi showcased Coca-Cola as a scary brand. The image of Pepsi wearing a Coca-Cola robe as its Halloween costume says it all. The campaign could pass as a subtle way of communicating the perceived superiority of Pepsi over Coca-Cola.

• “Share a Coke” Campaign

Coca-Cola launched the famous “Share a Coke” campaign in 2011. The concept was somewhat simple. Popular names were printed on the Coke cans and bottles. Anyone who buys the Coke product will look out for their names (or the names of their friends and loved ones), and “share a Coke” with them.

The “Share a Coke” campaign generated massive success. The numbers were impressive — about a 2.5% increase in product sales and 1.2+ million photos shared across the various Coke social media accounts. The brand recorded lots of user-generated content as they encouraged their audience to use the #ShareACoke hashtag.

• “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” Campaign

What comes to mind when you hear “you’re not you when you’re hungry”? Well, Snickers is capitalizing on the image you create in your mind to sell their product. The catchphrase is quite memorable, and it’s something the audience will remember for a long time.

Using such a catchphrase is a sure way to stand out in the chocolate bar industry. The catchphrase has been used to create multiple ad campaigns where a hungry actor acts out of character. However, the actor regains his regular behavior after eating Snickers. The catchphrase is a reliable way of getting their message across to their target audience — and it also serves as a comic relief.

How to Create a Viral Advertising Campaign?

Here is an easy guide to help you create a viral advertising campaign.

• Focus on a Target Audience

Creating a campaign for everyone is synonymous with creating a campaign for no one. It’s almost impossible to appeal to everyone. Therefore, you need to identify your target audience and focus on them. What are the needs and pain points of your audience? Create content around their needs and watch it go viral.

• Have a Clear Brand Message

Your brand message should resonate with each customer — and it has to inspire them to take action! Viral campaigns are usually accidental. But that shouldn’t stop you from planning your campaigns.

• Use the Right Channel

What platforms and channels are your target audience found? Use these channels to distribute your content. For instance, if your target audience is mostly Gen Z, you should use platforms like TikTok for content distribution.

• Offer Incentives to Your Customers

Incentives help push your customers into sharing your content. Incentives could be cash prizes (or free products) for anyone who shares your content. If you’re using emails to promote your campaign, you could promise your subscribers a reward for each successful referral.

• Evoke the Right Emotions

Humans are emotional creatures. And your campaign should evoke emotions like shock, surprise, awe, or sympathy. You should aim at making your audience laugh, offer solutions to their challenges, or inspire hope.

• Your Content Should Be Visually Appealing

Use compelling visual content to boost your chances of going viral. Visuals like images or videos tend to generate more shares.

Tips for Creating Successful Viral Advertising Campaigns

Here are some useful tips to help you create successful viral advertising campaigns.

1. Understand what appeals to your target audience
2. Have a good grasp of your target audience’s emotions, and know how to evoke the right emotions
3. Avoid words that trigger negative emotions
4. Don’t create viral content around adverse (or tragic) events
5. Focus on content that entertains your audience
6. To boost your engagement rate, create content around social experiences
7. Encourage your audience to take your desired actions. Such actions should be included in your call to action
8. Encourage your audience to create content around the buzz, leave comments on existing content, and share content with their networks
9. Your audience should feel understood. An audience that feels understood will most likely share your content
10. Take advantage of influencer marketing.

How to Manage Your Viral Advertising Campaigns?

Managing a viral advertising campaign involves identifying and monitoring your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

If you’re launching a new product line, you should be focused on metrics like conversion rates, new sign-ups, and email clickthrough rates (CTR).

Businesses that are focused on increasing their brand awareness should monitor their engagement metrics on social media platforms. Ultimately, what you will have to measure is largely dependent on your campaign goals.

FAQs:

What Makes a Marketing Campaign a Viral Success?

The success of a viral marketing campaign is dependent on how customers share the posts (or videos) of the campaign with their online connections.

What are the 3 Main Benefits of Advertising?

• Advertising provides information about your brand offering
• Advertising helps boost your product (or service) sales
• Advertising tells existing customers about product updates or a new product line.

What are the Pros and Cons of Viral Marketing?

Pros of viral marketing are:

• It’s cost-effective
• It generates more leads and traffic
• It boosts the brand’s credibility.

Cons of viral marketing are:

• It’s not the best fit for small businesses
• It’s almost impossible to measure
• There are chances of going viral for the wrong reasons.

What is a Fundamental Component of a Viral Marketing Campaign?

Successful marketing campaigns should make the audience feel:

• Shock
• Surprise
• Sympathy
• Awe.

If nothing is felt by your audience, they will most likely not share the content.

Wrap Up

Viral advertising campaigns are sure ways of accomplishing your marketing goals and objectives. There is no definite path to creating a viral advertising campaign. All you need to do is come up with a sleek marketing campaign that resonates with your audience. Hopefully, it may evoke the right emotions and spike a viral conversation around your brand.

Aside from the increased brand awareness that comes with a viral advertising campaign, it’s also cost-effective and boosts your brand credibility. To increase your chances of going viral, you need to properly optimize your campaign strategy. And that involves identifying your target audience, having a clear brand message, and using the right channels.

Furthermore, you need to offer your audience incentives, evoke the right emotions, and use compelling visuals. All these do not guarantee a viral advertising campaign, but they increase your chances of going viral.

Now you know how viral advertising works, what pieces will you put in place when designing your next campaign?