Viral Marketing:

Definition, Nature,
Advantages and Examples

Prepared by:
Maria Angelita Ramona L. Valles
Faculty, Department of Graduate Business
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

Note: The content of this materials should not be copied or distributed. This is used solely for the classroom purposes only.
Viral Marketing
Viral marketing refers to a form of marketing that uses the
Internet and social media to distribute an idea or product
via social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.
The idea is that people who see or hear about the campaign
will share it with their friends, and this will help spread the
message further.
It can be defined as spreading a campaign through word-of-
mouth or viral content, so any publicity or advertising about
a product or service.
Viral marketing is the process of using social media to
promote products or services. People can watch an online
video about a product they’d like to purchase on YouTube
and share it through this site with their friends.
A social media is an effective way of communicating
modern companies with the use viral marketing strategies
so they can reach huge audiences without spending too
much money on things such as newspaper ads and
television commercials.
Word-of-mouth marketing, it’s form of viral marketing
that’s effective because people are more likely to share
things they find interesting.
It can boost up the brand awareness of a lot of local
business like restaurants, salon, fitness center, artist
among others.
A viral campaign could be refer a friend, contest,
giveaway, sweepstake or something similar to it. Viral
marketing mainly influence social media Facebook,
twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn so on…whilst viral
marketing plans are viral videos, blog, social media
shares, likes and comments.
Brand’s social media handles doesn’t have a
good number of followers and no engagement
on the content then a viral marketing campaign
can help to increase the followers and
engagement on the brand’s social media
handles.
Social media can help to build email list of new
audience which could be potential customer in
future with the email marketing strategies.
Viral marketing solely motivates social sharers,
generates lots of visitors to the site and also
rack up thousands likes for many viral
campaigns; which helped brands to grow to the
next level with less efforts and in less time.
Does Viral Marketing Work in 2022?
Most of the online marketing enthusiast are
practicing viral marketing for business, this
concept came very late in the digital marketing
world but there are no doubts that it does work in
the long run.
It is helpful in building brand awareness which
could automatically help your business to
establish new heights; the continuous evolution of
technology, viral marketing brings up newer
trends for online marketers’ consideration.
The 21st century have more possibilities for online
marketer to identify new market trends by getting
their hands on the latest technology ideas used in
all modern media campaigns.
As a result of decreasing visitors’ activities with
one social media platform, viral marketing has
taken an innovative step towards making its
presence in the digital marketing world visible.
Social content sharing in the internet will
improve the brand’s exposure and performance
because viral campaigns do play an important
role to fetch more visitors for the social media
handles.
The digital marketing world is evolving, is
likely that viral marketing will become a new
trend in the 21st century; and always keep
updated with marketing strategy on the latest
social media marketing trends and make the
business visible in this competitive world.
What are the Benefits of Viral Marketing?
There are no kind of losses in the viral campaign for any business, as a
result to getting more visitors and the campaign is successful.
The social media is successful for growing fan base of followers; and
viral marketing technique on Facebook, Twitter which is used to
impress in an exclusive technique in this modern era.
Viral marketing helps reduce the advertisement cost, the major benefits
are as follows:
1. Increase Facebook page likes
2. Increase Instagram followers
3. Increase Twitter followers
4. Increase LinkedIn followers
5. Increase YouTube channel subscribers
6. Increase Pinterest followers
7. Increase Facebook post share
8. Increase Instagram post likes
9. Increase Instagram post comments
10. Increase YouTube video views
11. Increase YouTube video likes
12. Increase YouTube video comments
13. Increase Website traffic
14. Increase email list subscribers …
How to create a successful viral marketing campaign?
It is not always true that any kind of marketing campaigns gives the
expectations of great success and we assume that the campaign will
influence the target audience to boost up the brand awareness and sales
quickly.

Viral marketing either in video or an image can be shared by various

users making the campaign known with how many things should be
done in order to be successful.

Some techniques used for creating successful viral marketing campaign

such as:
1. Viral marketing campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram … in
order to build up brand awareness with an image or video shared
by users to engage audience for clear idea about the brand; and
2. Use of Hashtags to increase the reach on social media … in order
to increase brand awareness and engagement whether it is a
positive or negative response so it can be addressed on what to do?
Posting in Facebook or Twitter using trending topics.
Viral marketing can create a strong buzz into the
competitive market, as long as the target
audience of the brand which the business
enterprise can easily scale the brand awareness
with viral strategies with relevant influencers for
small promotional activities.
Tweaking the viral marketing techniques to
distribute great marketing content and tasks with
all influencers performance measured of the
efforts in real-time with impressive and attractive
content marketing messages that users will share
in the social media platforms easily.
Presently, meme marketing is a new trend for
more popular brands in the internet.
How to measure successful viral marketing?
Marketing campaigns success is best when it measured to
determine the key performance indicators (KPIs) to help calculate
the results and ROI.
✓ Google Analytics and Facebook pixel are the best tools used to
analyze all the data related to social media platforms in real-
time.
✓ BuzzSumo is used to analyze content and social media traffic;
and find the top content from various sources in real-time.
It is important to do proper research on how viral marketing works
and what are the potentials of the campaign, get ideas of how the
competitors and analyze the best viral strategies.
To measure the results of the campaign in term of success
parameters will help setup the factors which decides the success
or failure of the entire campaign, and determine the direction to
the goal of the campaign.
Every campaign should run in the specific direction
and never expect everything from all the campaigns
launched and consider the goals with some of the
following factors:

1. Website traffic
2. Facebook shares
3. Facebook page likes
4. Facebook page post engagement
5. Instagram followers
6. YouTube subscribers
7. Twitter follower
8. User generated content

Identification and decision with the most important

statistics measurement factor can help businesses
decide how to look on the calculations., setup the
minimum milestones to match the goal according to
the efforts placed into the system by gradually or
rapidly increasing statistics indicates that at least it is
working.
Limitations of Viral Marketing Campaigns (VMC)

Everything has limitation which is beyond anyone's control and one should
never expect everything will work.

There may be problems encountered, setback for the business, understand the
limitations of VMC and how to solve if there is a problem. Some of the
limitations as follows:
1. Don’t expect 100% conversion rate from VMC, but it be at least closed to
the target.
2. Don’t expect the same results every time new VMC is launched because
these are not designed with a perfect formula.
3. Unable to reach the minimum milestone is not an indication of failure,
and no need to continue the VMC as it doesn’t work.
4. Don’t expect all competitors will be affected by the company VMC at
once because these are not designed with a rulebook.
5. VMC will no be effective if the product is too expensive because
customers will not buy it for free and they are looking for cheaper offer
instead of paying high price.
6. Don’t expect your competitors to follow 100% the company VMC plan
every step of the way because they will be in a competitive mode.
7. There are more limitations of VMC , it is important to understand these to
minimize the problems. Just be adaptable and the company will be fine.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Viral Marketing Campaigns

Advantages Disadvantages
Cost-effective way to promote Very hard to measure the
products or services effectiveness of the VMC
because it is dependent on how
much the people want to like or
share the product or service
Increase sales in an instant Very expensive way to promote
because it is the fastest way to business because you need to
promote products or services spend money on advertising
Used as long-term Cannot use VMC as an effective
promotional cost for business too for advertisement,
but need to know how promotion if there are so many
effective the VMC will be limitation in the business
before it starts
Great way to increase brand
awareness
Use VMC for production,
service promotions; and
advertisement of all types.
 EXAMPLES OF TOP VIRAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS 2022

Source:
https://startuptalky.com/top-viral-campaigns-analysis/
 SUMMARY
1. Viral Marketing is difficult to measure the
effectiveness of the campaigns, but with all
the limitations there is a need to understand
and know how effective it is before starting in
order to prevent future problems in the
implementation of the campaign.
2. The company need to adapt with the present
reality that viral marketing can be used
effectively in the business.
3. Viral marketing is a great way to promote the
business, but the company should know the
advantages and disadvantages before
launching the campaign.
References
Petrescu, M. (2014) Viral Marketing and Social Networks, 1st Ed. Business Expert Press, LLC
Coker, B. (2016) Going Viral, The 9 Secrets of irresistible marketing, 1st Ed. Pearson Education
Limited
Klopper. H.B. (2002) Viral marketing: a powerful, but dangerous marketing tool. South African
Journal of Information and Management
Pal, S. (2022) What is Viral Marketing? Does it actually Work in 2022? Retrieved April 8, 2022
https://monkmarketers/viral-makring/#heading-1