Viral marketing is a powerful way to reach millions of potential customers and grow your brand awareness. But how do you create a viral marketing campaign that strikes the right balance between creativity and data? How do you ensure that your content resonates with your target audience and also meets your business goals?
In this post, we’ll share some insights from Viralify, a viral marketing growth partner that helps businesses achieve exponential growth through various tools and strategies. We’ll show you some examples of successful viral marketing campaigns and how they leveraged both creativity and data to achieve amazing results. We’ll also give you 7 tips on how to balance creativity and data in your own viral marketing campaigns.
What is viral marketing?
Viral marketing is a style of promotion that relies on an audience to organically generate and push the message of a product or service. On social media, marketing is considered “viral” when it’s being shared rapidly by the public at large (with a compounding effect) rather than just its target audience.
Viral marketing can help you reach a massive audience, increase your brand awareness, generate word-of-mouth, and drive traffic and conversions. However, it’s not easy to create a viral marketing campaign that works. You need to have a clear understanding of your target audience, your value proposition, your goals, and your metrics. You also need to have a creative edge that makes your content stand out from the crowd.
Why do you need to balance creativity and data in viral marketing?
Creativity and data are two essential elements of any successful viral marketing campaign. Creativity is what makes your content unique, engaging, and memorable. Data is what helps you measure your performance, optimize your strategy, and validate your assumptions.
However, creativity and data are not always in harmony. Sometimes, they can even clash with each other. For example, you might have a brilliant idea for a viral video, but it doesn’t align with your brand voice or your audience’s preferences. Or you might have a lot of data on what works best for your industry, but it limits your ability to experiment with new formats or platforms.
That’s why you need to balance creativity and data in viral marketing. You need to find the sweet spot where you can use data to inform your creative decisions, but not stifle them. You need to use creativity to spark interest and emotion in your audience, but not lose sight of your objectives and metrics.
How to balance creativity and data in viral marketing: 7 tips from Viralify
So how do you balance creativity and data in viral marketing? Here are some tips from Viralify, a viral marketing growth partner that helps businesses create and execute viral marketing campaigns that deliver results.
1. Define your goals and metrics
Before you start creating any content, you need to define your goals and metrics for your viral marketing campaign. What are you trying to achieve? Who are you trying to reach? How will you measure success?
Having clear goals and metrics will help you focus your creative efforts on what matters most for your business. It will also help you track your progress, evaluate your performance, and adjust your strategy if needed.
Some common goals and metrics for viral marketing campaigns are:
- Brand awareness: The number of people who see or hear about your brand or product.
- Engagement: The number of people who interact with your content (e.g., likes, comments, shares).
- Traffic: The number of people who visit your website or landing page from your content.
- Conversions: The number of people who take a desired action (e.g., sign up, purchase) after seeing or clicking on your content.
2. Know your audience
Another key step before creating any content is to know your audience. Who are they? What are their pain points? What are their interests? What are their motivations? What are their behaviors?
Knowing your audience will help you create content that resonates with them and solves their problems. It will also help you choose the right tone, style, format, platform, and distribution channels for your content.
One way to know your audience is to create buyer personas, which are fictional representations of your ideal customers based on real data and research. Buyer personas can help you understand the demographics, psychographics, goals, challenges, preferences, and expectations of your audience.
Another way to know your audience is to use social media listening tools, which can help you monitor what people are saying about your brand, product, industry, competitors, or relevant topics online. Social media listening can help you discover trends, insights, feedback, opinions, sentiments, and influencers related to your audience.
3. Research what works
Before you start brainstorming ideas for your content, it’s a good idea to research what works in viral marketing. What are some examples of successful viral marketing campaigns? What made them go viral? What can you learn from them?
Researching what works can help you get inspired by best practices, avoid common pitfalls, and find gaps or opportunities in the market. It can also help you validate or challenge your assumptions about what appeals to your audience.
One way to research what works is to use web analytics tools, which can help you analyze the performance of various types of content across different platforms and channels. Web analytics can help you identify the most popular topics, formats, headlines, keywords, images, videos, and more for your industry or niche.
Another way to research what works is to use viral marketing tools, which can help you find, analyze, and replicate the most viral content on the web. Viral marketing tools can help you discover the most shared, liked, commented, and viewed content across social media platforms, blogs, news sites, and more.
4. Be original
While researching what works can help you get inspired by best practices, it’s important not to copy or imitate other viral marketing campaigns. You need to be original and create content that reflects your brand personality, value proposition, and unique selling point.
Being original will help you stand out from the crowd, build trust and credibility with your audience, and avoid legal issues or backlash from plagiarism or infringement. It will also help you create content that sparks curiosity, surprise, or delight in your audience, which are key emotions for virality.
One way to be original is to use storytelling techniques, which can help you craft compelling narratives that connect with your audience on an emotional level. Storytelling techniques can help you create content that has a clear structure, a relatable character, a captivating hook, a meaningful conflict, and a satisfying resolution.
Another way to be original is to use humor techniques, which can help you create content that makes your audience laugh or smile. Humor techniques can help you create content that uses irony, sarcasm, exaggeration, wordplay, puns, or references to pop culture or current events.
5. Test different ideas
Once you have some ideas for your content, it’s time to test them out. Testing different ideas will help you find out what works best for your audience, your goals, and your metrics. It will also help you optimize your content for maximum impact and reach.
One way to test different ideas is to use A/B testing tools, which can help you compare two versions of the same content (e.g., headline, image, video) to see which one performs better. A/B testing tools can help you measure the impact of different variables on key metrics such as clicks, shares, conversions, and more.
Another way to test different ideas is to use feedback tools, which can help you collect opinions or suggestions from real users or experts before launching or publishing your content. Feedback tools can help you get qualitative insights into what people like or dislike about your content, what they find confusing or unclear, or what they would improve or change.
6. Launch at the right time
After testing different ideas and choosing the best one for your content, it’s time to launch it. Launching at the right time will help you maximize the exposure and reach of your content. It will also help you leverage external factors such as trends, seasons, events, or news that can boost the virality of your content.
One way to launch at the right time is to use social media scheduling tools, which can help you plan ahead and publish your content at optimal times when most of your audience is online and active. Social media scheduling tools can help you automate the distribution of your content across multiple platforms and channels without having to manually post it every time.
Another way to launch at the right time is to use social media monitoring tools, which can help you track the conversations and sentiments of your audience and industry in real-time. Social media monitoring tools can help you identify the best opportunities to join or start a conversation with your content, or react to a trending topic
7. Analyze and optimize
Finally, after launching your content, it’s important to analyze and optimize your viral marketing campaign. Analyzing and optimizing your campaign will help you measure your results, learn from your successes and failures, and improve your future campaigns.
One way to analyze and optimize your campaign is to use social media analytics tools, which can help you track and report on various metrics such as reach, impressions, engagement, shares, clicks, conversions, and more. Social media analytics tools can help you understand how your content performed across different platforms and channels, what worked well and what didn’t, and what you can do better next time.
Another way to analyze and optimize your campaign is to use social media optimization tools, which can help you enhance your content for maximum visibility and reach. Social media optimization tools can help you optimize your content for SEO, keywords, hashtags, captions, tags, descriptions, thumbnails, and more.
Conclusion
Viral marketing is a powerful way to grow your brand awareness, engagement, and conversions. However, it’s not easy to create a viral marketing campaign that works. You need to balance creativity and data in your viral marketing strategy.
Creativity is what makes your content unique, engaging, and memorable. Data is what helps you measure your performance, optimize your strategy, and validate your assumptions.
To balance creativity and data in viral marketing, you need to follow these 7 tips from Viralify:
- Define your goals and metrics
- Know your audience
- Research what works
- Be original
- Test different ideas
- Launch at the right time
- Analyze and optimize
If you need help creating and executing viral marketing campaigns that deliver results, Viralify is here for you. Viralify is a viral marketing growth partner that helps businesses achieve exponential growth through various tools and strategies.
Viralify can help you:
- Create viral content that resonates with your audience and meets your goals
- Distribute your content across multiple platforms and channels
- Monitor and measure your content performance and impact
- Optimize your content for maximum reach and conversions
Ready to go viral with Viralify? Contact us today and let’s get started!
FAQs
Q: What is viral marketing?
A: Viral marketing is a style of promotion that relies on an audience to organically generate and push the message of a product or service. On social media, marketing is considered “viral” when it’s being shared rapidly by the public at large (with a compounding effect) rather than just its target audience.
Q: Why do you need to balance creativity and data in viral marketing?
A: You need to balance creativity and data in viral marketing because creativity is what makes your content unique, engaging, and memorable. Data is what helps you measure your performance, optimize your strategy, and validate your assumptions.
Q: How do you balance creativity and data in viral marketing?
A: To balance creativity and data in viral marketing, you need to follow these 7 tips from Viralify:
- Define your goals and metrics
- Know your audience
- Research what works
- Be original
- Test different ideas
- Launch at the right time
- Analyze and optimize
Q: What are some examples of successful viral marketing campaigns?
A: Some examples of successful viral marketing campaigns are:
- The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: A campaign that raised awareness and funds for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by challenging people to dump a bucket of ice water over their heads or donate money to the cause.
- The Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” Campaign: A campaign that used humor and irony to promote the men’s deodorant brand Old Spice by featuring a charismatic actor who addressed women directly in a series of absurd scenarios.
- The Dove “Real Beauty Sketches” Campaign: A campaign that challenged the perception of beauty by showing women how they see themselves versus how others see them through sketches by a forensic artist.
- The Squatty Potty “This Unicorn Changed the Way I Poop” Campaign: A campaign that used humor and animation to explain the benefits of using a Squatty Potty stool for better bowel movements by featuring a unicorn that poops rainbow ice cream.
Q: What is Viralify?
A: Viralify is a viral marketing growth partner that helps businesses achieve exponential growth through various tools and strategies. Viralify can help you create viral content that resonates with your audience and meets your goals, distribute your content across multiple platforms and channels, monitor and measure your content performance and impact, and optimize your content for maximum reach and conversions.
