How To Create a Viral Marketing Campaign

So everyone is always hoping to create that viral marketing campaign; the one that will cause everyone to share with their friends, exploding over the internet, providing tons of free, organic, advertising!

But what makes a campaign go viral, and what can we as entrepreneurs with small budgets do with our campaigns to get them to go viral?

The number one driver for all viral campaigns is – Emotion!  A viral campaign needs to not only evoke visceral emotion, you know that feeling you get in your gut or brings tears to your eyes, but you need to be able to create an emotional driver for people to feel the need to share your campaign with others.

1. Evoke visceral emotion
2. Provide an emotional driver to share

So how do you do that?

Let’s look at a couple of campaigns.  If we look at the recent Audi commercial created for Superbowl 2014, Audi was able to gain over 12M views on YouTube of their commercial in just one week!

Audi Dobberwawa  Views: 12,053,263 (in just one week)

[youtube id=”zl0zw1YVZd4″]

I think this commercial is hilarious.  It made me laugh, cringe, and recoil all at the same time.  And I definitely got the point-“compromise scares us too, luxury without compromise”.  (just for fun, watch Sarah McLachlan’s follow on video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjTRUubkomQ) Yes, I told lots of people about it and I’m sharing it with you now.

But most of us don’t have the budget to build a mutant creature and bring it to life on video, but we do have the ability to evoke the same emotions and emotional drivers to share with others.

If we look at one of the top campaigns for 2013, the Dove Real Beauty Sketches, you can see that this YouTube video had over 61M views.

Dove Real Beauty Sketches Views: 61,962,070

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk

It’s not an out there, in your face type of campaign like the Dobberwawa video.  It’s a concept that we as women get—underestimating our own beauty, told in story form and presented in a unique way that I wouldn’t have thought of myself.  But it is so effective because it touches a heart string of most women and is done in a way that visualizes the difference in how we perceive our selves vs. how the world perceives us.

Now this is the kind of viral campaign that you and I can create.

We can do this by:

1. Being transparent and authentic.
2. Identifying with the concerns and emotions of our audience.
3. Telling a story. Your story or one about your avatar.
4. Sharing your Cause, your purpose or your Why.
5. Ask for engagement with your audience, asking questions, making requests.

What vehicles can we use to do this that are realistic for the everyday entrepreneur?

1. A video
2. A blog post
3. A photograph
4. A quote
5. A game, competition, puzzle or contest
6. Infographics that share facts and insights relevant to your audience

And as you create these campaigns make sure you give your audience not only the desire to want to share, but make it easy for them, by adding share icons and other mechanisms to make it easy for them to share while they are still feeling the emotion of the experience you provided.

Do you have any other ideas on going viral, if so we’d love to hear about it in the comments below!