What Is Viral Marketing? Does It Actually Work In 2025?

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.

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What is viral marketing?

Viral marketing is the process of using social media to promote products or services.

For example, 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.

If someone sees these kind of videos about their favourite products, then they’re likely to do the same with a product or service that they don’t have any connection with.

As social media is an effective way of communicating modern companies use viral marketing strategies so they can reach huge audiences without spending too much money on things such as newspaper ads and television commercials .

Additionally, big companies can use it to encourage their customers to share their videos with friends.

This is called word-of-mouth marketing, and it’s a form of viral marketing that’s effective because people are more likely to share things they find interesting.

On the other hand, it can also be used to promote a product or service that’s not very popular.

For example, social media marketing campaign by “The Amazing Race” television show is viral marketing campaign that was launched in 2011.

Not only this but it can boost up the brand awareness of a lot of local businesses like restaurants, salon, fitness centre, artist etc.

A viral campaign could be refer a friend, contest, giveaway, sweepstake or something similar to it.

Now a days 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.

If you are feeling that your brand’s social media handles doesn’t have good number of followers and no egagement on the content then a viral marketing campaign can help to increase the followers and engagement on your brand’s social media handles.

Now only social media but it could also help to build email list of new audience which could be your potential customer in future with your email marketing strategies.

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Does Viral Marketing Work in 2021?

In 2021, most of the online marketing enthusiasts are practicing viral marketing for their own business and for clients too.

Although this concept came very late in the digital marketing world but there are no doubts that it does work in the long run.

Viral marketing solely motivates social sharers, generates lots of visitors to your site and also rack up thousands likes for many viral campaigns.

In the last three years only, I’ve seen many live viral marketing campaigns which helped brands to grow to the next level with less efforts and in less time.

Apart from this , it is helpful in building brand awareness which could automatically help your business to establish new heights.

With the continuous evolution of technology, viral marketing also brings up newer trends for online marketers’ consideration.

Moreover, I think that 21st century had more possibilities for online marketers 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.

After all, social content sharing is a must here in the internet to improve your brand’s exposure and performance because viral campaigns do play an important role to fetch more visitors for your social media handles.

As long as the digital marketing world is evolving, it is very likely that viral marketing will become a new trend in the 21st century.

So I would like to suggest you to stay updated with the latest social media marketing trends and make your business visible in this competitive world.

As a result, you will be able to grab the best opportunities in the digital marketing world.

By following these tips, you can boost your business’ visibility and performance.

And also, this article is dedicated to all online marketers who are not satisfied with their current digital marketing campaigns and wish to improve their presence in this competitive digital marketing world.

Start right away by making updates to your marketing strategy with the latest content which could make you visible in all social media platforms.

And consider the virality execution in your strategy to stay ahead in the competition in this year.

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What Are The Benefits of Viral Marketing?

To be honest, there are no any kind of losses in the viral marketing campaign for any business.

But it works well as a result to getting more visitors and thus the viral campaign is successful.

If you observe any viral campaign through online marketing, there is a successful viral marketing campaign and it works the same way here.

For example, viral marketing campaign on Facebook.

You will get more number of fans in less time because your social media campaign is successful for growing your fan base of followers and the viral marketing technique which you use to impress them makes it an exclusive technique today’s era called as ” Viral Marketing “.

Additionally, this strategy will help you to increase your brand awareness and it is an excellent technique for increasing the number of customers.

Also, viral marketing campaign on Twitter works the same way as viral marketing campaign on Facebook.

It helps to get more followers on twitter handle, likes on tweet and retweet to increase the organic reach and engagement.

It helps to boost up the organic reach through the users involved in the campaign.

Another benefit which I always consider in all the campaigns is, it helps to reduce the advertisement cost.

So viral marketing campaign play a great role in cutting advertisement cost too.

On the other hand, it works well as a result to getting more visitors and thus it is successful.

If I summerize the major benefits then it should be-

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
15. And many more…

And if we calculate the benefits in all these assets of the business, then it’s a big milestone to achieve.

In short, viral marketing campaign on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest is a successful technique to boost up the business growth quickly.

The technique works well as a result to get more followers and likes.

It helps to boost up the organic reach through the users involved in the campaign.

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How to create a successful viral marketing campaign?

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.

But it is not always true.

In the case of viral marketing, we have to create a video or an image which can be shared by other users and if you want your campaign to become successful then let’s know how many things should be done in order for that?

There are several techniques which can be used for creating a successful viral marketing campaign.

Here are some techniques to achieve success in your viral marketing campaign-

Build up the brand awareness with an image or video which will be shared by other users and if you want your audience to engage more then it is necessary that they should have a clear idea about the brand.

In order to build up your brand awareness you have to create an image or video which will be shared by other users and if it is more engaging then people won’t hesitate in sharing that on their social media accounts.

In this way, they can spread out the brand awareness to their friends and followers.

By creating an image or video which can be shared by other users, you will get more customers for your business.

This technique is very effective in the case of viral marketing campaign on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram etc..

And the next step is use the hashtags to increase your reach on social media.

When you use the hashtag, it will help in increasing your visibility and make people aware about your product or service.

The users who are searching for a particular topic can easily find out what’s trending on Twitter by using this technique which is very effective.

If you are using the hashtag, then it is necessary that your campaign should be highly engaging and if there’s a negative response from people then let’s know what can we do?

The answer to this question is very simple. You have to create something new which will attract people’s attention.

The best way to do this is by creating a video or image which will be interesting for people, so that they can share it with their friends and followers on social media accounts in a way of viral message.

Remember, direct messaging works best on social media because users are already connected and following each other on multiple social media accounts.

Especially, the messages which can be easily share through the mobile devices in whatsapp of facebook messenger can drive more brand awareness and engagement.

In contrast, the direct messages are not easily shareable on all the social media platforms because if users will start sharing same message quickly then the platform could block them from sharing message to anybody.

So, it is better to use the hashtag in order to increase your brand awareness and engagement.

The last step is the use of hashtags in the posts which you want to share on Facebook or Twitter etc..

The best way to use hashtags in your posts is by using the trending topic of hashtag.

For example, if you want to share the post which will be related with travel then use #travel and it would be easy for people to find out what’s happening on that particular day or time because they are most likely to use that hashtag.

Another example is if you want to share the post which will be related with fashion, then it would be better for you to search #fashion and find out what’s happening on that particular day or time because people are likely to use this hashtag in their posts.

If you will do market research deeply into this, you will easily get a lot of viral marketing examples which already created a strong buzz into the competitive market.

As long as you have the target audience of your brand, you can easily scale the brand awareness with this viral strategies.

But in case if you are completely new in the business and wants to get the benefits of this, then I would recommend you to find the relevant influencers and outreach them for a small promotional activity.

Now just tweak the viral marketing techniques to distribute the marketing content and task with all those influencers so that you can measure the performance of there efforts in real-time.

But remember, every piece of content and marketing message should be imrpessive and attractive so that users will share it on social media easily.

It could also consider the meme marketing which is another trend now a days for many popular brands on the internet.

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How to measure the success of viral marketing?

Measurement of any marketing campaign always helps to calculate the results and ROI.

If you cannot measure the success of your viral marketing campaign, then it means that you are not able to get any results from this.

The best way is to use tools like Google Analytics and Facebook pixel which analyzes all the data related with social media in real-time.

Also, you can use some other tools like BuzzSumo to analyze the content and social media traffic.

But before that, it is important for you to do a proper research on how viral marketing works and what are the potentials of your campaign.

So, it is always a good idea to do some research on your competitors and analyze the best viral marketing strategies of them.

Also you can use tools like BuzzSumo which helps you to find out the top content from various sources in real-time.

In this way, there is no way that you can miss any opportunity and get the best viral marketing results.

And to measure the results of the campaign in terms of success parameters, you have to setup the factors which decides the success or failure of the entire campaign.

It should be in the direction to the goal of your campaign.

Always remember, every campaign should be run in the specific direction and you shouldn’t expect everything from all the campaigns you will launch.

So your goal could have the following factors-

• Website traffic
• Facebook shares
• Facebook page likes
• Facebook page post engagement
• Instagram followers
• Youtube subscribers
• Twitter followers
• User generated content
• Or something else…

Once you will identify and decide the most important statistics measurement factor, then you can decide how you should look on the calculations.

Plus, you can setup the minimum milestone you need match your goal according to the efforts you will put into the system.

So if the stats are increasing gradually or rapidly, then it’s working at least.

But if you will cross the minimum milestone you need, then it’s game changer for your business and it could help you to make some additional dollars.

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Successful viral marketing examples

I have seen hundreds of successful case studies and improvement in selling the products faster with the viral marketing.

Below are some of the successful viral marketing examples of successful campaign and growth in sales-

1. Siddharth Pal Generated 4700+ Leads

Yes, I’ve generate 4700+ leads in July 2021 using viral marketing. Not only that, I was able to get a few sales from first day of the campaign.

So it was clear that the campaign I’ve launched was really well and moved into the right way.

This campaign crossed 2200+ social shares and 2900+ other actions on social media such as like facebook page, follow on instagram, subscribe to youtube, comment on youtube video etc.

Later, the email marketing helped to get more benefits out of this data collected from a single viral marketing campaign.

2. Check City Generated $136,458

Check City is a short term loan company started in 1986 and now has more than 70 locations. They struggles to get good amount of traffic especially from the social networks.

Summery of the stats they achieved-

• 2500+ Shares on Facebook
• 1900+ Retweet on Twitter
• 6132 direct visit
• 2794 direct leads
• 6137 referred visit
• 1756 referred leads
• 12269 total visit
• 4550 total leads

Not only this was a great achievement but they have got thousands of visitors after ending the campaign too because they got huge number of social shares through the target audience.

3. ZapBG Got 5000+ Leads

ZapBG is a sister company of Glorify and it started in Q1 of 2020. It’s an amazing online background remover app.

During the launching, ZapBG launched a big viral marketing campaign and they’ve got 5000+ leads in 3 weeks of duration with thousands of social shares and followers on social media handles.

I was the second winner in that campaign but then only I realised the power of this system.

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Limitations of Viral Marketing

Everything in this world has a limitation which is not in anybody’s control and you should not expect everything to work in your favor.

Sometimes you will face some problems and it could be a setback for your business, but if you understand the limitation of viral marketing and how it works then there is no problem at all.

Below are few limitations-

1. You can’t expect a 100% conversion rate from your viral marketing campaign, but it will be at least close to that percentage.
2. You cannot expect the same results every time you launch a new viral marketing campaign, because these campaigns are not designed with an exact formula.
3. If you are not able to reach the minimum milestone, then it’s a failure and there is no need of continuing with that campaign as viral marketing doesn’t work like this.
4. You can’t expect all your competitors will be affected by your viral marketing campaign at once because these campaigns are not designed with a rulebook.
5. The viral marketing campaign will not be effective if the product is too expensive, because people won’t buy it for free and they are looking for a cheap offer instead of paying high price.
6. You can’t expect your competitors to follow you in every step of the way because they will be in a competitive situation and you can’t expect them to follow your plan 100% like that.
7. There are many limitations of viral marketing which I have mentioned above, but if you understand the limitation then there is no problem at all. You just need to adapt with it and you will be fine.

I hope this article has helped you to understand the limitations of viral marketing and how it works in a better way, so that you can use it effectively for your business.

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Pros and cons of Viral Marketing

Every coin has two sides and it’s also true with viral marketing.

There are many pros and cons of viral marketing, let’s have a look over it-

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Conclusion

It will be difficult to measure the effectiveness of this campaign, but if you understand all limitations and know how effective it is before starting then there should not be any problem at all.

You just need to adapt with it and you can use viral marketing effectively for your business. In short, viral marketing is a great way to promote your business, but you need to know how effective it will be before starting.

I hope this article was helpful for you.

If you have any questions about viral marketing or if you want to share your experience with this article then please comment below.

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Frequently Asked Questions of Viral Marketing