Viral Marketing: Why It Works

The word “viral” is no longer a word used exclusively heard or used in the medical field. While it may have extended its usage into the realm of marketing and the content of this blog post – “viral marketing” – it still remains very close to its biological roots. Not because of how quickly it spreads, but because of what makes it successful – appealing to the human psyche. According to a recent New York Times article, “People share things they have strong emotional reactions to, especially strong positive reactions,” Dr. Guadagno said. It is then no surprise that the most popular videos are the ones that pull at our heartstrings or make us feel incredibly elated. When we see someone that appeals to us, we share it with friends and family, thereby creating a ripple effect of emotional sharing.

Marketers have of course seized this opportunity to capitalize on emotionally charged content and make use of pre-existing social networking services such as Facebook and YouTube to cast their net and spread brand awareness. The beauty of viral marketing is that it can be spread through the various social networking channels via linking and sharing. It can also permeate the internet through word of mouth sharing. Of course the latter is most effective when great creative content makes its way in to the hands of individuals with “high social networking potential (SNP)”. These individuals include popular bloggers and media personalities with a high number of Facebook friends or Twitter followers.

So what makes a viral marketing campaign successful? According to professors of marketing, Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, of the ESCP Europe Business School, three basic criteria must be met:

• Messenger – this is the channel through which the message is spread. As mentioned previously, it is vital that this person be someone who has their finger on the pulse of what’s hot AND has a large network with which to dispel or share the information.
• Message – at the heart of it all is the content itself and it must be emotionally charged. Whether it makes us laugh, feel nostalgic, cry or even get angry, that is the key to motivate the need to “turn a link into ‘click-bait’”.
•  Environment – like the people who are influenced by the message, the environment in which the message is shared is a crucial component in strengthening the content of the message. And like the message itself, both environments that are emotionally charged such as political uprisings or worldwide sporting events.