Sep-11-2012
Viral marketing seems to be a term that most marketing and advertising companies use right now. You may be wondering what this term actually means and how you can use this for your business. This article is meant to lay down to you the easiest way to understand viral marketing.
To start off, viral marketing is not a type of marketing – rather, this is an effect or a result that you wish to aim for your marketing efforts. As the term viral suggests, effect is to become widespread by people passing on your marketing efforts organically in different channels. Advertising has changed a lot through the years. You can now transcend from the usual TV, print and radio media. It is now more compelling if your own consumers and target passes on and swears by the message of your marketing efforts. You can do this via an online video. Everybody can be your channel in sharing this video- as long as your video is interesting enough to be shared by people. This is actually a cost efficient way to do your advertising because you are getting people to post your material on their social media wall and share to their friends for free.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130126083148if_/http://www.youtube.com/embed/a_1PPELgpcI?rel=0
With this, your marketing material should be really interesting, creative and compelling. But first, you must be able to list down the background of your business. It is really important that you understand your business very much – what do you want to happen, where do you want to take it and who are the people you are talking to. Your target market is very important so you must be able to study these people really well. What are their aspirations in life, what do they do day in and day out, what are their purchase habits, when do they go online and how do they use the internet? These are the questions that you need to answer in order to come up with a good consumer and business insight. This way, your advertising material is really focused.
It is best that you will be able to capture the message that you want to come across in a single line. It’s best to be focused. Multiple messages in an advertising material will be hard for your consumer to digest.
Now, you are ready to develop your storyboard. A storyboard is a visualization or the step by step narration of your video – done on paper. Don’t worry- you need not be a good illustrator to do this. As long as you have your imagination and creativity going for you, you will be able to list down what you want to happen in your video. If you are not really a creative person and more of the strategic marketing person, you can employ the help of an advertising copywriter and art director. Remember, the output or the story is very important for the material to become viral. Any how to viral marketing article or class will say that you will need a good story or material for it to be passed on.
Now with a storyboard on hand, you can now do your viral video. This can be via different ways and one of the most cost efficient is by the use of a slideshow. These is through photos that are put together to create a story.
If your material is exciting enough to share, once you are done producing it, all you need to do is to just sit back and watch it get shared from one person to another. Now that’s viral!
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