Viral marketing

Viral marketing is a type of advertising in which a business relies on its customers to share information about its products via the Internet. Viral marketing was initially made popular in the late 1990s by Hotmail, which used its own subscribers to advertise its email service. Viral marketing then grew to new heights alongside the rise of social media when sharing content across the Internet became commonplace.

Many companies engage in viral marketing because it is less expensive than traditional advertising campaigns. These campaigns also have the potential to reach wider audiences while still targeting specific demographics that may be interested in a business or its products. Despite these advantages, viral marketing carries some risks. No company can perfectly predict what will become popular on the Internet. If Internet users do not find a viral marketing campaign engaging, they will refuse to share the content. This wastes any resources that the company has put into developing that content. Worse, if users find the content offensive, then negative feedback toward the company itself might go viral. This can actively damage a company’s reputation, which might hurt its profits.

Background

The first recorded viral marketing attempt dates to the late twentieth century. Hotmail was a small start-up specializing in providing email services. Though it would later become a much larger player in the email industry, Hotmail initially struggled to recruit users to its services. At the time, the percentage of the population using the Internet was quite small. Because search engines were smaller, and Internet advertising had yet to grow into a massive industry, reaching new users through the Internet was difficult. Because Hotmail was still a smaller start-up, it did not have the budget necessary for large-scale advertising campaigns.

In 1996 Hotmail decided that the most effective means of growing its user base would be to directly attempt to reach the friends and family of its current users. However, reaching out to potential customers in an unsolicited manner would likely be dismissed as spam and rejected by email filters. To avoid this, Hotmail decided to leverage the activity of its existing users. They added an automated footer to each email sent. The footer read, “Want a free email account? Sign-up for Hotmail today!”

This tactic cost the start-up very little money. Additionally, it allowed the actions of its user-base to advertise on behalf of the company. As more users became aware of Hotmail’s free email offerings and signed up for the service, their messages also became advertisements for Hotmail. The tactic was an immediate success, and within one year, Hotmail grew from twenty thousand active users to more than one million active users. By 2001, Hotmail had grown to eighty-six million users and claimed roughly 30 percent of the total email market.

By the time Hotmail’s strategy had proven itself successful, the term viral marketing had been coined. Other companies had begun attempting to utilize Hotmail’s marketing tactic. Companies realized that when marketed properly, ideas would spread rapidly through a dedicated consumer base. However, at that time, viral marketing was still missing one of the key elements for its continued success: social media.

In the early 2000s, social media networks rapidly grew in popularity. When MySpace and Facebook launched in the early 2000s, each attracted millions of active social media users. These networks allowed people to rapidly share both information and digital media with one another. People regularly updated their social media profiles with events that happened in their lives, media they were consuming, and interesting online content. Most importantly, people began to interact with their social media profiles regularly. With the advent of smartphones, consumers could check their social media profiles at any time.

Advertisers were quick to realize how social media could be exploited for viral marketing. The term going viral, which referred to the phenomenon of rapid sharing online, was becoming popular across the Internet at an unprecedented rate. Advertisers began to tailor the content to specific online audiences, hoping that Internet users would independently spread these advertisements. Soon, this style of online engagement with a consumer base became the norm.

Overview

Viral marketing is the process by which a business intentionally uses consumers to spread information. It is commonly conducted through word of mouth or through sharing on social media and the Internet. In its early days, viral marketing was mostly conducted through email services. However, in the twenty-first century, viral marketing usually is conducted through the creation of digital media that is shared through social media.

Viral marketing has significant advantages over more traditional advertising campaigns. Television advertisements, Internet advertisements, billboards, and other traditional advertising methods are still considered widely effective at raising awareness of a product or service. However, these avenues are expensive and time-consuming. Similarly, hiring a dedicated advertisement firm may be too expensive for companies on tight budgets.

Conducting a viral marketing campaign can be extremely cost-efficient. Though the company must initially create some form of media for consumers to share, such as a video, image, or comments from a social media account, the company no longer needs to pay for the process of advertising itself. Instead, consumers voluntarily share the content, spreading it through their own personal networks. In some cases, companies may encourage this process by offering raffle or giveaway entries to consumers who share the content.

Additionally, viral marketing has a reach that traditional marketing attempts may not be able to match. When people who are excited about a particular type of content share that content with their friends or acquaintances, they are likely sharing it with people who would also enjoy that type of content. These other consumers do not need to be engaged with any of the typical formats of advertising to learn about a new product or service. Additionally, they may be more receptive to learning about the product or service if they are hearing about it from someone they already know and trust.

Skillfully conducted viral marketing campaigns usually avoid feeling like advertising at all. They make consumers feel as if they are voluntarily engaging with entertaining content. The consumer then shares it with their friends or associates. Many consumers innately distrust advertisements, so any method for raising awareness of a product, brand, or service that does not immediately appear to be advertising is particularly valuable.

Companies and advertising firms use several techniques to conduct viral marketing campaigns. Some companies use videos, making traditional-style advertisements in a comedic or memorable manner. They then begin sharing these advertisements across the Internet, hoping consumers who are entertained will also share them. Other companies leverage social media directly. They begin social media pages for their brand across various platforms, usually including TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. They then ensure that these pages are continually updated, often including amusing content and direct interaction with consumers. As more consumers share the content from the page, other consumers will follow the page, ensuring that consumers receive consistent exposure to the company or brand.

In some cases, companies will seed their content to maximize its potential audience. Seeding means purposefully giving potentially viral content to popular social media figures, influencers, and other content creators. In many cases, these figures will be paid to share the company’s content. Though this may cost the company more money than traditional viral marketing, it is usually significantly less expensive than a traditional advertising campaign. It also immediately secures large audiences for new content, as well as ensuring that consumers are exposed to the content from someone they view as a trusted source.

While viral marketing comes with significant advantages over regular marketing, it also comes with potential disadvantages. Because viral marketing campaigns depend on consumers for sharing content, they introduce an element of unreliability. If consumers fail to find content engaging or entertaining, they may fail to share the content. Internet communities are notoriously unpredictable, and styles of content that may have been popular in the past can suddenly fail. If the content does not immediately generate buzz from Internet communities, then any money or resources put into the creation of that content can be wasted. Though many social media and advertising experts work hard to predict the fads or styles of media that will remain popular on the Internet, no one is truly able to predict what will go viral.

If consumers dislike viral content, then companies are at risk of greater backlash. If a company publishes an advertisement through traditional means, then finds that such content is causing consumers to react negatively, the company has the power to pull that content from circulation. However, once content is directly released to the Internet, consumers can continue to share it. If a viral marketing campaign is received negatively, consumers may continue to share that campaign while including negative remarks about the company or brand. This can actively damage a business’s reputation.

Further, social media influencers may not hold the power they had in the past. Many followers have discovered accounts they followed were fake, or they discovered a proportion of followers the influencers possessed were actually electronic bots purchased to drive up engagement numbers. Others have become angry that influencers pushed products without revealing they were paid to do so. The backlash to such campaigns can be significant. In the 2020s, social media sites forced influencers being paid by companies to publicly declare they were posting advertisements, limiting the sway of viral marketing. 

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