Viral Marketing is a business strategy that uses a social media platform to promote a product or service. In other words, it is a digital marketing strategy that tries to convince the customer to become a brand advocate of the existing products/services.It encourages people to share with other people to reach a larger audience and thereby making the advertisement go viral! We take a look at some notable viral campaigns.

Top 10 Viral Marketing Examples

Dove conducted a study and analyzed that only 2% of women considered themselves beautiful. So, they conceived the idea of using real women rather than models for their ad. In this video marketing, the artist draws two sketches of a woman - one that she herself help him to create and another described by somebody. The video went viral globally by spreading the brand message and belief in confidence. The marketers tried to deeply touch the emotions of the people through this campaign.

Dove Real Beauty Sketches Campaign

iHeartDogs is a company that was established for a social welfare purpose. Every time people buy their products, they donate meals to dog shelters. Keeping to its core, the company started running ads on Facebook to attract more people to donate.The campaign said that they will provide nothing for buying their products. Instead of discounts, they promised to double donations from purchases made over the weekend. They launched a 0% off campaign from Black Friday to Giving Tuesday. The ad on Facebook read 0% off but the company ended with quadrupling sales.

iHeartDogs: 0% off

The South by South West (SXSW) conference brings together thousands of millennials interested in music, interactive media, and film every year. The SXSW is held in Austin, Texas. Twitter as a startup negotiated with the organizers to place huge screens around the venue. These were updated with real-time messaging and attendees with Twitter accounts participated in the campaign and promoted the brand.This created a massive impact, demonstrating the arrival of a new social media age. Twitter gained a new reputation and many new subscribers who wanted to become part of something new.

Twitter's Launch Campaign

Uber became a social sensation at the South by South West festival. They offered free rides to attendees during the conference and festival. This created a sensation during the event and people started discussing it on social media. Wouldn’t you? Everyone wants to experience free service and that too in such style! The deluge of information back and forth was so much that a <a href="https://startuptalky.com/best-video-advertising-platforms/">social media platform</a> collapsed.

Uber's Launch Campaign

Dropbox, is the go-to cloud storage service to save your files and data. And the best part is once stored in virtual space, you can share and sync your files without the hassle of sending attachments individually.They set a great example of affiliate marketing that went viral. Dropbox offered 500 MB of free storage for every referral and signup by an existing customer. What happened? Well, Dropbox saw registration shoot up by 60%. Even now, a major part of new customers is deriving from word of mouth.

Dropbox Referral Offer

Mint proved that with its unique marketing strategy and great product for content creators. Mint used its blogs to create awareness and gave special benefits to users who put "I Want Mint" badges on their blogs or social media pages. That was great free advertising!They were able to make customers feel special without spending money. And from this badge, Mint got free advertising on 600 different blogs from both normal people and influencers.

"I Want Mint" Badge

Marketing is an essential element for any business, startup or established organization to tell customers how awesome their product is and why they should buy it. There are innovative ways to promote your product. Now that you know the various examples of viral marketing campaigns, you can apply this to make your brand go viral and reach a larger target audience. Not all viral campaigns have to be funny or shocking. It can go viral for both positive and negative reasons if you can deeply touch customers' emotions by spreading the brand's message.

The Bottom Line

Zoom, a video conferencing platform, had come up with a Virtual Background Competition in March 2020. It had introduced the monthly competition for remote workers. They could share videos or pictures using zoom’s virtual background feature. A monthly competition with three prizes per month.How did Zoom perform? Over 50,000 people signed just to take part in the competition. Another great thing was customer value-added service. This campaign brought new people to Zoom and got them to explore different features. A good way to make sure customers learn and recommend further.

Zoom Virtual Background Challenge

<ul><li>Master the target audience.</li><li>Select the appropriate social media platform.</li><li>Create content with high engagement.</li><li>Time content for maximum reach.</li><li>Boost visibility with advertising.</li><li>Partner with a social media influencer.</li><li>Measure performance to create better campaigns in the future.</li><li>Provide a clear call to action.</li></ul>

Secrets To Go Viral On Social Media

Spotify, a startup founded in 2008 in Sweden and provides audio streaming and media services. In 2011, it initiated co-marketing with Facebook to solidify its position. A personal playlist can be published on a user’s Facebook page and at the same time, another user can listen to it with a single click.As of the second quarter of 2021, Spotify has 165 million premium subscribers worldwide and is available in more than 15 countries including the UK, the US, and the MENA region.

Spotify Co-marketing with Facebook

The company focused on the "selfie" aspect that people can share on social media which creates huge buzz among people. They find it a great product. The camera quality made people start filming and creating content. These beautiful pictures do not have any direct link to the brand except for the tag – Shot on iPhone.People have started sharing the Shot on iPhone images and video. The campaign became a great hit because of the memes. Apple had successfully portrayed itself as the best camera phone for all camera lovers or content creators out there.

Apple: Shot on iPhone

This Ice Bucket Challenge is also known as ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. The campaign was started with the purpose to promote awareness of the disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and encouraging donations to research. Many big personalities like <a href="https://startuptalky.com/bill-gates-microsoft/">Bill Gates</a>, Oprah Winfrey and <a href="https://startuptalky.com/justin-bieber-endorsed-brands/">Justin Bieber</a> took part in the campaign to raise awareness by pouring a bucket of ice water over themselves.The campaign went viral on social media and helped the organisation to raise over $220 million and became the fifth most popular Google search in the year 2014.

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Check out these top viral marketing campaigns that created a huge sensation on social media and how it tends to reach a larger target audience.