Supplementing Top Quality Content for the Web with Viral Marketing Campaigns
Dear readers (I’m assuming there’s more than one), has anyone of you heard of the ‘Dollar shave club’? Type in those words in the search engine of your choice and amidst the page littered with links to the aforementioned club, you might notice a link to a short video. It is of course an advertisement and it wouldn’t find a mention in our modest little blog if there wasn’t something extraordinary in it. This is a video that took the internet by storm sometime in April this year. Suckers for the occasional YouTube rib-ticklers might have heard about it.
The video was a simple advertisement fashioned comically around a business idea that can be described as nothing less than ingenious. Of course, in truth, it may not be, but the video could definitely convince you otherwise. The video went viral and needless to say, as Aldo the apache might put it, “Cousin, business is just boomin”.
A Case Study on Viral Marketing
In any other case, people might have scoffed at the idea and considered it a run of the mill hogwash scheme in spite of the absurdly low investment of one dollar. Perhaps it was the low investment that might have actually made it seem crazy to begin with. But the video made the audiences buy into its craziness.
And there you have it, a case study on how Viral Marketing can make your website an instant sensation. And in case you’re wondering, yes these are exactly the kind of results that Viral Marketing fetches you. It too has its drawbacks but considering the ruthless competition that you are likely to face, viral marketing maybe the perfect tool in your arsenal.
The Problems with Viral Marketing
People usually flinch in the name of viral marketing since it usually means a sudden spike in traffic which few websites can hold on to. Other forms of marketing and SEO are consistent and easy to sustain. Viral marketing on the other hand provides a recognition that slips through your fingers way too easily. There is truth in it.
The average user has the attention span of a goldfish and there are about a gazillion viral campaigns out there that are tripping up over each other. What are the odds that your campaign might come out tops and stay there? The uncertainty element just looms large.
But then again, one has to keep in mind that getting noticed is one of the most crucial steps in SEO and content writing. The rest that follows would be predicated solely on the user’s needs and experience with the website. It would be up to you to make the user feel a need that only your business can satiate. Viral marketing can make the horse come to the water. It is up to you to make it drink.
The Potential of Viral Marketing
The internet is a complex place. Subsequently, content for the web exists in many radical avatars. The exponential growth that SEO is witnessing has made marketing in the content service and technical writing industry as propitious as it is complex. Content marketing nowadays has evolved as a well rounded confluence of link attraction, social, search, branding etc. in one single force. The competition (and not just for web content writing) is vast and intense. And taking up strategies like viral marketing would be what one terms as bringing a gun to a gunfight instead of a knife.
Coming back to the uncertainties that one will face, one is yet to figure out what makes a viral campaign really go ‘viral’. What really makes the target audience carry forward the campaign? Perhaps it’s just a wild stroke of luck or maybe the answer may simply be compelling material for advertising that is zany and informative in the right mix. It is a gamble. But you’ll never win until you roll the dice now will you?
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