Want to go viral? Making a video go viral isn’t magic, yet too many smart marketing people produce and market great videos that don’t get views. Why is that?
With the proper strategy and budget, taking your video production and marketing campaign viral means more more views, exposure, awareness, social media engagement, website traffic and ultimately, sales.
People refer to making a video go viral as some kind of magic trick. It’s not.
There’s no mystery to producing and marketing videos that go viral, get lots and lots of organic views and lots and lots of exposure across social media and even traditional media.
Going viral means the people that matter care and are willing to share your videos with their friends.
Picture a stream – running into a river – running into an ocean. When you first launch a viral video, you’re in the stream. Viral is the ocean. It’s bigger and more diverse with a mix of people who want to buy your stuff, people who know people that want to buy your stuff and people who just like your videos.
First you need to create a great video, then push it from the stream to the ocean
So, how do we get from the stream to the ocean? How do we make your videos go viral?
- Target your customers but also appeal to a wider viral audience
- Focus on shareable creative – make it unexpected and memorable
- Go light on the branding, messaging and call to action
- Optimize for search
- Promote the video like crazy – including “gulp” paid ads and influencers
1. Go Viral by Targeting Your Customers While Appealing to a Wider, Viral Audience
Simply put, this means you have to hit a WIDE demographic of people to maximize views and sharing, but be targeted enough to actually sell stuff to your most likely customers.
Really understand what your target demographic likes, what they want and what they need. That’s your starting point. Then, widen out the creative to make a bigger tent – appeal to a larger mix of people.
Going viral is all about sharing. Otherwise you would just run a paid ad campaign to get all those views.
2. Focus on Shareable Content
You’re making a marketing video, so you’ve already got two hands behind your back when going up against cute cat videos, cute baby videos and cute cat videos.
The way to overcome this is with video concepts that are unexpected and memorable. Funny is always a good choice. Emotional works. Just make sure, above all it’s not boring. People don’t share boring. They skip boring.
3. Go Light on Branding, Messaging and Call To Action
As soon as viewers detect a marketing message coming their way, they get all spooked and ready to click anywhere else. So go light on the branding, messaging and call to action.
Save that for video and TV ads. They have no place in viral video land.
Instead, let video descriptions, a website landing page, bloggers, journalists and social media influencers do the heavy lifting and explain the deeper meaning of what’s for sale and why viewers should care.
Your immediate job is to get the viewers’ attention and make them watch and share.
4. Optimize for Search
Your video titles, tags and descriptions are what enable people find them in search.
Optimize videos by using the best keywords in the video title, description and even in the dialogue or voiceover of the video. Youtube allows for closed captioning which creates searchable transcripts. You can also copy-and-paste the transcript text into the video description on any video sharing platform, making the dialogue or voiceover searchable.
5. Promote the Video Via Paid Ads, Influencers, Email and Blog and Publication Outreach
Going back to the stream – river – ocean analogy, the idea is the jumpstart your video views and sharing the get your video out there enough that organic sharing begins and your video goes viral.
If you pay .20 for a video view and that video view gets shared once for free, you’ve now paid .10 for that view. The more it gets shared organically, the more your cost-per-view goes down.
- PAID SOCIAL MEDIA ADS: Promote the video campaign via paid advertising across social media and search channels. Paid channels include YouTube advertising, Facebook advertising, Google Display, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, promoted posts across most channels, and lots more.
- NATIVE VIDEO ADS: Native video involves placing ads that appear as content on relevant websites. For example, an engaging, shareable video about extreme whitewater kayaking may really be an ad for kayaks, but if you see it on an outdoor magazine website, you may just think it’s content and watch and share.
- BLOG AND PUBLICATION OUTREACH: Reach out to blogs and publications that appeal to your purchasing demo. Where does that audience and your wider demographic around them get their news, information and entertainment? Those bloggers and journalists are your target – pitch them your video along with a short description and get them to talk about it, embed it and share on their audience social media channels.
- PAID AND FREE SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS: Influencers across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other social media channels bring with them a pre-built audience. Much like bloggers and journalists, each influencer appeals to certain demographics and when they mention or share your video it’s like an endorsement that your video is cool.The trick is to make your video something worth sharing, then target the right influencers that reach your purchasing audience and wider audience. Many top, and even less famous influencers require payment to make a video or mention your video, product or service on their social media channels. Payments vary wildly and are typically negotiable right down to the number and frequency of mentions across a predetermined set of social media channels.
- EMAIL: Do you have a large email list? Send out an HTML newsletter-style email blast with an engaging thumbnail and short story behind the video – why they should care, why they should watch – to your entire list. Follow up again a few days later to make sure they saw it.
Supercool Creative Agency writes, produces and promotes videos for some of the coolest brands, businesses and startups on the planet! If you need help with any of this, CONTACT SUPERCOOL and we’d be happy to talk it through with you!
