Viral Marketing: How Easily You Can Be Manipulated?
It is no secret that marketing affects your day-to-day life. You probably notice it everywhere you go, with advertisements plastered throughout the internet. What if I told you, you were being manipulated with the day-to-day content you see on your social media feed. From the things that people share, like, or even the funny memes that you online; They all affect your mindset. There is someone behind it who strategically designed something to go viral and affect the way you think.
Within the last decade, there has been a major transition from how businesses market to an audience. Traditionally, they focused on advertisements and word of mouth to get their product into the consumer’s mind. With the explosion of the internet, new generations have become less susceptible to traditional styles of marketing. This caused the marketing industry to adapt to how they get their products out there, those who failed to adapt often fell behind in company growth.
Keywords To Know:
· Influencer- A person with a large social media gathering.
· Micro-Influencers- A person with a small social media gathering in a niche market.
· Influencer Marketing- Utilizing Influencers to promote your product to their social media following.
· Direct Viral Marketing (DVM)- Viral Marketing where a product is actively being promoted and the consumer knows a product is being advertised.
· Indirect Viral Marketing (IVM)-Viral marketing where a product is subtly placed in such a hidden way to show exposure to a consumer. A consumer may not realize they are being marketed to.
· Herd Mentality- How people often change their thinking to conform with a larger group of people on an idea. Often based on emotion, rather than rational thinking, aka Mob Mentality.
· Affiliate Marketing- A form of marketing that allows an influencer to take in profits based on the number of purchases they make.
· Word of Mouth Marketing- An indirect form of marketing, where consumers actively discuss a brand or product without any promotion occurring. (i.e.- referrals, suggestions, and casual conversations)
· Meme- A form of humor usually based on internet pictures making fun of a specific topic
Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing allows a product to become famous online, giving free exposure to a brand without the need for capital to advertise it. This does not mean they do not need capital to create a Viral Marketing campaign, because you may need an initial infusion of capital to get a campaign started, unless you A.) Have a social media following for your brand B.) Have the necessary connections to get your brand the exposure it needs.
Why Viral Marketing Works
Consumers tend to follow the same mentality of their peers when it comes to a product. If an initial set of consumers have the same positive outlook towards a product or service, many people will follow in with the same mentality because they want to conform to the same train of thought. People often look to others for recommendations on products or services; If someone they trust likes the product, so will they. As humans we fear not being normal, so we tend to follow what others do. This is common throughout history, from political ideas to small games of accusation like Among Us. Most people will conform to the same principles if they see someone, they trust doing it. This is called Herd Mentality and it plays a huge role in Viral Marketing.
There are two different forms of Viral Marketing, direct and indirect. Powerful in their own ways. However, one is openly known as an advertisement, while the other is subtle.
Direct Viral Marketing (DVM) utilizes Influencer Marketing, where an influencer (typically someone who has a high following count, with a lot of impressions on their content) has sponsors a post or video with a product. Celebrity sponsorship is not a new form of marketing, however with the advancements in social media it has become another hidden form of advertisement thanks to influencers. Consumers tend to trust influencers based on the trust they have built by interacting with them previously. The trust is similar to the levels of trust transferred when using Word of Mouth Marketing.
For a moment, I want you to separate celebrities from influencers, you must understand that not every celebrity is an influencer, and not every influencer is a celebrity. Sometimes they go together, but not always. People become influencers once they start to have a following, typically these will be very niched accounts. We refer to these accounts as “Micro-Influencers”, they typically have a higher interaction rate with their following, allowing them to form a better quality of trust/influence.
For example, an Influencer is contacted by a sponsor with a product as simple as a water bottle, app, or makeup product. They will then create a video or sponsored post showcasing the product. This can come in the form of a quick 30 second avert in a video, a picture on social media, or even as subtle as product placement.
This allows an influencer to advertise a product by giving it exposure to their following. When you have multiple influencers covering a product, this creates exposure towards the product. Influencing people to actively think about it.
Realistically this works if you have to capital to purchase advertising from multiple major influencers, or the connections to help you promote your brand. An example of this is Kylie Cosmetics: Kylie Jenner was already an influencer before starting her company, however, she was able to quickly take over the cosmetic industry by utilizing her connections in the industry. She was able to leverage her sisters’ influence, known as the Kardashians, to promote her line of cosmetics. Within a few years, she was able to grow her cosmetics brand into an empire, after her brand was able to utilize this form of marketing, it quickly became an in-house brand at major retailers such as ULTA.
When a product is actively in the hands of influencers, the consumers tend to follow the trends they set thanks to Herd Mentality.
Another great example of DMV is when you combine Influencer Marketing with Affiliate Marketing and Word of Mouth. That is what SunnyCoClothing was able to achieve (by accident) in 2017 when they launched their Affiliate Marketing Program that offered a Bikini for “free” + shipping. All consumers had to do was take a screenshot of the ad and post it on their platform. This allowed their friends and family to see the advertisement without spending the extra capital per impression. This campaign blew up as friends reposted the same image over and over again in hopes of getting a free product. Many fitness micro-influencers joined in on the campaign which sparked the image to go viral as it reached their following.
Herd Mentality comes into play when they see all their friends posting the same picture of a stylist bikini in hopes of getting something for free. They would want to get one too.
The genius behind SunnyCoClothing’s Campaign was they were not aware it was going to go viral, but with a stroke of luck it did. It reached the influencers that were following them and they spread it via word of mouth in hopes of getting a free bikini. Another great thing was the pricing, they offered the product for “free” at the cost of shipping. However, the cost of shipping covered the profits, as the bikini was outsourced and dropshipped from China. The campaign was free advertising and pure profit for the company.
Indirect Viral Marketing (IVM) utilized sharing as a tool to spread information or products to a broad audience. This is highly dependent on people creating memes to spread the advertisement but doing so in such a subtle way that they are unaware they are creating free exposure for a brand.
Let us examine the popular movie: Bird Box. Bird Box was a Netflix original movie that “took the world by storm” or so we thought. Everyone watched the movie, but it was a mediocre movie according to fans and critics alike, acquiring a 65% critic rating and 67% fans rating on rotten tomatoes, but why did it become so popular out of nowhere.
Prior to the movie coming out and the first 7 days of the movie aired on Netflix, the internet exploded with memes making fun of the concepts in the movie. It became the main topic on the internet. As some influencers, such as Kim Kardashian shared memes, about the movie. As more memes were shared, consumers actively became interested in the concept of the movie. According to Netflix, this hype around this movie increased their active subscriptions by 8 million new paid subscribers within the 3 months Bird Box was released.
Theory- Some theorize that Netflix may have engaged in bot activity or paid Twitter to actively promote the hashtag with bots posting memes that will be reposted by normal consumers. While this is not proven, the data supports that this could have been a possibility.
Another great example you will see is right now is on your Facebook timeline. Many drop shippers have become accustomed to creating small entertainment videos that use their products. These videos are designed to go viral without selling you anything, then they advertise the product in the comments with a link to the store. This funnels you from the video that showcases the product in action, directly to their website because you get curious about the product.
Now how do they get these things to go viral? That is not an easy question to answer, sometimes they manipulate the algorithm or get a bunch of influencers to talk about a product or service. This creates hype around the product to get others to talk about it in their feed. This happens a lot more often than you think.
I plan on coming out with an article that showcases how easy it is to get something to go viral on one of the largest websites known as Reddit.
Why do I need to know this information?
Marketing is a just another form of persuasion, however it convinces you to think and do things on a psychological level. When you understand you’re being manipulated, you can break free from it and think for yourself. Let’s go back to that BirdBox Movie, now that you have time to distance yourself form the memes, would you consider that a great movie? It most mediocre right? That’s because you’re able to think for yourself now.
Now that you understand how Viral Marketing works. This is your homework, go on your social media and look at the feed on Twitter, Tiktok, Facebook, and Instagram. Look specifically for the memes and see what people are talking about in their feed. Recognize how many things are just another product without telling you?
