Viral marketing is a technique that marketers aspire to – but can rarely – plan or predict. Most likely, viral marketing is in the thoughts of many marketers at night. Once the fire that drives viral marketing ignites, it induces the visitors to websites to pass on a marketing message. Since the visitor considers the perceived message to be of importance or value, they do as expected.
The growth of interest in viral marketing causes for brands can be exponential in volume and effect. Even if the target group realizes this is marketing, the interest and value of the content or product is so great that the marketing aspect is ignored. Part of this has to do with the natural urge of sports fans to share new, valued or important information (content) with friends and fellow sport fans.
Viral marketing that takes place in sports often centers around exciting news which is leaked or officially announced. This causes a rush of sales in tickets, team merchandise purchasing or attendance at pending appearances of teams, players or athletes. Viral marketing works because people in general and sports fans in particular love to share interesting and entertaining news, videos and other content. No one needs to ask them to spread the content. This is one reason Facebook, with its fan and follower structure, is very prone to be the vehicle for continued viral marketing.
Viral Marketing Types
Different techniques that have produced self-igniting viral marketing events are as follows.
Having a goal to promote brands without asking for a sale using interactive and small websites have been successful in generating viral marketing. These small websites that promote and allow user-generated content provide an easy vehicle for the start of viral marketing. The Facebook Fan page could be considered for this type of viral marketing tool. The fan page, combined with the infrastructure of followers, facilitates the viral spread of content a target group deems of value. No requests for sale are ever made. So to speak, the product sells itself.
Giveaways and free samples or contests are excellent ways to initiate viral marketing events. Especially when the giveaways and samples are deemed of value and the contests are challenging and not trivial. In sports marketing, these are called sport mechanics and they work exceedingly well when planned and carried out correctly.
Viral marketing is more easily generated by content provided by persons with powerful accounts on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and other sites. This is why more sports teams are engaging their players to be involved on Twitter. This has happened to the point where names on jerseys have been, in some cases, replaced with Twitter handles of the players.
Should a team of popular players be visiting a new town and a tweet, purposefully or accidentally reveals plans for appearances, massive attendance is virtually assured. Everyone wins the fans, the athletes, the teams and the brands associated with the teams and the athletes.
Disadvantages of Viral Marketing
Viral marketing can take place much faster than anticipated causing problems that can leave a bad feeling with fans. It has happened that events have had to be cancelled when frenzied fans have gotten out of hand with their enthusiasm.
