If you are running an online business, you must have dreamt at least once about your business going viral. There are so many examples of companies that just exploded overnight and achieved insane success. Even if we look at social media, many examples of videos go viral and attract millions of views in just a couple of hours. That all sounds amazing, and it is enticing to think about viral marketing. While viral marketing may be highly beneficial to your business, it has some downsides or drawbacks. With that in mind, we want to talk more about the pros and cons of viral marketing. We hope this discussion will help you understand your options and make an informed decision.
Pro #1 - Viral marketing will save you a lot of money
Creating a successful business marketing plan costs a lot of money. Furthermore, it requires a lot of time and resources. This is mostly because your marketing team needs to do extensive analysis and research.
When it comes to vital marketing, you are mostly relying on customers and prospects that will spread the message online. The amount of money you can save if you make it with viral marketing is outrageously high.
Con #1 - Not every person will share the message
Even though viral marketing will reach out to many people, not everyone will be interested in sharing the message. Even if people like your product, participating in a viral campaign and sharing with others might be something they are not interested in. They simply want to enjoy the product, and that is it. That makes it really difficult to keep track of the metrics. The number of views does not necessarily mean that there will be a positive reaction from everyone.
Pro #2 - Advertise your business in a non-intrusive way
The number of digital marketing people are exposed to is increasing daily. At the same time, expensive TV advertising, which is still very active, targets a wide range of people usually not interested in advertised products. A huge downside is that people feel overwhelmed and often think of advertisements as spam. In the end, they ignore marketing messages.
Con #2 - You don't have control over viral marketing
Viral marketing spreads like wildfire. Once it starts, you cannot put a stop to it. While there is a saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity, you can never know how people will interact with your message. That can be a double-edged sword and also cause damage to your business and brand reputation. Just as we have examples of businesses that grew and expanded overnight, there are also examples of companies that quickly went down after a viral incident. Have that in mind.
Pro #3 - Your brand will grow overnight
Many businesses spend years slowly growing into large corporations and successful brands. If you do it the right way, viral marketing may save you a lot of time, and you might achieve that success overnight. A fast rise to fame always seems attractive, especially if it earns you a lot of money in the process.
Viral marketing will also bring a huge amount of organic traffic to your website.
Con #3 - You need to be constantly engaged
With traditional forms of digital marketing, it is often enough to do a campaign, set up a message, and slowly reap the benefits. However, viral marketing is more alive and dynamic. Because of that, you need to constantly influence your marketing message to make sure you weed out any negative comments. Even though it substantially cuts down the time to achieve success, it does require additional time to maintain a positive direction.
Pro #4 - Viral marketing can work offline
Digital marketing requires an online presence at all times. You must be active on social media, manage the website, and be very busy. We already mentioned that viral marketing is a form of word-of-mouth advertising, so technically, it can also happen offline.
This is excellent because it leaves a better impression if people hear about your business, even when they are not online. You will achieve great success if you get people talking about your brand in their personal lives.
Con #4 - You could be wasting your time
Even though viral marketing is so appealing and it grants you overnight success, that does not mean it will happen for you. In fact, according to the customer research of MoversTech CRM, there is no clear path to successful viral marketing. Even though you might have a quality product, good customer relations, a positive brand message, and many other things, viral success might still somehow evade your business.
The best approach is to just work on doing your best to provide quality service to your clients and try to reward them for spreading the good word about your brand.
A quick summary of the pros and cons of viral marketing
As we can see, viral marketing can go both ways. It can reward your marketing efforts and create overnight success, but it can also simply not happen or bring you negative exposure.
The major pros of viral marketing are:
- it will save your business a lot of money on advertising;
- it is a form of non-intrusive marketing that relies on word of mouth;
- you might grow your business overnight;
- you can go offline with viral marketing;
At the same time, the cons of viral marketing are:
- not everyone interested in your product will participate in spreading the message;
- once it happens, you cannot control the outcome of viral marketing;
- it requires a lot of engagement to weed out the negative comments out;
- it might never happen for you;
We hope that you now understand the pros and cons of viral marketing. The best piece of advice is just to make sure you are delivering quality service, and if you go viral, try to reap the benefits of the current situation.