How to Create a Successful Viral Campaign

by Francois Muscat | Oct 14, 2019 | Online Marketing

Viral marketing is undoubtedly hit-and-miss and, therefore, we would never claim to have found a foolproof formula. It’s extremely gratifying and good for business when you do hit on a campaign that spreads like wildfire. But, there are no guarantees. So, there shouldn’t be too much disappointment when your efforts don’t go quite as planned. The next time you start working on a potential viral campaign, try to make the following points part of your approach:

• Don’t Leave it to Chance – Know Your Audience

If your campaign has any chance of going viral, it needs to be targeted. And, you need to know everything about your audience. What is the best time to launch for maximum impact? What does your audience want and need? How and why should they respond to your campaign? Make sure you’ve answered these questions thoroughly before you get going.

• Keep the Message Simple

All it takes is a single image or one simple meme to go viral. You need to focus on minimal information and maximum impact. Devise something that can be consumed, understood and interpreted at a glance, and that can inspire a reshare or retweet in a second. Don’t make your reader have to think about it for too long.

• Focus on Visuals

As a corollary to the previous point, in order to make your campaign as simple as possible, you should focus on powerful images and minimal text. Less really is more in this instance, and the old adage that a picture paints a thousand words is absolutely true. A single image that catches the eye and sums up the message will do a lot more than a paragraph of even the best copy.

• Let it Happen, Don’t Push It

Remember that most things that go viral do so completely organically – and often by accident. You can’t force it. You need to put your message out, having done all the necessary prep work, and then let it attract an audience naturally. There will be times when it won’t work and you’ll need to go back to the drawing board, but don’t let that worry you. As long as you’ve done your homework regarding your audience, you are more than likely to hit the target eventually. Your chances of doing so will increase each time you try, so keep at it!

WSI OMS can help you with your viral campaigns. Contact us to find out how.

The Best Ways to Make Behavioural Marketing Work for You

by Francois Muscat | Oct 10, 2019 | Online Marketing

Behavioural marketing can take a bit of research and legwork, but it’s well worth the effort. Below, we discuss just three of the many ways in which investigating the behaviour of your audience and altering your marketing accordingly can be extremely good for your business!

1. You Can Up-Sell Through Remarketing

This is possibly the easiest form of behavioural marketing! And, everyone from Amazon to your local online shoe retailer does it. Simply put, algorithms enable you to sell more to returning customers on the basis of their previous searches, views and purchases. The more they visit, the more you can refine your marketing communications, the easier their buying experience gets, and the more likely you are to make more sales.

2. Segmented Content = Marketing Precision

The more you get to know about your target audience, the more you can sharpen and refine your marketing approaches to each segment. In turn, these approaches are likely to be more effective and lead to more conversions because of the narrower scope. How you segment your market depends on the specifics of your business.

Consider the case of Orbitz, an online travel website that experimented with serving different content to its users on the basis of whether they were working from a Mac or PC. Mac users were served more expensive accommodation options in their searches, compared to the PC users. This was reportedly on the basis of research that showed that Mac users were, by and large, more affluent and tended to spend about 30% more on travel.

Controversial though this case may be, it presents some very interesting ideas as to how you can divide up your market. It could be along the lines of income or perhaps gender or location – the exact methodology depends on you.

3.Direct Resources into Audiences That Are More Likely to Convert

Segmenting your audience on behavioural lines can also help you to focus your marketing budget on those sections that are more likely to convert to a sale. Once you get an idea of which part of your audience is most likely to spend, you can then, for example, place higher bids on pop-up ads directed at them specifically, while downplaying or eliminating ad spend that targets other, less lucrative segments. This may lead to slightly higher outlay, to begin with. But, with the increase in ROI would be worth it.

WSI OMS can advise you on all aspects of your online marketing operations. Contact us to find out more.