How do you attract new customers to your business? How can you a create a successful marketing campaign that will go viral? These are the questions i will answer in this article.

Marketing campaigns can never stand the test of time if they are boring. More than three thousand marketing messages are sent out to customers on daily basis and the advent of the internet has even made it worst. So it is really a fierce competition out there especially if you are trying to make your brand stand out of the crowd.

“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park; aim for the company immortals.” – David Ogilvy

Today, I am going to teach you how to create a targeted viral marketing campaign for your business or product; I am talking about a targeted marketing campaign that sells itself and wins the heart of potential customers. I will be sharing with you components you can add to your marketing campaign to make it go viral. Before we proceed, please answer the following question:

• Have you ever come across a marketing campaign that stuck to your heart? You so adore the message that you hum its rhythm everywhere you go.
• Have you ever witnessed a situation where kids were thrown into frenzy simply because of an ongoing advert?

If you have experienced the two situations above, then I am going to teach you how to achieve the same result with your marketing campaign. My aim of writing this article is to show you practical ways to making your targeted marketing campaign go viral. My aim is to teach you how to create a viral marketing campaign that will win the heart of your customers; I am talking about a marketing campaign that will propel customers to help spread your message voluntarily. If you are ready to learn, then let’s proceed.

  How to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign that Attracts Potential Customers

1. Design a Marketing Campaign that speaks directly to the customer

“Stop talking about your products and services. Customers don’t care about products and services, they care about themselves.” – David Meerman Scott

When designing a marketing campaign, your message should talk directly to the customer and influence his/her mind. Your message should be emotional and create the impression that you care about the customer. When planning a viral marketing campaign; be sure to use words such as strong, affordable, charming, fantastic, delicious, outstanding and exciting because they are keywords that are known to influence customers’ action so your marketing message should carry them.

Your message must engage the subconscious mind of your customers because it is in your subconscious mind that the buying decision takes place. The customer should feel empowered and important simply by reading your marketing message and should think of taking some action right away.

“The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.” – David Ogilvy

For instance, just check out Nike’s tag line “Just do it.” It is a simple marketing message with a great impact on the minds of people. Nike’s marketing campaign was so successful that customers use the word “Just do it” in almost everything they do. Customers also use the word to motivate themselves to action. Same goes with Adidas tagline “Impossible is nothing.” From the two illustrations mentioned above, it is obvious that by adding certain sleek features and emotional messages to your marketing campaign, the attractiveness and effectiveness can be multiplied. So learning from the Nike and Adidas experience; it is advisable to take your overall brand strategy into consideration before developing a marketing campaign.

2. Use Visuals to Create an Impression

Marketing professionals attest to the fact that using visuals can make a person learn something faster than any other means. Just as a famous saying goes “a picture speaks a thousand words.” So when creating a viral marketing campaign, make sure you add visuals to the marketing message. Visuals can range from pictures and animations to graphics. Inserting visuals into marketing messages not only brings the customers close but also strengthens the bond and creates a lasting impression in the mind of the customer.

Another key point to note when developing a targeted marketing campaign is color representations, shapes and symbols. You must always remember that different colors depict different types of emotions and different symbols create different emotions.

Red and blue are colors liked by aggressive shoppers while yellow color can catch the attention of on lookers. Green denotes health, money and nourishment, so it is mainly used in food product advertisement. Black stands for strength and power; that is why it is used by Jaguar, on their website background and advertisement. Purple denotes wealth and royalty.

Your marketing campaign message should also reflect on your company’s materials; so your chosen colors must also be applied on business cards because your business card can be used to attract customers and increase emotional attachment. But colors should be used carefully as too much of it can ruin the campaign. Same goes with shapes and symbols.

Some certain shapes and symbols attract and influence customers more. From market research and analysis; a crest is the best marketing symbol, followed by circle or oval shape. Square and triangle has the least emotional impact. You can seek professional help when selecting colors and symbols for business cards, website font, background and logo.

3. Use Technology to your advantage

When planning a viral marketing campaign, the application of technology can be an added advantage. The good news is that most of the technological options are cheap and easy to use. Examples are audios and videos which are now included in websites to gain extra attention. Just pay a visit to the Pepsi homepage and you will be greeted with energetic music, the type that attracts teenagers instantly.

To make your message more effective, welcome messages, introduction videos, coupled with interviews can be added your website. Hearing a voice can be very touching and a feeling of attraction can immediately develop within your visitor. An example of this is Adidas’ website, which opens with a video that fits their tag line, “Impossible is nothing.”

How to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign that Attracts Potential Customers

4. Develop a Winning Unique Selling Proposition

Uniqueness is the ultimate key to making a targeted marketing campaign go viral. Not only should your products and services be unique, your marketing message and selling proposition should also be unique. Not only will the effect be felt by your targeted customers but the impression will also be lasting.

Your marketing message should carry a unique promise to the customer; a unique promise or benefit will be your access route to the customer’s subconscious mind. A rule of thumb here is to sell benefits over features. Take a look at the following unique selling propositions and you will understand what I mean by selling benefits over features.

“When you absolutely, positive have to have it overnight; use FedEx.” – Federal Express

“Fresh hot pizzas in 30 minutes or less.” – Domino Pizza

“Always low price.” – Wal Mart

Naturally, customers always want more. They want their needs to be met fast. For example, when sending out a marketing message about exercise equipments, don’t just say that the machine has display, automatic incline, internal cooling device, CD player, programs. Instead, say the machine has a program with audio instructions which encourages the customer to exercise and a CD player to make the exercise entertaining. This marketing approach will attract people who need real motivation to get out of their bed and start sweating out.

What I am saying in essence is this; when you are developing your marketing campaign, don’t sell features, sell benefits. Tell the customer why they should use the product and be precise. Once the loyalty of customers is gained, they will be a free walking advertisement and will spread the word to their friends and acquaintances.

5. Make it easy for your customers for customers to promote your business voluntarily

This is probably the most important key to creating a targeted viral marketing campaign. One attribute of a winning viral marketing campaign is its ability to spread itself like wild fire without any additional effort on the part of the marketer. Your aim is to give your viral marketing campaign wings; you have to make it easy for your customers to spread your message.

“Ground your content in who you are. Don’t be afraid to have a point of view. But also give it wings to soar freely and be shared.” – Ann Handley

“We use other people’s stuff or other people’s content to socialize and your stuff’s either a social object or it’s not.” – Hugh Macleod

A good way to do this is to make your marketing message or sound bite interesting and memorable. Aside making your marketing message memorable, you have to back it up with business cards, brochures, eBooks, booklets, short videos and audios, souvenirs or anything that can help the customer spread your message voluntarily. If your targeted marketing campaign is to be done online; then you must encourage your customers to help you spread the word in social media such as twitter and facebook.

As a final note, these are the five exact keys to creating a winning targeted viral marketing that attracts potential customers. Apply them tactically and I will see you at the top.