The Definitive Guide to B2B Viral Marketing for 2022

Irrespective of which industry you work in, or what products/services you offer, you need to expand your reach to grow. In the midst of huge competition, the only way to sustain is to market your brand so well that it’s always in the talking. Normally, if a business fails to expand – it will obviously shrink. That is true for almost everyone. When brands are unable to attract new audiences, cannot pull new customers, and avoid scaling up to newer regions – they eventually become smaller and even in some cases – extinct. Especially in the case of B2B businesses, marketing yourself optimally is vital to stay in the humongous marathon of growth. Here’s where B2B viral marketing comes into the picture. Marketers should aim to reach as many relevant eyes as they can, and viral marketing is the way to go! 

Let’s move forward to get a clear understanding of what exactly is B2B viral marketing and how to execute a viral campaign. Keep reading to know how to redesign your marketing strategies so that you can make them explosive and compelling.

A Glimpse of Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing refers to creating unique content or marketing pieces that grab the attention of the majority and stay with us for a considerable amount of time. Or in other words – marketing campaigns that distinguishably stand out in our modern, always-connected world.

This domain of marketing is usually executed through the web, social media, text messaging, videos, or even some P2P strategies for spreading information. Interestingly, this kind of campaign can include articles, videos, images, or any other type of content about the concerned product/service. 

Just like a virus, when a marketing campaign goes viral, it spreads unimaginably and rapidly among people.

With an exponential hike in the reach on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, it is now possible to share videos, images, and stories to millions of people within minutes!

Hence, viral marketing is mostly about compelling people to do marketing for your brand, without them even realizing it.

What’s The Biggest Advantage of B2B Viral Marketing?

When working on a viral campaign, you’re essentially depending on your audience and other people to keep the campaign alive. How? Well, by just sharing it. All thanks to this aspect, viral marketing can easily be the most economical marketing strategy for you. 

There’s no need to pay anybody who shares your posts, hashtags, or your content. All you need to do is to indulge in something people would love to share, and then it becomes similar to a virus – it spreads without any external effort.

Most importantly, viral marketing can act as a great lead generator. It helps you build your brand awareness, market your services in the best possible way, and people remember you after that.

Examples of B2B Viral Marketing Campaigns

The principles of creating a viral marketing campaign

Every marketing strategy has a certain set of principles or characteristics associated with it, here are the key aspects to follow when you’re trying to execute B2B viral marketing:

• Connect on emotions
• Choose the correct channel and market the right way
• Being unique is a necessity
• It goes viral only when your audience shares it
• Optimize your timing
• Always be authentic

#1 Connect On Emotions

If you want your campaign to go viral, it has to connect with prospects deeply, and for that, it has to hit the emotional chord right. No matter whichever emotion it touches – maybe desire, joy, compassion, bewilderment, excitement, FOMO, or others, but it has to be cut down deep.

Maybe now you understand why a majority of the viral campaigns gather progressive values. 

#2 Choose the correct channel and market the right way

Today, every single brand- no matter how big or small, is active on social media. There are obvious reasons for it, like if they desire to reach their audience and stay relevant. However, not every brand stays active on each and every platform. Why? Because their target audience might not be present on certain channels. So you need to choose which social channel is the right choice for your B2B viral marketing campaign.

Successful viral marketing relies on targetting the right platform for your campaign. Additionally, even in the case your brand demands omnichannel marketing, picking the right one for the start is critical.

For example – Xbox Design Lab’s #MakeItYours campaign simply couldn’t have been as successful on any other platform as it was on Instagram. The campaign was primarily aimed at gamers asking them to post their own customized Xbox controllers on the platform.

#3 Being Unique is Necessary

You should surely research and study what has worked well in your industry. But don’t copy what’s already been executed. Undoubtedly, it’s not at all easy to come up with completely unique plans, but if when you’re trying to go viral, there is no other option.

For example, think about how Baby Yoda went extensively viral. It was so successful that most brands tried to create their own versions of such mascots. You should have forgotten all of them, obviously except Baby Yoda. Why? Because it came first and was hence, unique!

Now the question arises regarding the level of uniqueness. Well, it depends on whether you’re constructing your own B2B viral marketing strategy or joining an existing viral trend. If you are doing the latter, the success ratio largely depends on your execution capabilities and your creativity.

#4 Optimize Your Timing

We all have seen campaigns that would have sounded completely irrelevant if they weren’t perfectly timed. There is no scope of error when it comes to trends and post timings. Study the latest trends, research about what’s working for your competitors, and what your target audience is currently engaging with. Be an active consumer of quality content in your niche, so that you can understand what people like the most.

Take Baby Yoda, for an instance. Now if you were active on social channels like Instagram or Twitter in December 2019, your feeds were crowded up with posts of that viral green toddler.

#5 Always Be Authentic

We discussed why you’ve got to be unique, the same reason stands for the necessity of being authentic. People easily come to know when incorrect or incomplete information is being served to them. Imagine what could happen if the audience feels cheated – we’re sure you won’t want to go viral for the wrong reasons.

Recall how we discussed your viral campaign should explode some kind of emotional connection. It can be laughter, compassion, awe, or a positive type of aggression that drives people to act? That’s the aspect that always has to be authentic. Obviously, you can’t force people to feel something directly; your campaign needs to provoke authentic responses.

#6 It Should Be Shareable

One last thing which we shouldn’t positively forget is that the content pieces also have to be somehow shareable. No matter how much you invest in your campaigns, shareability is the foremost important part of any viral marketing campaign.

Shareable can mean different things to different people. It can be about asking people from the audience to join your campaign on social media. Also, it can be a social message that applies to a large group of society.

Why Should You Opt for B2B Viral Marketing?

Let’s take a brief look at the most significant benefits of viral marketing. These pointers will give you the answer to why you should include B2B viral marketing campaigns in your strategy.

1. Cost-efficient: In viral campaigns, you just need to think of a big idea, execute as creatively as you can, and the rest will be done by the public. So your ultimate investment is really low.
2. ‘Brand boost’: Along with a great ROI, there will be also a considerable rise in your brand awareness and reputation. That will further result in consumers feeling positive and the viral content stays with your brand.
3. Huge potential reach: Now for something to go viral, two things are necessary – distance and speed. Your campaign or content needs to go really far and should take as little time as possible. This is the exceptional capacity of viral marketing to spread far and fast.
4. Non-invasive: Viral content is majorly non-invasive. Interestingly, it’s always quite welcomed because people automatically love what a lot of people already like. There’s a hype built around it.

How Does A Viral Campaign Work?

So far we discussed what exactly is a viral marketing campaign, how can it help you, and why you should opt for B2B viral marketing strategies. Let’s now discuss the necessary steps to implement viral marketing campaigns successfully.

Step 1: List Out What’s Trending

The primary reason for virality is that campaigns are targeted around something that the consumers are already talking about. Moreover, creators and marketers leverage the gained knowledge regarding trends. Then they leverage it and curate content that promotes their brand and products. 

Step 2: Analyze Similar Succesful Campaigns

Research, study, and analyze how your competitors or other businesses in your industry have performed viral marketing for their brands. Try to create something unique but yet related to the trend so that the audience connects to it.

Step 3: Identify Ideal Channels For You

If you want your campaign to go highly noticed, you would priorly need to identify the optimal marketing channels. Let’s take a look at the most effective marketing channels for B2B organizations:

• LinkedIn: This is the main target platform for B2B businesses. Regardless of whether brands need to recruit new talent, promote new services/products, or market their thought leadership, Linkedin is absolutely the go-to door. 
• Facebook: A majority of brands focus on Facebook at the center of their social media marketing strategy. Why wouldn’t they? With billions of active user-base, Facebook is definitely the social network with the widest reach.
• Twitter: Twitter is the social media for millennials. It allows us to keep the information short, crisp, interesting, and yet valuable. Moreover, Twitter encourages conversations between businesses and their clients through replies and retweets.
• YouTube: Gone are the days when people just go to YouTube to watch cat videos or cooking lessons, it is now a great platform for promoting your B2B brand through educative video content.

Step 4: Drive The Traffic To Make Sales

The ultimate goal of your viral marketing campaign is to drive more sales. Suppose your video goes viral, and there’s a good chance of your website traffic spiking, What now?

The first step towards growth might just be done right. Now it’s time to convert site visitors into your clients. Make sure your website is well prepared for visitors. Curate your website content that compels the users to take some action.

Step 5: Post Content Regularly

Many marketers believe that one viral campaign is enough to push a B2B business up. But this isn’t the case. Business owners and marketers need to carry the B2B sales pitch all the time with their brand. In case you do not capitalize on your hard-worked viral momentum, everything would just end up being a waste.

Step 6: Promote Trending Content Through PPC Ads

Each social media channel can serve only a limited amount of organic reach. Now that organic reach tells how interesting your content or campaign is. The interest can be measured in the form of reactions or view time, with your audience. Viral content technically is the one with very high organic reach.

In order to enhance the possibility of your campaign going viral, one needs to identify trending subjects/content quickly. Then, you can utilize paid ads to inorganically push your content to a wider audience.

Step 7: Run Multi-Channel Marketing Campaigns

Although running a campaign on a single channel might be economical, but then the ROI is a huge risk. Suppose your Facebook viral campaign gets reported due to some reasons- you’re left with no choice but to take it off the platform. Imagine all your hard work being wasted just like that.

When you execute a multi-channel marketing campaign, your brand’s reach expands beyond its core audience is visible mostly everywhere. Further, your content gets protected from being stolen/repurposed by other users to attract traffic to their sites. Managing an active presence on various platforms enhances user engagement with your brand.

Summing Up

No doubt If you’ve got an enthralling new product or message, or if your services are simply amazing, and you’ve got an audience who’s ready to be part of it, a viral marketing campaign can surely skyrocket you to marketing success. All you need to do is to make sure your campaign has all the necessary ingredients as discussed above. Further, depending on your industry, your audience, and your content creation, you can curate your B2B viral marketing campaigns along with a bit of right luck to make it all come together.