Level 4 (Right)

Virality

Everyday we will always stumble across one post on our social media pages that has a lot of views or reactions. May it be a funny post that involves someone being laughed at, a video where it gets people talking because of a persons misconduct or even a fake news that involves a celebrity. The point is today there a lot of ways to be viral nationwide or even worldwide. Virality is an interesting marketing skills that involves a viral video or a post from brands. But what makes it viral? Is it the product, the advertisement, the campaign or simply lucky, that makes something such a big hit. This is why I am keen on understanding more about what is Virality and its forms.

Viral content usually has a well-designed viral strategy behind it, but virality could also be due to luck, creativity and preparation. To break down this concept a little better, I am going to explain the definition of this concept with the help from different websites, on how a viral campaign works, the advantages of viral marketing and also some of my personal favourite viral campaigns as an example.

Based on MarketingSchools.org. Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people in their social networks, much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another. The basis of viral marketing is in the spread of information by word-of-mouth, but modern technology has allowed the viral effect to include many Internet-based platforms as well.

The list below are some networks on how a viral effect can spread through:

• Word-of-mouth
• Email
• Social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)
• Video sharing sites (Youtube, Vimeo, etc)
• Web forums

But why does something goes viral?

Talkwalker.com says that a viral content is sticky. It makes you want to watch it again. It makes you want to be a part of it. This is is why TikTok so addictive. The videos are short. They loop again and again. And in the case of things like #hashtagchallenges, TikTok makes it easy for you to join in on the fun and remix something popular to give it your own spin.

But there are over a million videos viewed on TikTok everyday. If you’re not on the app, but have seen something that originally went viral on there on a different platform, just know that you are seeing the very best of TikTok content. The video below will give 2 tips on how to make campaigns or advertisement always go viral.

---

Now that I know what virality or viral marketing is, here are some of its advantage, by cyberclick.es, that might help me consider creating a viral campaign when doing future group projects.

Advantages of viral marketing

• Low cost. What characterizes viral campaigns is that the users do a significant part of the work for the brand, which drastically cuts down the costs of dispersion. It is unnecessary to buy advertising or media space. 
• Potential of great reach. A viral video on the Internet has the ability to reach a huge international audience without having to invest a ton of money or make any extra effort. Due to this, a small company or even a private individual can go extremely viral. 
• It is not invasive. In viral marketing, the social media user is the one making the decision to participate and share content, so it lessens the possibility of the brand coming across as invasive. Like this, the perception of the brand and the interaction are significantly better, compared to more classical forms of advertising. 
• It helps build up your brand. If we really hit the bull’s-eye in terms of creativity, we are creating content so incredible that users themselves decide to share it and, hence create a personal connection with your brand. It is without a doubt an extremely powerful tool when it comes to branding and awareness.

Viral marketing might have some advantages but I know that it also has its cons. Which I need to consider before making something goes viral and find every possible outcomes that might happen, to prevent any backlash from it.

Some Of My Favourite Viral Campaigns

Dumb ways to die

Dumb Ways to Die is an Australian public service announcement campaign done by Metro Trains to promote railway safety. The campaign video went viral through sharing and social media starting in November 2012.

This campaign is something that went viral worldwide and even become a mobile game. The video received over $60 million in media impressions in 2013. But most importantly, the message of the video caused people to be more aware and act safer around trains, resulting in 20% reduction in rail-related accidents. Listening to this when I was young, it didn’t occur to me that it is a campaign video as I find it funny and entertaining.

Dove Campaign for Real Beauty

In 2004, Unilever’s research found that only four percent of women considered themselves beautiful. After working with Ogilvy and Mather, Unilever launched the Campaign for Real Beauty. This campaign became large and the message spread like a bush fire. The message was translated into many languages to get more women involved in the campaign.

Even talk shows, women’s magazines, and TV news began discussing modern female beauty standards and the campaign evolved into a series of viral videos, commercials, and print ads that changed how we all look at beauty. This was one of the most talked about campaigns and until now Dove continues with the campaign to reassure women for their real beauty.

Dollar Shave Club: Our Blades are F**king Great

In 2012 the razor subscription service, Dollar Shave Club, was looking for a simple way to explain why their product is so unique compared to the rest. After much consideration, they ended up creating this comedic yet practical video to explain exactly that:

After the release of the video, the previously unknown brand’s website crashed multiple times and ended up receiving over 12,000 new subscribers in 48 hours. The video currently has over 26.8 million views on YouTube.

---

Overall, learning Virality or viral marketing as a skill is an interesting way on how to help small businesses to be known to the public. Virality could be an excellent way to create attention from the public for the new Sennheiser MOMENTUM True Wireless 2. It could be in the form of a creative campaign that can attract the media’s attention.

Virality in my opinion, should be a skill that combines with content creation, whereas a post has the clarity of message and call-to-action at the same time it gets people talking and causes word-of-mouth online.

Advertisement

Level 3 (Left)

SEO/SEM

Internship is something that is necessary to go through especially now that I am in Year 3. Whilst looking for internship position in different companies in Singapore, I realised that most of their job description includes having the knowledge of SEO/SEM. And SEO/SEM is something that I am not confident in, I believe that there are still a lot of things that I do not know about with this certain set of skill. However, I have managed to obtain a certification for Google Ads Search which recognises my mastery of the fundamentals of building and customising effective Google Search Campaign.

What I have learned from this crash course is that many considerations go into the creation of company websites, paid advertisements on Google, email marketing, and many more. The primary key take away I had from this course is that keyword is the most crucial part of running an ad and increases the search engine optimisation of a business.

The reason why keywords so crucial in digital advertising is because the majority of people who search for products or services tend to use specific keyword phrases into the search box in Google. In digital marketing, keywords are what connects customers and businesses. It is the bridge between the two and having the right keywords are the determiner for a company that can get their desired results from their search engine optimisation campaign. This means that keywords are in the centre of a successful marketing campaign.

Aside from this, I have understood the need for the relevance of keywords to websites and Search Engine Marketing. In an era where internet marketing tools have created a more extensive space for business marketers to sell their products online. People rely on search engine results and keywords. Most people tend not to go far beyond the first page to look for a different option. If a customer is looking for a business, and the keywords they searched do not reflect on the business website, it is likely that the customers cannot find it. I watched the video below to better understand the importance of keyword search engine optimisation and how to choose the right keywords.

---

I am aware that knowing the importance of Keywords is not enough for me to say that I am proficient with Search Engine Optimisation nor with Search Engine Marketing. I am okay with that because it is why I would work harder to learn about SEO and practice it through the creation of this website. With this mindset, I have signed up for an online course with HubSpot Academy, which I believe will help me better understand the skills and practice it. I believe that having this set of skills will help me analyse company websites better and help them grow.

---

Upon signing up to the HubSpot Academy, I currently have completed 2 lessons about Search Engine Optimisation.

The lesson about “How to Find the SEO Strategy that Fits Your Business is the lesson that I am most interested about as it concerns ranking of a business content on a search engine like Google. So how does content rank in a search engine? Based on HubSpot Academy, there are two ways that you can rank:

1. Build Discovery and Relevance by creating lots of high-quality content on the topics you want to be known for.
2. Build Authority getting lots of high-quality links to your website.

The bold words are 3 steps how search engines rank a business content:

Discovery – Search engines starts by crawling, discovering web page and checking contents on different contents.

Relevance – They then check the relevance of the contents of a website or an ad by indexing ( this step is mostly based on keywords )

Authority – Lastly, search engines ranks through high-quality links or backlinks. Authority is like basically the number of sites or link in your website that you use as a reference that adds credibility.

Authority is the most important part of these steps, if a website does not have an authority there is no purpose for a high quality contents. Which means that having more authority in your website can result to a better ranking for yourself. Therefore, to have a better authority businesses have to make sure that they are creating a compelling, unique, high-quality content that people would naturally want to link to. Also, business should also make sure that they tell people about their content so that they can find and link it.

Overall, business does not need to worry to improve their SEO if there’s enough authorisation and should focus on the quality of their content. It is also important for business to find the balance that fits with their SEO needs. Mostly High Quality Contents = High Quality Backlinks. Therefore, to increase Purple Tea SG Social Engine Marketing creating a quality content would hopefully increase the page social traffic and engagements.

Level 2

Branding/Storytelling

Branding and Storytelling is a skill that I am familiar with, and enhancing my knowledge with this skill is an essential aspect for me to promote better a company I am going to work with or even promote my brand hopefully in the near future. The reason why I would like to focus on this skill is that branding/storytelling is what makes each business unique from one another. Furthermore, based on the Marketing Insider Group, Stories are scientifically proven to get a person’s attention. In fact, stories stimulate brain activity. When we read or hear plot points, our neurons start firing—and not just in the part of the brain that controls the language center. Brand storytelling is the process of creating your business’s narrative that helps connect the brand to your customers. With the brand story, businesses hope that customers can resonate with their values. 

What I would want to achieve after this research is to be able to use the Sennheiser brand story and understand it to create a unique experience for my group’s PR Plan for them. I believe that keeping Sennheiser’s vision in mind, we can create a PR plan that will suit the brand.

“We are shaping the future of the audio industry, based on our history, our culture of innovation and our passion for excellence.“

Sennheiser’s Vision

The video below summarizes and explains the book written by Donald Miller titled “Building a Storybrand.”

What I got from this video is that having an interesting or eye-catching brand story is enough because some do not care about it. Some people do not care about the values of a company at all. However, every human being wants to be invited by the story. They would want to be included in the story the company is telling. They would want to hear that the brand can offer them something much better, customers would want to know if the brand can provide them a better life, if the brand can help them overcome their struggles or serve as a guide to them. With this I finally understood that not a lot of company is doing this, not many companies talk about what they can do to the customers but instead they talk about their accomplishment and how they manage to reach where they are. Because of this, I compiled some brand stories that I feel are able to apply the fundamentals of creating a good brand story.

---

Tom Story

Brand Story: According to their website, founder Blake Mycoskie “witnessed the hardships faced by children growing up without shoes” while traveling in Argentina in 2006. “Wanting to help, he created Toms Shoes, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a new pair of shoes for a child in need.”

To date, Toms says it has given more than 50 million pairs of shoes to children in need, has helped restore sight to over 360,000 people, and has helped provide over 250,000 weeks of safe water in six countries. In addition, Toms launched its Bag Collection in 2015. With each bag purchased, the brand says it will help provide a safe birth for a mother and baby in need.

The Reason for Their Success: The reason why they became successful is because now customers look past the brand itself and see what benefits it could give to other people. Tom’s social media shows the different communities or people they have reached out too, which gives a customers a better view of the brand.

Go Pro

Brand Story: Aside from the video above, the founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman writes, “GoPro helps people capture and share their lives’ most meaningful experiences with others – to celebrate them together. Like how a day on the mountain with friends is more meaningful than one spent alone, the sharing of our collective experiences makes our lives more fun. The world’s most versatile cameras are what we make. Enabling you to share your life through incredible photos and videos is what we do.”

The Reason for Their Success: The company focuses on the community and sharing. What began as an idea to help athletes document themselves, GoPro has “become a standard for how people capture themselves engaged in their interests, whatever they may be.”

Airbnb

Brand Story: Airbnb says in their website that the company is a trusted community marketplace for consumers to list, discover, and book unique accommodations for unique travel experiences.

The Reason fo Their Success: Airbnb has challenged the hotel industry and totally redefined an experience, where there is a much better trust and connection with the owner to the customer. As a result, as noted in its brand story, it boasts a community of loyal users.

---

After this research, it has dawned to me that I still have many things to understand, that I have to look deeper into the company’s purpose and not only focus on their product that much. Moving forward, I believe that with my current understanding, I can brand not only a company but as well as myself. Speaking of branding myself, before I end this post, I would love to share one video that has resonated with me, and I would be using it as a guide whenever I brand myself or my business.

Level 1

Behavioural Psychology

Based on send-up.com the goal of having a behavioural psychology in content marketing is to change the behaviour of a consumer in a way that it could benefit the business. Marketers tend to use set off skill to increase traffic, engagement, conversions, and other metrics. To achieve high indexes, as a marketer you need to try to change the content marketing strategy based on the different principles of behavioural psychology. Some of this principles were explained and categorised by the website Digitalpsychology.io

I compiled below some examples based on the categories given by the website that affects a customers behaviour. Check out their website for more examples.

Loss Aversion

Fear of missing out the show they are watching after the free trial have expired.

Scarcity

Showing low in stock creates an urgency for customers to make a purchase as soon as possible in the fear of possibly losing out.​

Triggers

Showing recommendations to people that can influence them using the website more.

Rewards

Receiving a $5 off is enough motivation for users to invite their friends.

---

Other websites also have shown the connection of marketing and behavioural psychology. Smartbugmedia.com talked about how content marketing strategy should be more like behavioural strategy. The website explains how behaviourists rely on different scientific methods to have a better understanding of consumer behaviour.

When they do this, they ensure that they follow the basics of a behavioural strategy, which help them to effectively change problem behaviours, by clearly defining the behaviour, observing it, completing an experiment and then reporting on the results.

The website then gave the following questionnaires that could help create a good marketing strategy which I think I could leverage for my group project with Asia Farm: Purple Tea:

• Define the goal of your content marketing strategy. What do you want your audience to do? What should your content help you accomplish?

The goal for the content marketing strategy for Purple Tea Sg is to change the whole aesthetic of their Instagram page. By making a more interesting posts can help increase Instagram engagements for current and new followers. I hope that using this skills we can encourage people to purchase the Purple Tea drink.

• Who is your audience? Knowing your audience or buyer persona will help you to create content you know will motivate.

Our target audience for this project is age 18 to 25 years old. As of persona, we are going to focus on consumers that purchase frequent in supermarkets or convenience stores.

• As your content is out there growing your leads, make sure to observe performance.

• Reporting on the results is important because it allows you to learn opportunities for the future. If one aspect of the campaign wasn’t particularly effective, you can change it up next time.

From the website I have learned that there are certain rules that we could follow to be able to achieve our marketing goals, and after watching the video below, it has helped me better understand digital psychology.

What I learned from this research is that there are many good strategy that will allow businesses to attract consumer, but what can make does strategy is to understand their pattern or behaviour. With that in my mind a business should shift their methods on how their consumers act, in hopes that they would be able to have a successful campaign.