Viral Marketing Ideas
Everything About Viral Marketing Ideas
A great viral marketing strategy for law firms doesn't just happen overnight. Coming up with successful viral marketing ideas takes patience, awareness of the web, great timing—and a little bit of luck. If you're having trouble coming up with viral marketing strategies, keep reading: the ideas contained in this article may help you get past writer's block and start building the viral campaign of your dreams.
Viral Marketing Strategy #1: Lay Off the Hard Sell
The single biggest mistake you can make when making viral marketing strategies is to use content that reads like a sales brochure. Keep in mind what you want the end result of your viral media strategy to be: someone seeing your viral marketing ideas, then sending them on to another person or posting it to a social media page.
Does someone in your Facebook feed already post too many ads for winning free iPhones? Odds are, you've learned to ignore these ads, or you may have even unfriended someone for posting them. If your viral marketing strategies sound too much like a traditional advertisement, especially in your summaries that appear on people's social media pages, they can't possibly succeed.
You don't want your law firm's viral marketing ideas to develop into content that is ignored or even mocked. The best viral marketing strategies rely on using a soft sell approach, showing clients what you're capable of.
Viral Marketing Strategy #2: Open the Floor
What's the best way to know the kind of viral marketing ideas your clients will love? Have them work on it themselves. Viral marketing strategies can be made even better when you encourage your viewers to be the content producers. Consider a viral marketing strategy in which you ask people to submit videos for your firm based on a particular concept, and offer a prize for the best and most creative videos (something related to your firm: several hours of free legal advice, or maybe something even more creative—your clients might be delighted to have their attorney mow their lawn in a suit!).
Even more viral marketing ideas: you can hold the same kind of contests on a smaller scale using Twitter alone—ask for taglines for your firm, or for great legal blog topics, or any other viral marketing ideas you're interested in. The more input your viewers and visitors have on your viral marketing strategy, the more they're likely to participate. Not only do these viral marketing strategies grant your firm more good will from potential clients, they also help you develop more content that looks like what your visitors want.
Viral Marketing Strategy #3: Advertising People Want to See
If you want your viral marketing strategies to succeed, they need to give rise not to just ads, but to content people are genuinely interested in. No audience is interested in puffery or self-serving ads that they could see on television—your viral marketing ideas need to go beyond, in terms of both content and format. Viral marketing strategies work best when you're doing something so innovative that people are pleasantly surprised, and can't help but share your content.
Keep in mind that viral marketing ideas can take nearly any form at all, as long as your viral marketing strategy allows for people to share your content. Try to think outside the box when you're developing viral marketing strategies: for example, instead of just producing one video about what to do if the police pull you over, why not try a “choose your own adventure” style video guide, with several branching paths of choices, that shows what happens when you take certain actions after a traffic stop?
If you can figure out viral marketing ideas that really do something new with the formats you have available, you'll have a much easier time getting the publicity you want. If you're hitting a creative wall when you're trying to think of unique viral marketing strategies, try developing a viral marketing strategy based on what you like to read or watch most. What would happen if your practice was combined with that kind of media? These kinds of viral marketing ideas can give rise to unique, funny, and creative results.
Viral Marketing Strategy #4: Say Something Unexpected
Because so many law firms already advertise, viewers tend to tune out from these ads. To make them tune back in, you need viral marketing strategies that say something different from what they expect. Instead of having a blog post about how to find the best lawyer, a humorous post about how to find the worst lawyer possible is much more likely to be a great viral marketing strategy.
Some of the best advertising ideas in the world—whether they were viral marketing strategies or just something like the famous Volkswagen “Lemon” ad—work by making viewers look at something totally unexpected. Because people's expectations involve cliches (law books, stern looking partners, and dark wood paneling) and self-promotion, try self-deprecating humor instead.
Your viral marketing strategy could be, for instance, to have a series of YouTube videos depicting your attorneys being hilariously bad at things like golf, doing the dishes, or going on vacation. “Attorney So-and-So, Bad at [Something Not Law Related]—Great at Law.” While you don't want to seem unprofessional, it's fine to poke fun at yourself and show clients that, contrary to cliches about lawyers, you have a good sense of humor.
Viral Marketing Strategy #5: Give it Away
Great viral marketing strategies always involve giving something away for free, but giveaways don't just need to involve winning fabulous prizes (like free legal services). Sometimes, all that you're giving away is thirty seconds or a minute of entertainment or laughter. Other times, you may want to give viewers legal knowledge that they might not have had before. In order to make viewers like your viral marketing ideas, you'll need to give them “something for nothing.” Make sure that whatever you give away is related to your law firm in some way—a giveaway of an iphone or an e-novel isn't likely to win clients no matter what kind of gimmick you use.
