What Is Viral Marketing? How to Go Viral?

1-2, 2-4, 4-8 — Go Viral!

Going viral is absolutely not accidental. Even in cases that seem completely random, there are specific reasons behind the virality.

Going viral means getting your customers to spread your product or message using their own resources. But why would your customers do you that favor?

The only way is for your customers to share your content not because they think they’re doing you a favor, but because they perceive the content as genuinely worth sharing. In other words, you need to move a specific audience to action through their emotions.

What Is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing — whether it involves a product, service, ad, or manifesto — is when your existing customers share your message using their own resources, bringing you potential sales or new users.

If you’re in digital marketing, you constantly hear clients wanting to “go viral” because it drives customer acquisition costs to nearly zero. But the substance behind this wish is often so thin that even a brilliant creative idea would have zero chance of going viral.

You’ve probably heard of Pokemon Go. It launched suddenly and went massively viral within a day. Niantic’s CEO John Hanke said: “Achieving this overnight success took me 20 years.” The point is — if nothing is done right from the very first step of product development, going viral is extremely difficult. You might disagree, since there are plenty of hollow viral examples on the internet. I’ll address those “viral but unhelpful” cases at the end.

How Do You Go Viral?

There are two types of virality:

Intentional (engineered) virality
Viral advertising/content

When people think “viral,” they usually imagine a company’s post, ad, or manifesto being shared thousands of times. But that’s partly luck — not accidental, but even when you do everything right, you might not go viral.

However, some companies go viral in a way that’s anything but accidental.

Viral spread

Examples of Engineered Virality

Some companies execute such brilliant growth hacks that they don’t wait for something to go viral — they’ve already built virality into their product.

Take Hotmail. In its early days, every email sent through Hotmail included a footer line: “Sent via Hotmail — create your free Hotmail account.” This single hack drove hundreds of thousands of new users. We know iPhone and BlackBerry later used the same tactic.

Another example: Grupanya (a Turkish daily deals platform). They had an incredible offer — if you shared a deal with friends and 3 more people purchased it, you got yours free. Many companies try referral programs, but their offers aren’t compelling enough to motivate action. Grupanya’s offer was so good that people actually shared it.

Engineering this kind of intentional virality for your own product is admittedly difficult, because these companies already had users and simply built clever mechanisms that turned customers into promoters.

Viral Advertising

You post something and it goes viral with millions of views.

It’s never that simple. Let me share two examples. First, Holstee, a small “product design” company. Second, Eti Canga, a well-known Turkish brand.

I intentionally chose a small company’s viral example because large companies going viral isn’t that surprising — with small touches, recognized brands can go viral easily.

Holstee designs products that motivate people to chase their dreams. That’s what we all want, right? Their manifesto video “The Holstee Manifesto: Lifecycle Video” reached millions of views. I don’t think they set out to go viral — they moved a specific audience emotionally, and those people shared it organically.

The second example is Eti Canga’s viral Arabesque Rap video — a Turkish snack brand’s ad that brilliantly captured the cultural moment. It went viral because it had all the right ingredients.

First, in 2014 Turkey, both arabesque rap and the “apaçi/emo” style were hugely popular. A Facebook page called “A New Apaçi Every Day” had millions of followers — this ad essentially targeted everyone.

Second, the production quality was spot-on. The music genuinely sounded like arabesque rap (with humor woven in), and the video used amateur-style filming and animation that matched the genre perfectly. Many brands had tried incorporating rap into their ads poorly — Eti Canga got it right.

Third, featuring a celebrity (Murat Dalkılıç) in such an unexpected context grabbed attention. Plus a depressed gorilla — that helped too 🙂

Going viral depends entirely on your creativity and product. Some tactical details for viral posts: know your target audience deeply, create content that forms an emotional connection, offer something valuable in exchange for sharing (like Grupanya), ensure the content is genuinely useful and shareable for your target audience, and use compelling visuals.

2026 note: When I first wrote this, TikTok wasn’t yet mainstream. Now short-form video is the most powerful viral channel — TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. If you’re planning a viral campaign, I strongly recommend creating vertical video (9:16) content for these platforms. In short videos, the first 3 seconds are everything — if you can’t hook attention in that window, you get scrolled past.

My Personal Takeaways

Despite working on several projects with viral potential, I’ve never created an ad that truly went viral. Especially with the KızBaşına social impact project — our posts were shared thousands of times but never fully broke through. My lessons:

Posts that smell like ads — We featured our own project too prominently. Our logo or our own work was always somewhere in the content. Truly viral posts minimize this.
Production quality paradox — I worked hard on making videos and designs look polished and complex. I believe that viral posts actually share a common trait: simple design.
Not leveraging influencers — We tried but it didn’t work well. If we had partnered with an influencer effectively, their support could have created a snowball effect.

Viral but Ineffective Examples

Some brands go viral with content that targets a completely different audience from their actual customers.

But my question is: are these viral posts actually effective?

Two examples. First, illegal betting sites. I saw a viral cat video on Twitter with tens of thousands of retweets — posted by an illegal betting site. Since they can’t legally advertise, they pour effort into viral content. But what does a cat video do for a betting brand? Nobody thinks “this company’s post got 10K retweets — they must be trustworthy.”

Second, municipal government Twitter accounts that give funny responses. We’re used to seeing official, serious government accounts, so when they’re funny, they get massive engagement. But how does this help the city? Nobody says “let’s vacation there — their Twitter account is hilarious.” And these are already established brands with name recognition.

I can comfortably make this comparison: I’d take a 100-retweet post showcasing a city’s beauty over a 10,000-retweet joke any day.

This was the first article where I shared more of my personal opinions rather than purely instructional content. I’d really appreciate any feedback — positive or negative. I hope I’ve been able to add even a small amount of value.

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