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In social media marketing, the client is almost always fixated on whether the campaign has made a splash and gone viral. While virality is one metric that you can use to gauge success, it is not the most important.
This is because, while a viral campaign will give you good awareness, awareness does not usually translate into sales. For the typical consumer, sales is generated when the prospect is moved through the sales funnel of awareness, interest, desire, and action. In digital marketing, the corresponding stages to the sales funnel that I use are the 4Cs — contact, connect, convince, and convert.
Hence, what is important, is not virality (or massive awareness or contacts). What is important, is the ability to move those contact to the next stage in the sales funnel. In social media marketing, this would mean getting the ‘contact’ to ‘connect’ with you on one of your social media platforms. If this does not happen, the virality would be nothing but a vanity metric.
So the next time you achieve a viral campaign, be happy and celebrate it as it is an achievement. But I would advise that you forget about chasing the splash and instead focus on what truly matters — having a campaign that results in the right prospects connecting with you.
