Soundscapes of Success: Why Sound Matters in Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is all about creating content that people (and social media platforms) can’t help but share far and wide.
Not only is this a great approach to building a solid brand, but it also helps you tap into massive audiences without the need for behemoth advertising budgets.
It is undeniable that for content to go viral, it needs to make a significant visual impact. But sound also plays an important and often overlooked role. In this article, we explore the role of sound in viral marketing.
The Power of Multimedia
Great digital marketing involves creating a mix of multimedia assets.
Doing so will allow you to reach people in a way that most appeals to them. It also helps you to communicate a strong marketing message through different mediums, developing clarity and building brand recognition. Many brands will use a combination of text, videos, images and audio in order to achieve this.
For example, a growing brand may include the following as part of their marketing strategy:
- Videos published on YouTube
- Podcasts
- Product photography
- Short video clips for Instagram and TikTok
- Written blog posts
The Impact of Sound
Sound can impact the way we feel. Just think about your favourite song or a clip from your favourite film. Consider how the sounds provoke certain feelings within you, it may even bring back memories or make you reminisce about a certain time in your life.
In fact, studies have shown that sound is processed in a part of our brain that also processes our emotions.
Brands can leverage the impact of sound to drive brand recognition. For example, a sound may be used as part of a brand signature. Just imagine the Intel or 20th Century Fox logo and it is likely you can play the associated tune back to yourself in your head.
Sound’s Role in Storytelling
By connecting sound to emotion, brands can use it effectively in storytelling.
For example, notice how adverts for charities typically use solemn music whilst they communicate the issues, then switch to uplifting music when appealing for help to make things better. Or how some brands will use inspirational music in their adverts to provoke excitement around their products.
Sound and User Engagement
Leveraging the power of sound in your content can help you improve the potential for it to go viral. This is for several reasons.
Firstly, by provoking emotion via sound, you increase the likelihood of viewers seeing the content in a positive way. In turn, this will increase the chances that they will share it with their personal network.
In the case of videos, higher levels of engagement will also typically lead to longer watch times. On many platforms, this will play positively into the algorithm and naturally increase your reach via the platform helping more people to ‘discover’ it.
In some cases, such as on Instagram Reels, content can even be searched for by audio. This allows those that use ‘trending audios’ to increase the potential for people to find their content organically.
Sound in Viral Marketing: Summary
It is clear that sound is often overlooked as an important factor in viral marketing.
Yet we can also see that sound can have a huge impact on emotions, which is essential in the process of turning content viral. Brands that consider the impact of sound on their marketing efforts will boost their chances of their content exploding in popularity.
Want to drastically increase the chances of your brand content going viral? Get in touch today.