The Problem With Trying to Go Viral
Going viral sounds like the ultimate marketing win.
Thousands of views.
Hundreds of new followers.
Comments rolling in.
Your business suddenly being seen by people all over the country.
It’s easy to understand why businesses want it.
And there’s nothing wrong with wanting more people to discover your business.
But there’s a problem with making going viral the goal of your marketing.
Because attention isn’t the same as growth.
A Viral Post Isn't Always a Successful Post
Imagine you post a video that suddenly takes off.
It gets 100,000 views.
You gain 2,000 followers.
Everyone is talking about it.
It feels like a huge success.
But then you look at your website.
No significant increase in enquiries.
No noticeable increase in sales.
And most of those new followers aren’t actually potential customers.
Was it successful?
It depends on what you were trying to achieve.
If your goal was awareness, perhaps.
But if your goal was to generate enquiries or sales, the numbers might tell a very different story.
This is one of the biggest problems with chasing viral content.
The metric that looks impressive isn’t always the metric that matters.
Attention Is Only the Beginning
At a recent marketing conference, one of the ideas that stood out was the importance of looking beyond individual pieces of content and considering the customer journey.
Someone might discover your business through a Reel.
But what happens next?
Do they understand what you do?
Can they find the information they need?
Does your website build trust?
Can they easily see how you can help them?
Is there a clear next step?
A viral post might get someone through the door.
But your marketing needs to give them a reason to stay.
That’s where strategy becomes more important than reach.
The Wrong Audience Can Be a Problem
There’s another issue with viral content.
You don’t always control who sees it.
A video might take off because it’s funny, relatable or entertaining.
But if the people engaging with it have no reason to buy from you, you’ve created a lot of attention without necessarily creating business value.
For example, a local business could create a video that gets millions of views from people around the world.
It might be incredibly entertaining.
But if the business only services customers within 50 kilometres of its location, most of that audience isn’t useful to the business.
Meanwhile, a post that reaches 500 local people who actually need the service could generate far more value.
Five hundred relevant people can be more valuable than 100,000 random viewers.
What Should You Aim For Instead?
Rather than asking:
“How do we make this go viral?”
Try asking:
“How can we make this valuable to the right people?”
That change might sound small.
It’s not.
It changes the way you approach your entire content strategy.
Instead of creating content purely for reach, you start thinking about:
- What does my customer need to know?
- What problem can I help them solve?
- What would make them trust my business?
- What would make them remember us?
- What should they do next?
Now your content has a purpose.
Don't Ignore Reach
This doesn’t mean reach doesn’t matter.
It absolutely does.
Getting your business in front of new people is an important part of marketing.
And some of the best content strategies include content designed specifically to attract new audiences.
The problem is when every piece of content is expected to do the same job.
Some content should build awareness.
Some should educate.
Some should build trust.
Some should demonstrate your expertise.
And some should encourage people to take action.
That’s why thinking about top, middle and bottom-of-funnel content is so useful.
Your top-of-funnel content might introduce someone to your business.
Your middle-of-funnel content gives them reasons to trust you.
Your bottom-of-funnel content helps them make a decision.
You need all three.
A Viral Post Can't Carry Your Marketing Strategy
One of the biggest lessons from the marketing conference we attended was that successful marketing isn’t usually built around one huge breakthrough.
It’s built through lots of smaller decisions.
Testing different ideas.
Understanding what your audience responds to.
Looking at the data.
Improving your website.
Creating useful content.
Building trust.
Making it easy for customers to take the next step.
That’s not quite as exciting as “one Reel changed everything.”
But it’s far more sustainable.
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What If Your Best Post Only Gets 500 Views?
Would you still consider it successful if it generated three enquiries?
What if another post got 20,000 views but didn’t generate a single potential customer?
Which one would you rather create?
This is why context matters.
A piece of content shouldn’t be judged purely by how many people saw it.
Ask what it achieved.
Did it reach the right people?
Did it answer a question?
Did it build trust?
Did it send people to your website?
Did someone take the next step?
Those are the numbers that start to tell you whether your marketing is actually working.
Stop Chasing Viral. Start Building Valuable.
There is nothing wrong with creating content that reaches a huge audience.
If it happens, celebrate it.
Learn from it.
Look at why it worked.
But don’t build your entire marketing strategy around trying to recreate it.
Because the goal isn’t to have one post that everyone sees.
The goal is to build a business that the right people remember, trust and choose.
And sometimes, the most successful piece of content isn’t the one with thousands of views.
It’s the one that reaches exactly the person who needed to see it.
References
Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2022) Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. 8th edn. Harlow: Pearson.
Google (2020) Decoding Decisions: Making Sense of the Messy Middle. Available at: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com (Accessed: 20 August 2026).
Kotler, P., Keller, K.L. and Chernev, A. (2022) Marketing Management. 16th edn. Harlow: Pearson.
Ryan, D. (2024) Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation. 6th edn. London: Kogan Page.
