Well guys, here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. I asked Austin Craig, video marketing genius, the secret of how to make a viral video.  Luckily for you it requires just a few easy steps:

1. Win the lottery
2. Use your winnings to buy a unicorn
3. Train your unicorn to ride a unicycle
4. Enjoy your life as a YouTube hero

Ok so basically what I’m getting at is this; expecting to think you can make a viral video is ridiculous. Austin and I get asked this question all the time. Every time I hear this I just want to face palm myself. His response is a little more professional. He says “I don’t immediately condemn them because that’s not a very good business practice., but education needs to happen in a situation like that”.

What you’re running is a business. A viral video is like winning the lottery, and buying a lottery ticket is not a business strategy” -Austin Craig

Now that I’ve ruined your dreams of creating a viral video, let’s talk about what you can do instead that is 100 times more likely to help your business. What would Austin do if someone asked him to help them make a viral video?  He would first help them create a strategic sales video. Once they have found decent success in that, then he would be willing to try something a little more crazy so that the business would have a cushion to fall back on if and when their “viral video” only gets seen by 150 people.

Now you’re gonna say “Wait, but doesn’t Orabrush have a viral video? Isn’t that how they started?”. Kind of. Yeah they have a video with over 18 million views which I guess you could say is “viral,” but that didn’t just happen by itself. Orabrush has been promoting that video since the beginning to make sure that it would show up when people searched for relevant terms. On YouTube, there are 100 hours of video uploaded every minute. That’s a crap load of videos. How do you expect your video to get seen in all of that if you don’t promote it?

Planning for a Video to go Viral in your marketing is like planning on winning the lottery for your business to make money. It’s highly unlikely and it’s the worst marketing strategy you could have.

So what should your video marketing strategy be?

You need to gain people’s trust with a campaign of videos, like the Velcro Theory.

The Velcro Theory explains how to make a message or video stick.  On one side of the velcro you have hooks and the other you have loops, when the two come together it sticks.  The hooks represent Videos and the loops represent viewers.  If you only have one hook your message won’t stick very well.  For this reason you need to create a lot of videos to hook and stick with the viewers.

*  If you are looking for more tips and tricks on how to increase your YouTube views and following, you should check out this Free Video Marketing Course