Going Viral: Success Strategies for Viral Marketing

What is Viral Marketing?

Often referred to as word of mouth, creating buzz, piggybacking…

Viral marketing is a strategy that makes your current customers or people on your list visible, big supporters of your business (brand advocates). It’s a great straetgy to expand your user base to increase sales and customers. To make this work, your current customers need to feel comfortable and connected to your product or service, and willing to pass it on to others to consider.  Done right, the cool thing about viral is that you leverage a dynamic of the social graph that is hugely important…empowerment.  Think about it, if I can introduce my friends to something very special, cool, fun, money saving before anyone else does, just because they are my friend, that gives me more status in my social graph.

The key to a successful viral marketing strategy depends on your market, and what motivates target users.  You must mold your strategy to connect with your target prospects.  Viral marketing will never take off if you don’t have a high pass-rate within your market and you will not have a high pass-rate if your product/service does not have a solid reputation with your customers and a very cool “empowerment” concept.

How do you go about this?

Here are some tips to create your viral marketing strategy and create chatter within your target audience:

• Make your audience feel some type of emotion.  Whether they love you or they hate you, nothing is worse than feeling neutral.
• Do something that lets people notice you.  I always use the example that if there was a room full of green jackets, what would you do to stand out? Not wear a green jacket, of course.  Do not be a copycat.
• Identify something that you can offer that will make people want to share it (because of the empowerment concept) and make it very easy to share. Special discounts, unique products, exclusive content, private access are great tools.
• Now that you have your audience’s attention, they want to talk. Follow up with related content and value to get your new prospects to act.
• Don’t sell! Share, empower, cultivate, schmooze…

Viral marketing is a little like drilling for oil.  You will need to try different approaches to see what works. This is best done in quick cycles with good feedback so you can build on concepts that are getting traction.

Check out “Six principles of viral marketing” for some very specific ideas on how to execute a viral marketing plan.

What do you think about viral marketing?

Business Marketing-Disrupted

Disrupted

We created a free ebook with this title because I know so many of the business managers we talk with feel like “Disrupted” is the state of their business right now.  The bad economy, combined with new technology and interactive marketing techniques, has changed the way business marketing will work effectively in the future.  Call it the new normal.

What to do? Education, training and experimenting is the key.  The companies and executives that stay ahead of this curve will benefit greatly.  Winners and losers will emerge out of this Disruption.  Anyone know who the largest soap company in the US was before radio?  It was not P&G.  Companies that adapt to the new normal will win new customers and influence the market in unprecedented ways.  And guess what, anyone can play in this new normal regardless of the size of your organization.  Because everyone has an equal playing field in terms of access to customers and leveraging great content.  Creativity and serving customers better than anyone else in the market will win in the new normal.

Welcome to the new normal!  Join us in the fun and excitement of winning in this new Disrupted marketing and media environment.

Check out our free ebook at GenNext Media LLC.