How to use viral marketing to grow your brand the easy way?
I’m sitting here at my desk and wondered how to use viral marketing to growth hack your email list? Going viral is a hot topic nowadays so I did some research. It can be hard to create a marketing campaign that will go viral. Most of the times it depends on timing and luck. Luckily there are tools available which use viral marketing to grow your email list. So I went on a search to find a proven method to grow your email list without too much effort so you can save time.
The summary
Viral marketing is a good way to grow your brand. Know your audience to offer the right incentive. With the right incentive, the sharing part will sky rocket.
The 2 tools we recommended for viral marketing are Upviral and Viral loops.
What is viral marketing?
Going viral and mouth to mouth is in fact the same. Both are meant to create brand awareness.
Going viral on the internet is the same as the old word of mouth marketing. Word of mouth happens when people are enthusiastic about your product or service. They tell others about your product or service. Even without any marketing, this can help your product sales.
Social media offers the quickest way to get viral. Twitter, Facebook, youtube or any other social media platform offer a cheap platform to get a viral. Videos usually go viral as video is appealing and easy to share. But even a tweet with a short message can go viral. A blog post on the other hand is quite hard to go viral. You can use parts of the blog post to create a successful viral campaign.
Still social media marketing is not viral marketing. With an influencer you can add the odds of going viral. But that is still not guaranteed. So influencer marketing can be a hit or miss if you want to go viral.
Viral marketing uses similar techniques to spread a message to people. For example an incentive can help the message go viral. People like free stuff so offering a free product can stimulate people to spread our message.
People will share your message with other people in their network. The best way to spread a message is using a network of the people themselves. If you get a message from a friend or relative to check out a certain product, news or service, you will do so. But if the same message comes from a company or someone you don’t know, you might take action.
Why should you go viral?
Going viral on the internet can boost your business growth. But going viral can be hard. It depends on several factors and you can’t control all. If you do go viral, you can have a huge return. As people hear about your business and respond to it. They will shout around your message.
As an entrepreneur your email list is your most valuable asset. You can sell your products or services to the people on your email list. Those people know and trust you. They might not have bought your products yet, but with email marketing they can. They are part of your warm audience.
You can grow your email list running ads. If you use paid ads, you have to convince a cold audience who have never heard about you to do business. After the first contact with your ad, you have to run retargeting ads to show your product or service again. This process can take up to 7 touch points before someone will do business with you. That means 7 different moments when someone sees your business.
So growing your email list can cost a lot depending on the growth you want to achieve.
What are cold and warm audiences and touch-points?
You have to convert people from a cold audience to warm and hot target audience using touchpoints.
To understand the terms cold and warm audiences you have to know the basics. Every customer that gets in touch with you or your company start with a customer journey. Each time a customer experiences content from you, is a touchpoint.
The first time the customer sees and responds to content, they are cold audience. A cold targeted audience can interact with you, but won’t convert yet. Some people will buy from you at the first touch point, but most people need more convincing.
Each touchpoint after the first touchpoint will make your audience warmer. In general, people will convert after 7 touch-points. So they see any content 7 times and they can convert. Sometimes it takes less touch points and sometimes it takes more touch points.
When should you use viral marketing?
You can use viral marketing at any time you need to spread out a message. If you have a new product or service, you can use a viral marketing strategy to sell your product. Or if you started with your business and you need customers, you can use viral marketing to grow an email list fast.
Does viral marketing help to grow your business?
Yes, it helps to grow your business. When done right your email list will grow very quick like 100k+ customers in 30 days. You can achieve these kind of numbers using the right viral marketing technique. It still depends on the offer and the ad how effective your viral campaign will be. So invest time to setup a successful viral marketing campaign.
One of the measurable viral marketing success factors is the viral coefficient. This number is the number of new users that one user is bringing in. With the right online content this number can be higher. And higher means your marketing message is becoming a viral message.
How to use viral marketing in your business?
You still have to take time to figure out how you will apply viral marketing. The message has to something that people want to share with their friends. You have to offer something valuable which people want to respond to and share it with their network.
How to create viral content in an effective viral marketing campaign?
Having knowledge of digital marketing can help to create content. But viral content takes time. Your message, that can be a video which can become a viral video, is less important as the overall story. Humor is an important aspect.
An example of repeatable viral success is the Harmon Brothers. They are the ones who created the squatty potty videos. They use humour in their videos. They have multiple writers write a story and combine those into a video.
Does viral marketing have any risks?
Every marketing technique has risks and viral marketing is not different. The main risk if you are doing a give away that people will use fake emails to increase their change of winning. It’s hard to verify email addresses. Especially if it’s a higher priced item that someone can win, you have to verify the customers.
You need some kind of way to keep track of all the customers. Especially when a lot of people will join, you need a system or tool to keep track of all the customers.
Which tools can help me with going viral?
There are a lot of viral marketing tools.
1. Upviral. The marketing tool we use is upviral. Upviral offers several methods of sharing your message. It includes a landing page builder, so you can even use the platform without any other tools. Upviral exists quite a while and it’s a proven system. Last year the tool the clickfunnels crew said they use Upviral for their marketing.
2. Viral loops. The main advantage is that they have a Shopify app. So if you use Shopify and want to use viral marketing, install the viral loops Shopify app.
