viral marketing : viral mechanisms and seeding strategies

Viral Mechanisms and Seeding Strategies

By Brian Chappell

What is Viral Marketing?

When your audience markets for you.

Not All Viral Campaigns Turn Into Viruses

• Viral marketing doesn’t have to be 400,000 visits in 3 days

• 30,000 visits over 12 months spread across multiple campaigns and launches that in turn creates success over time.

3 Main Components To Viral Marketing

Content

Mechanisms

Seeds

Commonly Viewed Viral Marketing Components

Content

Mechanisms

Seed

The Real Truth Of Viral Marketing Components

Content

Mechanisms

Seed

Types Of Viral Mechanisms

• Forwarding to a friend• Links in widgets• “Free” – Give it all away for a short time.• Affiliate Programs• FB Likes• Twitter Retweets• Automatic Address book importing • Competitions With Leaderboards• Login With Facebook

Viral Mechanism Integration Example : Before

Viral Mechanisms Email Integration Example : After

Post Purchase Viral Mechanism

Links In Widgets

Automatic Address Book Importing

Login With Facebook

Viral Seeding TechniquesInitial Seeding By Marketers• Press Release• Blogger and Community Outreach• PPC

– Facebook engagement ads– Sponsored Tweets– Google Adwords, Bing Adcenter

• Banner Media Buys• Emails and status updates• Word of Mouth• Frontpaging Digg, Frontpaging Reddit, Tumblr Reblogs

2nd Level Seeding Done By The Audience• Emailing a list• Personal and Family relationships• Twitter Status update• Facebook Status update• Blog post

Go Big Or Go Home

Factors For Success• Viruses only spread when they are easy to

transmit• Ensure inviting users is core to the product, app

or website• Remind users to keep coming back• Use existing networks instead of creating new

ones • Apply low barrier to entry’s early on in the funnel• Develop a Formula and stick with it

Successful Viral Marketing Environment

Success!

Make Content Travel Far With Seeding Techniques

Multiple Seeds

Make Content Travel On Its Own With Baked in Viral Mechanisms

Content Viral Mechanisms

Further Reading

• One of the original primers on Viral marketing from 2000. http://bit.ly/dr-wilson-viral

• Read more about the viral loop herehttp://bit.ly/viral-loop

• Crowd Sourced Viral Loop exampleshttp://productplanner.com/

• How To Make Your Application Viralhttp://bit.ly/app-viral

Thank You

IgniteSocialMedia.com/blog

@brianchappell

brian@ignitesocialmedia.com