Viral marketing is the most cost effective traffic strategy that any business can use for their business. The idea is to create a campaign that’s designed to move people to share your content or event. The problem is that it’s easier said than done. Every business would love to create a viral frenzy but most usually fall short in their attempts. Despite that, there are many viral marketing techniques that can significantly increase your traffic even if your campaign doesn’t manage to hit a home run. Here are some that you can use for your campaign.
1. Start with Content Marketing
Content marketing works as a viral marketing technique because great content naturally gets shared. The trick to making your content go viral is to figure out the pain points, needs and desires of the target audience. That won’t guarantee that your content will go viral but it will significantly increase your chances of it happening. Some great examples of content that has gone viral include an article teaching men how to get precise shirt measurements, infographics on how to tie a tie and funny video commercials. Content can be anything from a viral video, a step-by-step tutorial, an infographic, podcast, to a simple blog post.
2. Give Away High Quality Freebies
One of the best ways to generate traffic to your website is to give away high quality freebies. This can be anything from a PDF report, software, mobile app, to a graphics pack. There are a lot of freebies that are available on the Internet but most of them are low quality freebies that the creators didn’t put much effort in. That’s why people love sharing free resources that offer a lot value. Sharing a high quality freebie is a rare find that gives website owners credibility and adds value to their audience.
The perfect example of this is the classic BMI calculator that many weight loss and fitness sites have on their site. A different iteration of the strategy that some reseller hosting sellers are using is giving away high quality templates, themes or plugins. These freebies often have their reseller hosting website link attached to it which leads to free traffic and sales.
3. Create a Social Media Campaign to Generate Engagement
Social media is the perfect channel for starting a viral marketing campaign. You have to approach it in a different way to execute a viral marketing strategy. Rather than trying to generate a sale, you want to create content that engages your audience. You want your content to generate comments, likes and shares so that it gets shared to the user’s network.
A great way to set up your social media viral campaign is to start with content that you already know works. Then, draw traffic to it with your blog and email newsletter. If your audience is non-existent or simply too small, you can fan the flames by investing in social media advertising. You don’t need to invest too much money into the social media advertising. The idea is to get enough eyeballs to start the viral marketing process.
4. Start a Giveaway or a Contest
Running a giveaway or a contest is a great way to get the word out there about your brand and products. Asking people who enter to refer other people to the contest to enter or increase their chances of winning is the key to making a contest go viral. Most businesses fail with contests because they either offer a winning prize that isn’t compelling enough or offer a prize that doesn’t present a unique value to their target audience.
Giving away a free Amazon gift card to an audience consisting of golfers is compelling but it will attract interest from unqualified prospects. Giving away free three day access to a golf course targets golfers but probably won’t be compelling enough to them. You have to find the right balance between the two for your contest to take off. Put some thought into what your audience would really want as a prize before you start the giveaway or contest.
5. Enable Sharing, Embedding and Downloading
To ensure that your website and content gets passed around, you want to providers users the capability to share your content. Start with the most basic functionality and make sure you add social sharing links on your website when appropriate. If you have an audio or video player, include the HTML code to allow other people to embed your content on their website. With this, all they have to do is copy and paste a line of code on to their website to share your audio or video.
If you have files (graphics packs, software, text files, etc.) that you want to give away, set up a server where users can download your files securely and quickly. The bottom line is that you need to be the one enabling your content to be shared. Don’t assume that users will take the initiative and go through all the trouble to share your content.
6. Start an Affiliate Program
The best way to get other people to promote your business is to incentivize them. This can be done by starting an affiliate program where affiliates are paid a flat amount per sale or a percentage of the total sale. An effective way to help your affiliates promote is to give them the ability to rebrand content. By rebranding PDFs, software programs and apps with their affiliate IDs, they’ll be incentivized to promote your content.
This works incredibly well because it’s always an easier sell to offer content than to ask for the sale right away. You can take this concept further by promoting your affiliate program in the rebranded content. This viral marketing technique will help you bring in new affiliates as your existing affiliates promote the rebranded content.
7. Get Involved with Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is the process of reaching out to influencers and striking up a deal to have them promote your products and services. This usually involves coming to a joint agreement about a promotion or revenue share fee. In order for influencer marketing to work in the first place, you have to look for influencers that have a target audience for your products and services.
Tapping into influencers can help make your marketing campaign go viral for several reasons. First of all, they usually have a large following on their blog or social media. Second, you are leveraging the relationship they’ve built with their audience which means that the audience will be more receptive to your marketing campaign. Third, they can connect you with other influencers or establish credibility with other influencers (if the campaign goes well) which you can leverage to scale your influencer marketing campaign.
Those are just a few viral marketing techniques that can increase traffic. The truth is that you’ll never know for sure what will end up going viral, but what you can do is use the right viral marketing techniques to get the most out of your marketing campaigns.