What Is Viral Marketing?
Viral marketing is the digital version of “word of mouth” marketing. When I hear the phrase “it went viral” I picture a digital asset, such as a jpeg or video, being shared all over social media. Before there was social media emails would go viral. Hotmail utilized viral marketing when they put a message at the bottom of each email reading: GET YOUR FREE E-MAIL AT HOTMAIL.COM. It spread to 11 million users in 18 months without any advertising.
In the example of Hotmail they used a form of incentivized referrals. In exchange for getting free email the user advertised Hotmail service with every email they sent.
Here at Riewe Internet Consulting we use Rafflepress to create Viral Giveaways that help businesses get more subscribers, social engagement, and traffic. A giveaway promotion is a promotion where something of value is given away in exchange for users taking some sort of action. These giveaways are considered “viral” when they are designed in a way that users are encouraged to share the giveaway with others, thus making it go viral.
Goals Of The Give Away
The give away can be designed to accomplish a number of goals. For example:
- Generate Sales
- Boost Brand Awareness
- Increase User Engagement
- Drive Traffic To Your Site
- Get More Email Subscribers
- Gather User Generated Content
- Get More Social Media Followers
- Create Buzz Around A New Product Or Service
When designing a give away we look at what the specific goals are and select the appropriate actions to use in the giveaway promotion. All giveaways share one thing in common, users are encouraged to engage with the advertisers content in order to improve their chances of winning the contest.
Users can be rewarded points for doing things like Visiting a FB page, Liking a FB Page, Following on Twitter, Visiting an Instagram Profile, Following on Pinterest, Following on Linkedin, Following on Twitch, Visiting a Youtube Channel and Joining an email newsletter.
Reward users for referring a friend to the contest/giveaway, Viewing Facebook Post/ Video, Viewing Instagram Post / Video, Watching a Video on Youtube.
Reward users for Tweeting a promotional message, Share a post on facebook, Visit a page, share on Linkedin, Answer A question, Submit an image, Leave a comment on a specified blog post, Subscribe to Podcast.
Website Visitors
RafflePress helps you capture visitor’s attention with attractive giveaways … and what happens next is AMAZING.
Enter Giveaway
Website visitors must use their email to enter the giveaway.
Benefit: Grow Your Email List
Viral Sharing
Visitors are incentivized to share the giveaway to earn entries.
Benefit: Increased Engagement
Supercharged Growth
Word-of-mouth advertising helps you get more traffic, FASTER!
Benefit: More Sales + Revenue
Visitors enter the give-away eager to win. The Give-away contest has actions setup that visitors can take to earn more points (entries) in the contest. The more points a contestant earns, the greater their chance is of winning.
Lets use a basic example of a gift card give away.
The prize is a $50 Gift Card from Amazon. In order to enter the contest the visitor has to login and confirm it. (This is to protect the contest from automated bots).
Once logged in the user can take specific actions to obtain points in the contest. Each point is like a ticket and the more points a user accumulates, the greater his/her chance of winning is.
In our example above, the entrant can earn points a number of ways.
- Refer contest to others and earn 5 points when someone joins through their link.
- Subscribe to Youtube channel
- Subscribe to Email Newsletter
- Follow on Twitter
- Visit FB Link
Item 1 is very powerful. Entrants in the giveaway can earn entries by promoting the giveaway for you. There are literally “sweepers” (people who enter giveaways and contests as a hobby) that develop their own lists to market giveaways they find. When I launch a giveaway I will see it getting advertised on FB groups and Giveaway directories within an hour because I have many dedicated sweepers on my list.
Each point a user earns is recorded in the database. When the contest comes to end the contest software will chose the winner(s).
How To Get Your Giveaway started.
Take advantage of my Joint Venture Viral Giveaway Special. Currently I am offering a special where I’ll set up a giveaway for you. I will host it and promote it. That means I will email my list and submit the giveaway to 20 or so giveaway directories.
You, as sponsor, provide the prize. In exchange for my services I am allowed to have the giveaway “branded” by being allowed to use at least two of the action items.
You provide the Prize. I provide 20 hours of work setting up the give away and promoting it. My promotion efforts involve listing the give away on popular give away directories AND promoting it to my give-away notification list (currently 2,653 highly responsive subscribers).
You can see a list of the active giveaways and demos running here. Feel free to enter them and go through the flow of how a contestant takes actions to earn points. It costs you nothing but a few minutes of your time. Heck, you might even win the prize!🙂
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