Building Viral Strategies in your Product

Building Viral Strategies in your Product : Building Viral Strategies in your Product

Something you probably did not know : Something you probably did not know Simply by designing your product the right way, you can build a billion-dollar business from scratch. No advertising or marketing budget, no need for a sales force, and venture capitalists will kill for the chance to throw money at you. The secret is what's called a "viral expansion loop," a concept little known outside of Silicon Valley (go ahead, Google it -- you won't find much). It's a type of engineering alchemy that, done right, almost guarantees a self-replicating, borglike growth: One user becomes two, then four, eight, to a million and beyond.

Viral Growth : Viral Growth Viral growth is a requirement for consumer web success To achieve 50 million users: 500 million unique visitors on your page 50 billion ads [1% click through rate] $0.50 CPM means $25 million in ad spend $2 CPM means $100 million Now think -> If one user gets 10 users, your budget reduces by 1/10th

Viral Growth : Viral Growth 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 A Virus … Lives in secrecy till the numbers are huge Gets power by sheer number of it Piggybacks on other resources to increase its tribe In right environment grows exponentially

Why Viral? : Why Viral? For websites with social networking or community features “going viral” or achieving a viral coefficient greater than 1.0 represents the holy grail of traffic acquisition. What’s behind this? Going viral means that new user acquisition costs have essentially been driven to ZERO or ALMOST ZERO.

Traditionally – what is Viral? : Traditionally – what is Viral? User sees the product User tries the product If user likes product, make it easy to tell their friends “Do something REALLY cool and people will tell all their friends.” Word of mouth spreads New users try the product Problem 1 : Users have to first experience the product, then talk about it. Problem 2 : This equates the word “viral” with "word of mouth"– [the product or service is so good that people are compelled to talk it up with their friends]

Viral for the web : Viral for the web User sees the product User tells all their friends to use the product User tries the product [Site propagates regardless of whether or not the user likes it] Focused on : Do something that’s REALLY easy to spread to other people Focused on : The mechanism of viral transmission than the content of what you are transmitting

Viral for the web : Viral for the web Make it EFFICIENT to spread your site Give people an INCENTIVE [financial, emotional, spiritual etc.] to send it to their friends Have a GREAT product that keeps people around spreading it through time Network has to inherently add and build value.

Example – Cindy Gordon : Example – Cindy Gordon Vice president of new media and marketing partnerships at Universal Orlando Resort, launched The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. She did not spend millions of dollars with old-rules approaches: Super Bowl TV ads, direct mail, and magazine ads. Instead, Gordon told just seven people about the new attraction. Gordon estimates that 350 million people around the world heard the news that Universal Orlando Resort was creating The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park. All by telling just seven people.

Example – Cindy Gordon : Example – Cindy Gordon Gordon and her counterpart at Warner Bros. chose to launch The Wizarding World of Harry Potter by first telling the exciting news to a very small group of rabid fans. These seven (affectionately referred to by Gordon’s team as “the AP of the HP world”) were invited to participate in a top-secret Webcast held at midnight on May 31, 2007. In the Webcast, live from the “Dumbledore’s Office” set at Leavesden Studios, Craig discussed how his team of twenty designers is bringing together The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park. Soon after the Webcast, the team sent an e-announcement to their in-house, opt-in email list of park guests so they could hear the news directly too. Team members also sent the e-announcement to friends and family. During the secret Webcast, a Web micro-site went live to provide a place for bloggers and the media to link to for information on the theme park, which is slated to open in late 2009 or early 2010.

Example – Hotmail.com : Example – Hotmail.com Give away free e-mail addresses and services, Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and, Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates, Who see the message, Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Examples : Examples Instant Messengers, require a user to forward the application to other users and have them register in order to participate. CPM (Yahoo!Mail) and contextual (gmail) advertising and pre-paid subscription (Skype) business models have all been used to monetize these viral ecosystems. Sites like MySpace , Flickr, and YouTube and new distributed social self expression sites or widgets like RockYou (LSVP portfolio company), Widgetbox and others enable users to invite friends to view personalized digital content. Monetization occurs through online advertisements or sale of goods. Plaxo taking over your Outlook and making it easy to spam 50 people at once Slide asking for your social network credentials to make it easy to embed slideshows These are not simply depending on making something really cool and compelling you to spread it. They made it automatic, something built into the product rather than as a marketing afterthought.

Slide.com : Slide.com

Slide 14 :

Slide 15 :

Examples : Examples Upload your own YouTube Video Send to a Friend Automatic would be even better

Examples : Examples

Examples : Examples By New Year's Eve 2010, Ning estimates, it will host some 4 million social networks serving up billions of page views daily.

Examples : Examples

Examples : Examples

A Viral Game or Video : A Viral Game or Video

What Viral is not … : What Viral is not … It is not Word of Mouth [based on compelling user experience] – it is specifically engineered Incentivized Word of Mouth Yet another marketing technique like SEO, SEM, Email Blasts etc. Bolted on the product after it is developed [“Viral isn’t something you can just make happen. It has to be inherent in your product.”] Tell a Friend + Import Address Book!= Viral

Acquiring Users : Acquiring Users Email/ IM features for invites and content Cool, interesting, daring and unique content Blog/ MySpace Widgets Dynamic, unique and easy embedding [automatic] Auto-invite for email, social networks, etc Make it smart and quick Push through RSS/Email, etc. Enough content for sharing and coming back Content Ease

Viral Strategies Reviewed : Viral Strategies Reviewed Address Book Sharing, discussions Updates about self and others Being involved – knowledge Benchmarking Mapping, relationships Product Use Have to have the product to use

Elements of Viral Marketing Strategy : Elements of Viral Marketing Strategy Gives away products or services Free products, email and patience Provides for effortless transfer to others Simple message and easy transfer Exploits common motivations and behaviors Desire to be cool, sexy, wanted, powerful, prepared, greed, heard, understood, loved Utilizes existing communication networks Social Networks, emails etc. Takes advantage of others' resources Content : embeds and articles

Expanding Viral Loop : Expanding Viral Loop Viral Media : Newsfeeds, messages, alerts, mobile messaging Messaging pitch and medium Viral Hook: Fit your brand around a great concept Don’t make an obvious ad Hinge on the excitement/ controversy factor - arousal Funnel Design : No more than 2-3 steps Track drop off’s at each step and optimize

Facebook Apps – The Viral Loop : Facebook Apps – The Viral Loop The only way for any Facebook app to become popular is to have a viral coefficient over 1. This is an extremely high barrier for any app in which inviting friends is not an inherent part of using it (or, in other words, which is not structured for "viral action"). Hence, utility-based apps [who rely on word of mouth or great content alone don’t succeed much]. Its tough to get viral coefficients more than 01 through WOM. For 5% click through rate, you need to send 20 invites.

Friend Wheel Generator : Friend Wheel Generator

Likeness : Likeness

Likeness : Likeness

Viral Strategy Outsourcing : Viral Strategy Outsourcing

Things to keep in mind : Things to keep in mind Don’t get too aggressive – measure the noise level Building your business on one or two social networks puts you at the mercy of these platform owners. Try to aggregate loyal users on your own website.

What next?>> : What next?>> How to get the initial users? Tipping Point A seamless experience Is Content Really that Unimportant? Increase the power of network Neuromarketing