We have seen many applications draw serious attention and went viral in hours in Nigeria and the world at large. For example, our own bride price app which broke the internet in few hours and drew attention across the continent in matter of few days. But the question is how does one create virality? Is there a formula or a pattern to follow, or is just cheer luck that some go viral while some don’t? Suggestions anyone?
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I think a viral effect can never be guaranteed or controlled.
Anyone that offer you a “viral guarantee” will mostly scam you.
That said, here is what you can do to give your undertaking the best chance of going viral
- Determine your target audience
- Develop desirable, original free content
- Offer a clear incentive
- Employ technical tricks. Make it easy to find, easy to pass on and easy to download as it applies.
- Adopt the most suitable approach. Make it either professional or amateur
- identify, understand and make the most of the appropriate online networks
- Be prepared to take risk. It might succeed or not.
Hope this helps
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You numerize most of your pointers in post.
Very analytic mindset! #justobserving
Oh well all the things mentioned are true
I like to think itemizing points makes the post easily scan-able and quickly gets the point across. Thanks for observing.
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Great question @iamfunsho. I am not a viral marketing professional, however, I did lots of research about viral marketing before launching my current company. Let me tell you for sure that viral marketing is a serious profession today and there are marketing, PR, and gaming firms who are dedicated to create virality for their products or clients. Example of such firms are those who produce Super Bowl Commercials.
There is no single formula for creating virality. The viral marketing campaign will depend on some factors such as:
- The product or services being marketed. Viral marketing for a game will definitely be different from viral marketing for an electronic product. The techniques for creating viral products will also be consistent for similar products or services.
- The budget of the client. If you intend to hire an experienced viral marketing company, then you have to be ready to pay the $X,000,000,000 range of price tag. If you don’t have such a budget, say, you are bootstrapping, then your viral marketing campaign methods will be totally different.
- Your locality. Viral campaigns used in the UK might not necessarily work in Nigeria. The people are different with different environments and lifestyles.
- Political environment. The nature of the political environment should be taken note of while creating viral products. I know cases where viral gaming companies have created games to take advantage of some political situations and they went viral.
Recently, I came across two entrepreneurs/start-ups who have perfected the art of viral marketing: Oli Christi of Neonplay and Jeffrey Raider of Harry’s.
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Oli Christi of Neonplay. I came across Oli Christi while reading the book, How They Started - Digital (a highly-recommended book for all entrepreneurs). Neonplay has been in the business of producing viral games since 2010. According to Neonplay’s website, Oli claims to have produced over 200 viral games for his company. I don’t know how he does it! But I’m sure if you can afford his services, he might replicate his experience for you.
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Jeffrey Raider of Harry’s. Harry’s a blade company that went viral during her pre-launch campaigns. Harry’s is said to have gathered 100,000 emails in ONE week. With such ingenuity, Harry’s has been able to raise a total of $211.5 Million to date and bought a 93-year old Germany company which was her blade manufacturer. You can read this popular article on Harry’s prelaunch strategy which include all his email templates.
Harry’s strategy is one that I adopted and will always replicate because it’s cheap and easy to implement. Beyond the marketing strategies, you have to ensure that your product or service is even more attractive than the marketing strategies else you won’t have significant conversions.