How to Properly Unleash a Virus in 4 Steps

I tried to launch my first internet company in the finance space when I was 23. I thought I had an amazing product that investors would salivate over. “I just have to get the word out with some advertising,” I thought. As I tried to reach out to my ideal customers through Google’s Adwords pay-per-click service, I found myself running out of cash every month. Despite the profit margins on the small amount of sales that trickled in, kt was getting too expensive to get off the ground.

I needed marketing that would give me more leverage–less time and money spent in exchange for more paying customers. Common sense told me that if I had a remarkable product, it would almost sell itself through word-of-mouth, almost like a virus. Easier said than done. 

Just telling someone about something doesn’t mean they’ll share it. I, like most business owners trying to promote through word-of-mouth advertising went from person to person through my offline and social networks, my initial customer base, and visitors to my website.  I quickly realized that this was the wrong approach. I needed to go to where the customers already were. I needed to spread a virus. 

Here’s what I realized: You need to gain a “critical mass” of people who will share your product with their friends. This cannot be done by approaching one person at a time. Rather, you must go where your customers already are and approach their leader or what I call their “influencers.”  To spread a virus successfully, especially if you’re not yet known in your niche, the following steps need to be applied:

1. Find the influencers. What blogs, forums, sites, and social networking groups do customers in your niche gravitate to online? Who are the well known people that attend conferences and make press in your industry? Which magazines or trade publications do your customers read? These are the influencers. 
2. Shoot for the stars on the list. The common tendency once you’ve found a list of influencers is to try to reach the C level and B level influencers and work your way up. I say life is too short. Besides, most people overestimate their competition and underestimate their chances in a given undertaking. The final motivation for going for the A+ level influencers is that the payoff is huge for the amount of work you put in.
3. Cultivate a relationship. The first thing to do is not beg for their help to promote your product/business. Look at how they interact their customers/followers and see how you can add value and be in alignment with their goals. This could mean providing valuable information or sending free product to pass out to their followers.
4. Have something worth sharing and give it to the influencers. Once you’ve added enough value and have gained the trust of the influencer, it’s time to ask for them to point their followers your way. To do this, you can’t have something to share that’s just good. It has to be worth sharing. This could feature either an incentive or a novel characteristic. An incentive could be financial, a reward/discount, or valuable information/resources. The novelty can come from either a unique and memorable characteristic, or something that evokes an emotional response. Think about the most highly viewed Youtube videos.

Tagged as: entrepreneurship tips, idea virus, viral marketing, word of mouth advertising, word of mouth marketing