What are the best ideas for making your app and product go viral?
Every maker and every team creating a product or an app dream of creating an app or a product that goes viral and receives a lot of likes, gets shared, and becomes popular on all the social media channels and ad channels. It's not just a dream, it's a need of the time. With thousands of apps and products coming to the market every day in all domains it is difficult to get visibility, engagement, and conversion. If you are able to create a product that goes viral, it makes things easy. You save huge advertising costs, content marketing costs. It becomes really easy to establish your brand image and launch the second product to cash in on the popularity of your first viral product.
When you develop your go-to-market strategy based on customer growth and enhancing the user experience, you will have a greater chance of going viral with your product launch. Find innovative and unique ideas for launching amazing and innovative products, apps, and websites. After your app, product, and website are launched successfully, visitors are automatically attracted and engaged.
Formula to come in the top five products of the day using product hunters
Product hunters are influencers who have a huge number of followers. When these hunters search any product on Product Hunt (PH), these followers get a push notification. They upvote and engage with your product and get your product in the top 5 products of the day. The trick is to find the most influential product hunters for your product or app. If you need to book top hunters such as Chris Messina, you need to book them two months in advance.
You can find hunters on these websites: Product Hunt hunters leaderboard
Launch your product on a highly converting landing page
Create a product landing page that is clear, simple, and concise with one single call to action.
Before creating the first draft of the landing page, put yourself in the place of the customers and users and ask the following questions:
• Why should I buy your product?
• What tasks can I achieve with the product or what problems does it solve?
• How is your product better than the competitor or existing product?
• Is your product right for them? Who are the target users of the product?
• Is your product providing the right features and benefits at the right price?
Do not overcrowd your landing page with a lot of product details. Use the keywords that your customers expect to see on this page.
Implement all the strategies to convert visitors into customers. Include brilliant pictures of your product, product explainer videos, and testimonials from beta users.
You can create hacker-safe superfast, instantly loading, and 100 % secure product landing pages using static website generation tools such as Designmodo Slides, Designmodo Startup, and Instapage. These websites become live in minutes. You can quickly create one page websites for free.
There are some free landing page builders available such as HubSpot. You can also capture leads for free and set autoresponder in HubSpot’s Form Builder and Pop-up Forms.
If you are a creator and are looking for a landing page builder then Landingi helps convert more prospects to customers easily and quickly. It provides easy-to-use drag and drop feature and 400+ templates for creators.
Your prospects are more likely to click on the product landing page and presentation links if they are 100 % secure and load instantly.
Purchase an unforgettable and simple domain and create your high converting landing page for your product launch. Find out what motivates your users. Prioritize and optimize the content of your landing page to improve user and customer experience.
✅ Set up analytics and track customer conversion using tools such as Google Analytics.
✅ Set up tools such as Hotjar on your website that help you track and record user behavior and gather feedback. Based on these insights about your user behavior and heatmaps, the tool shows the places on the landing page where users tend to click more. You can optimize your landing page for better conversions.
✅ Check and optimize the speed of your website using tools such as Pingdom.
✅ Set up a lead magnet for your website using tools such as ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, and MailerLite.
✅ Add testimonials on your site using tools such as Testimonial.to, testimonialtree.com, surveymonkey.com.
✅ Include words and colors on the Call-to-Action (CTAs) that match the context and audience. Conduct A/B testing before including it in the launch. HubSpot's Calls-to-Action, Wishpond, Canva, ImageFu, ButtonOptimizer, saleoid.com, and copy.ai.
✅ To retarget lost prospects and visitors, you can include Facebook and Google Tag Manager on your website.
If you do not like handling the technical complexities of website hosting, you can explore some hosting platforms such as Cloudways. You get managed web hosting services that are simple and easy that can be used by anyone.
Product teasers to get your prospective audience excited and engaged
Just like the movie teasers, get your prospective audience alert, excited, engaged, and glued to your launch and open to your product launch. Get exciting, useful, and engaging content ready for the teasers. Do not forget to include what problems your product solves and how it can impact their business and how it can influence the lives of the users and customers. All your teasers should answer "what's in it for me?". Use psychology to influence your prospective audience.
Priming is an effective method for engaging your audience by saying "I am aware about your problems; I empathise with you. And, I have the best solutions for your problems. I am your best friend and well-wisher." Customers should feel that you have the best solution and you can deliver 200 % value to them. Convince them that they will get more value from the product than what they are actually paying for the product. Do not forget to include the vision of your company in your teasers. A combination of all these points makes the best recipe for a successful product launch that go viral.
Focus and channelize all your energies into creating a buzz before launching your product with anticipated content. Social media, television shows such as reality shows, online web series, shipment tracking, mobile apps, and there are many different ways to create a buzz about the product launch. Here are some ways of creating a buzz:
Create and release a minimum viable product (MVP) to your prospects
If you create and release a product in different growth stages such as an MVP with one feature and then release the beta, you are basically releasing your product in parts and giving them a taste of the product. This creates engagement, opens up channels to receive continuous feedback, and improves the product as per customer requirements. Speed to bring your idea to the market is crucial for inventors and innovators. There are some tools that can help you create an MVP with one click. For example, if you want to convert, Airtable or Google Sheets into a mobile app, you can do so with just one click. For more information, you can visit Softr or refer to Tools for Startups. Softr the fastest, intuitive, and easiest way to build products without coding knowledge and technical complexity. If you are looking for no-code tools, then Softr is one of the best tools. You can create client portals and also build an employee directory.
Coming soon posts and countdown posts
These posts can be in the form of infographics, blog posts, YouTube, and other forms of advertisements on different social media channels. Make them interesting, attractive, and playful so that your audience is pulled into a conversation by asking a question, by discussing a pain point, or by writing a quote. It naturally encourages comments and conversation.
Use the story telling method and unravel the mystery slowly by maintaining an element of secrecy.
Elements of creating an excellent "coming soon" post:
• Present value proposition clearly
• Present benefits convincingly
• Include appealing graphics
• Include a call to action (CTA) UI text that brings maximum customers
• Include social media links to encourage maximum sharing
• Include a countdown clock to create a sense of urgency
Product preview posts
If your product already has followers, then product preview posts are a brilliant method to build anticipation and desire in prospects. Attractive photos and videos help your followers visualize and feel the product. It gives a sense of how the new product would look in their hands.
Make the value proposition extremely clear to your prospects. The best way to do this is to answer the basic questions about why should customers buy your product, why is your product created, which problems does it solve, what is the unique selling proposition or what is the value that customers will get from your product.
The most important research before even creating a product is what problems are your prospects trying to solve. If your product is created using the insights from this research, it is known as product led growth (PLG). If your product previews include these insights, then it is definitely going to be a huge success. Your product previews are definitely going to draw a lot of audience for your final product launch ceremony. You can find product led growth tools such as Pendo.
Product preview posts should also include these keywords if you offer these to the customers: "Risk-free trial," "Free shipping & returns," and "Exceptional customer service" to support the value proposition.
Giveaways and contests posts
Contests and giveaways are great ways to engage prospects and re-engage your followers to get more engagement for the product launch.
You can think of different ways of engaging your prospects and audience with contests and eventually to your product launch.
1. Like and/or comment to win
2. Photo caption contest
3. Tag a friend
4. User-generated content
5. Trivia
6. Share this post
7. Hashtag contest
Stories and fleeting content
Instead of putting time-sensitive perishable content on the main feed, you can put this promo content as stories if you want to promote multiple products together.
While moving closer to your product launch, to drive more engagement, you can also show interesting and fascinating photos of the customers and behind the scenes content. You can also share interesting moments from the making of the product promos. People love your inside story.
New product ads
If you have a dedicated audience and budget for new product ads you can run new product ads to attract the former customers and reluctant prospects who dropped off the sales funnel. Product ads on Facebook and Instagram are some excellent mediums to retarget prospects and left out customers.
Best ways to find the best product hunters
The best way to find hunters is to first search for similar products and then connect with hunters connected with these products using email and Twitter. Twitter is one of the best methods to connect with them because most hunters have direct messaging open on Twitter.
Best ways to get a yes from product hunters
Build a good quality product and then the best hunters will definitely say yes to connect with you and your product. No hunter would like to spoil their Product Hunt (PH) portfolio. Hunters always like to add an amazing set of products in their portfolio to retain their credibility. They will definitely say yes to hunt your product. And then, in some hours your product becomes viral.
Get engaged with the products they engage with. Interact more with their hunts and tweets. You can approach them after one week of launching the product.
Get maximum traffic by selecting the best day for your product launch
Your product launch day should not be a US holiday. Products get maximum 23.63% traffic from the USA (Source: SimilarWeb).
On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, maximum products are launched on the Product Hunt platform.
If you want less competition for your product launch, you can choose to launch on Monday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.
While deciding the launch day, you can even set one of the launch goals:
Win product of the day badge to show on your website as a social proof. To achieve the badge, launch on weekends.
Create maximum awareness from the product launch. To achieve this goal, launch on a Wednesday or a Thursday. Get the max benefits of creating an Upcoming Product Hunt page
Get the max benefits of creating an Upcoming Product Hunt page.
Some of the best reasons for creating a Product Hunt upcoming page for free:
1. Your product gets featured continuously on the Product Hunt (PH) Upcoming page irrespective of whether your product is launched or not.
2. You can create extra hype for the product launch and users can subscribe in one click.
3. You get the email ID of the users who subscribe to your product's Upcoming page.
4. On product launch day, you can easily notify this list of email IDs and get leverage on Product Hunt.
Retain your product fresh in customer's memory using courier and flight tracking apps and websites
A lot of people visit the flight tracking and courier tracking apps a number of times. It's one of the best platforms and an opportunity to push content about your product to nourish, win, and retain customers. Thousands of products literally bombard the market every day. If you want to push your product in the long-time permanent memory of your customers, you need to do some special and interesting things that attract and engage them in a pampering way. Customer surveys, customer insights, customer goals, and wish lists come in handy to promote your product on these tracking platforms.
Serve customers what they cherish most in their hangouts
Find out the hangout areas where your target customers like hanging out. The favorite blogs, podcast, meetups, conferences, social networks liked by your target audience. When you know what your audience like, you can serve them what they like through different communication mediums such as newsletters, and targeted advertisements.
Relate to your customers and tell their stories in their language across all touch points
Just like a movie or a song you can relate to yourself or your personal life stays with you for a long time. Similarly, if your product messaging on all your platforms and channels consistently talks about your customers, their wish lists, their goals and pain points, how your product adds value to their lives and business, and uniqueness of your product, it is definitely going to stick with them longer. Customers are going to become fans of your product instantly. And, like a soap opera, the saga of your product is going to run longer and spread like wild fire if it clicks with customers. It is crucial to understand the real and exact needs of your customers to achieve this goal successfully.
In-depth research of the support tickets and feedback of customers in different forums and channels allows you to understand the language, style, and reactions of your customers. It helps to tune the product messaging. Maintaining consistency across internal and customer facing teams is crucial in successfully relating and retaining your customers.
Designing a unique product that stands out from other products
It is obvious that your product's chances of becoming viral increase when it is unique. There are no products that are like yours. It could be the best thing if your product is a unique product. If this is true, your product gets the freedom to set new trends in a new product category. Uniqueness can be in the form of branding, sound effects, visuals, advertising, marketing. Competitor's product can influence the branding of your product.
Apple selected white color for all products to stand out from their competitors. When someone used white color products, they used white earphones, laptops, and AirPods. Everyone could see social proof that they were using Apple's products. When the trend of Mi Xiomi was at its peak, people considered it a status symbol. They did not change Mi's default ringtone. Mi users wanted and received more attention. This happened when their cell phone played the Mi ringtone.
Shower incentives to promote specific features in products
Offer discounts and products for free when users promote specific product features. Users can use social media to do this. Attract and engage your prospective customers with lucky draws and promotional deals. You can get real user feedback for specific product features. You can also find out the features that are more popular with users.
Provide multiple opportunities to earn from your app or product
To make your app popular, you can gamify it and provide more opportunities to sell creations of users. Playing games is a great source of earning money through an app. People will definitely engage longer with your product. As per a research study, games are the second most popular thing that people do after social media. You can also use gamification as a method of promoting your product to users. You can attract more gamification developers, designers, and companies to your app. Today, there are numerous ways of earning from an app or a product. If you are able to develop a product or app by providing multiple ways of monetization and earning from the app or product, your prospects are going to buy and download your app and product within minutes with no need to make much efforts to market them.
Create a win-win for all types of users and stakeholders
Analyze user needs and this will give you great ideas to market your product to all types of users. It will provide you with insights into its applications for different users. You need to connect the dots and create a win-win situation for all your users.
You can provide incentives to users for providing:
• Positive feedback,
• Ideas to enhance the product,
• Useful new features
The community of creators can share interesting things about the product:
• Shortcuts and tips,
• Videos,
• Product tutorials,
• Other promotional material
These help you to grow the followers of brands and products.
Add an element of fun and style to your product's social media marketing
Make your social media posts irresistible and engaging. Add an element of fun to your posts for social media. Create funny taglines on the latest trending news and celebrity news. It will keep your audience plugged into the product. For example, one brand created funny and sarcastic taglines around trending news items. It invited people to share it with their family, colleagues, and friends. It became viral overnight and had 10,000 followers in 24 hours.
Some products standout because of their unique trending style quotient. The uniqueness and fresh ideas brought to the market for the first time are magnetic. It drives people to them and makes them shareable.
Create memorable product launch posts using searchable simple hashtags
With thousands of products launched every day and people with short attention spans, it is extremely difficult for any product to stick with your prospects. It's all about creating memorable posts with easily searchable simple hashtags. The speed with which you launch your product must be combined with memorable hashtags. That's the key to the success of your product and product launch.
Create a buzz with interesting stuff in your customer community
Make your customer community talk about your product, like, share, tweet, and copy your product launch ideas in their videos. Whatever you do for your product launch, make it unique and interesting. People should copy your creative and innovative style of launching a product. Your product gets credit even if competitors, prospects, and users copy your innovative idea. Your product gets viral with shares and copycats. That's the trick.
Anticipate and answer customer queries with the zeal as you play ping pong
The most successful product launches have seen the most effective customer service. Every product team member should be prepared all the time to answer any customer query. A query can be in the form of a comment, email, tweet, or Instagram message. For the product launch to succeed, your team needs to feel amazing enthusiasm and show great team spirit.
Your team can receive questions related to shipping, shopping cart errors, and so on. Ensure that no questions are left unanswered. By answering a question on social media posts, you are ensuring that you remove the roadblocks for thousands of customers who might have the same question. Watch out for mentions and notifications. You are basically bringing your prospects closer to the Buy button and converting prospects into happy customers by making the shopping journey smoother and easier. This customer experience makes your product go viral. Proactive and timely customer assistance goes a long way. It sticks with the customer and they come back to you again with more customers.
If you need to switch between multiple social channels, Sprout's Smart Inbox can be a boon for a decentralized and remote team. Sprout's Smart Inbox centralizes your messages into one Inbox.
convert customers into ambassadors using in-product tutorial
If you empathize and consistently help your existing customers, they can become the best ambassadors for your products. The deal is, you need to find ways to help them at all customer touchpoints. One way of doing this is by improving the user's in-app experience. User experience can make a huge difference as there are thousands of competing products launched every day. Make the messaging and in-app help intuitive, simple, and easy to follow. Give context wherever possible. Tell them when to use each help tip. Be the best real friend of your customers. Help them realize a lot of value and growth through the in-app experiences. There are tools to help you improve the user's in-app experience such as Chameleon.
Boost user engagement using effective, targeted, and unique in-app messaging
Explore unique ways of making your app or product engaging and shareable. For instance, there are some great brands that do this well. Some examples include Evernote, Slack, Trello, and HubSpot. You may want to take inspiration from them. And, create your unique ways of creating engaging in-app marketing strategies. You can use different types of in-app messages. For instance, product tours, checklists, chatbots, tooltips, modals, and in-app surveys.
Launchers is a type of in-app messaging. It's a place to get quick links to useful resources.
Users can use Launchers to:
• Launch an Intercom Chat,
• Get updates about new feature, or
• Even join product webinars
Push product promotion emails that completely resonate with your audience
Emails stay in your inbox for a longer time with prospective customers and give them a sense of security and comfort. Create well-crafted product promotion emails that completely resonate with your audience. They might not instantly say yes and buy your product or take your offers. They are definitely glued to your product offers and probably they are waiting for the right time to buy the product when they really need your product and when they have the budget for it.
For a successful product launch, a highly converting marketing email should contain effective and engaging copy, infographics, animated GIF, or animation that shows how your product solves customer problems, and a call to action.
Collect as many leads as you can using newsletters and freebies who are influenced and are more open to your new product or leads who actually need this type of product. Some product companies, create a product based on user research and user testing data. It is easy to sell a product that is tailor made exclusively for a specific target audience. You just need to give a slight nudge to them and then, it is just a question of delivering the product to the customers. You do not really need to make any extra efforts to sell to them. Customers do not need to be convinced; they exactly need a product like yours. They click the Buy button.
To customize your marketing emails to specific audiences, categorize your audience into groups or segments such as blog subscribers, content signups, customers who take free product trials, and existing customers. Fine tune your marketing emails for each segment by taking care of their unique requirements. It helps get maximum attention from users if your subject lines and email copy are personalized.
Make the subject line spicy, one that teases the prospect into hunting for more product information. Do not be too pushy. Show the well-wisher nature in all your communication with your prospects and users. The trick is to find ways to make them thirsty for more product information. A call to action is essential in every interaction with prospects and users. It opens up the way for conversion.
You can refer to the best email samples of successful product launches.
Make creator and maker community excited about your product launch
Build a network of product creators or makers on Product Hunt (PH). Spend at least 5-10 minutes daily connecting with other product creators on PH. To get support for your product launch, start networking with them at least 4 to 6 months before your launch. Follow other product creators and makers. Upvote, comment, provide feedback for their products on their product launch day.
When they get notified about your product launch, some of your followers will definitely be helpful in supporting your product launch.
Extract user email from Coming soon page
If you are a startup and your product has a good chance of featuring on the Coming soon page of Product Hunt (PH). You can export this list and include it into an email marketing tool and notify them about your launch.
Most people might not remember after some time why they signed up for your launch. Always be in touch with your mailing lists.
Make a list of your contacts for your product launch
Make a list of all the contacts including your family and friends, investors, partners, suppliers, current customers, media persons, who are most likely to support you for your product launch. Reach out to all relevant channels on social media apps such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Whatsapp, Telegram, and other social networks to create this list. Help non-tech savvy and non-technical friends to create accounts and subscribe for the product launch. AWeber, GetResponse, LeadPages, are some of the best tools to create and grow your email list.
Communicate your launch date to the people on your email list
If your prospects and audience are not aware about Product Hunt (PH) as PH has only 3+ million members, you need to educate and onboard them on PH and once they are on PH, they can upvote your product when it is launched.
It takes only 1-2 minutes max to create an account on PH. When you create an account at least 3 to 6 months earlier, you get time to build credibility and trust, and a large number of followers.
Now, you and your prospects are all set for the product launch. You can now notify them about the product launch date.
Get ready with answers to expected questions about your product
It's common for people to compare your product with other products. So, they will definitely ask how is your product better than any other product. Here are some other common questions:
• Will my data be secure?
• Do you provide support for migrating from another product to your product platform?
• Are there any plans for integrating your product with Intercom this year?
• How do you justify the high pricing of your product?
• Do you have partnership programs?
• What are the other social media channels where I can sign up for your product apart from Facebook and Google?
• Do you have any plans for mobile?
• What's your product roadmap?
Create different special offers for Product Hunt (PH) visitors
You can create and display different offers and pricing for your product to the prospects on your landing page based on different conditions, for example, only if they are redirected from the producthunt.com website. Make the offers timebound with a timer on the landing page.
Register for 60 plus online communities to share your product launch
You will need to be an active member of 60 plus online communities and engage with these communities. At least, 1-3 team members should join these communities to create optimum engagement with them. This will help your product on the day of launch. 1-3 people from your team, who are engaged with these communities are the first to upvote your product. The more successful your team members are in getting followers before the launch, the followers are bound to copy their actions. This creates a viral chain reaction. When more people follow and upvote the product from the network of followers, it helps create a ripple effect.
Here are some slack communities on which you can share your product launch:
This week in startups by Jason Calacanis (37k members)
Acquired (7k members)
The Product Folks (7k members)
You can share your product launch on Twitter, HackerNews, HackerNoon, and other sites.
Your content’s primary Focus should be target audience and not the product
Good stories that care about your audience and which understand their pain points tend to win more over content focused just on the product and its features.
Create stories that create lasting impressions on the audience and encourage them to discuss and share them. When your stories are related to a product, they promote your product automatically.
Find out and use the words in product launch material that audience use to describe their pain points
It's quite natural that to listen to your audience online, you need to go to the customer forums where they pour their heart out fearlessly in the form of feature requests, complaints, feedback, and comments. Here you will find them express themselves using the words and tone that they use while talking to their colleagues while seeking assistance from them when they face any issue. The trick is finding the hangouts and spots where they are usually found. Make a note of the terms, words, and styles of the customers. Harmonize and use them in the launch material in such a way that they feel like it's one of their buddies or colleagues speaking to them. Basically, they should feel comfortable and at home when they read your product emails, blog posts, and value proposition.
Create interactive content that match your product features and your target audience's preferences
If you are looking for more engagement from your audience for the product launch, then create interactive material. It helps you get instant feedback when you educate, amuse, and engage your audience.
Ensure your interactive content includes:
• Interactive infographics,
• Videos,
• Polls and surveys,
• ROI calculators,
• Assessments,
• Interactive emails,
• Contests, games and more.
Subtly or directly state a unique value proposition that makes your brand and product clearly better
Make the value proposition of the product clear to your prospects. For example, some products are known for one USP all over the world such as Nokia for its cell phone batteries, Apple for its unbreakable security. Nokia and Apple conveyed their USP through their products that they are valuable for one big feature. After using Nokia cell phones and Apple products, people globally spread their value proposition and USP by word of mouth. The products simply speak for themselves through the value they create for their customers, which is a subtle way of conveying a brand's value.
Your value proposition should make potential customers feel and experience the superpowers of your brand and products. It should showcase how the product fixes the problems faced by them. And, how it improves their lives. It alters their mood and how they feel about themselves or their problems. Once they read the value proposition on a landing page, blog posts, and product pages, potential customers should feel that they have acquired the right solution and superpowers to solve their problems.
For example, the value proposition for Studio Neat company is: "Simple products that solve simple problems." The value proposition for Studio Neat's product Material Dock is: "It's nice to have a designated spot to charge your devices." The value proposition of the product subtly conveys the value proposition of the company named Studio Neat. However, both are literally distinct.
Here is another unique value proposition from Novo Watch: "Timepieces handmade in Alberta from repurposed pieces of history."
When CrazyEgg changed its value proposition, it drew a lot of customers to their website. CrazyEgg is an analytical tool that allows you to understand how website users are actually interacting with your website and share insights to help you improve the website and the user experience.
Previous value proposition: "Want to make your site better?"
A prospect might think: "Maybe, may think later, not now"
The value proposition lets prospects escape or postpone the call-to-action.
Latest value proposition: "Make your website better. Instantly".
A prospect might think: "Oh! Really, let me check"
The latest value proposition gives more confidence and trust to prospects. It is more direct and seeks immediate action with the word "Instantly". The word "Instantly" is a great trigger to take action.
Launch friendly competitive ad campaigns to beat competitors and benefit from their campaigns
Conduct research into what can be included in the campaigns and advertisements of your brand. A brand can create friendly competition and become viral. These campaigns can attract and engage prospective customers, competitors, and customers of competitors.
Apple took advantage of Google Play Store's safety issues which happened in 2018. Apple created a mischievous and competitive advertisement that flaunted the unbreakable and strong security of Apple.
The ad shows a woman taking a box from a shelf that bursts on her face. However, when she takes a box from the other shelf (Apple App Store), it does not burst on her face. The first shelf (Google Play Store) falls down. This shows Apple's App store is more stable, easier, friendlier and provides strong security.
View the Apple advertisement mocking Android.
Always remember, however, that it is possible to market products and apps positively. Instead of listening to negative reviews about your competitors, let them know what makes your product unique.
Educate and sell products simultaneously to your prospects
Make advertising subtle and indirect where you educate and sell products simultaneously to your prospects. You can create educational resources such as instructional videos, blog posts, and product demos. They can be shared on social posts, email, your website, and even channels such as YouTube.
For example, Ruroc launched Atlas 3.0 along with the how-to video campaign. With a series of how-to videos and social posts, existing and prospective customers could experience the product in action. It's an excellent way to showcase key features and benefits.
encourage ongoing promotion of products using Brand referral and brand ambassador programs
Referral marketing programs are one of the best types of long-term marketing campaigns. It's an excellent method to promote and ensure ongoing sales through the loyal fans of your product.
Some ways of making your customers fans of your brand: offer discounts, free products or product trials, and bonuses. Everyone would love incentives for their continued loyalty to your brand. And, in return, they would be inspired and encouraged to refer new customers to you.
Brand referral or affiliate marketing programs (link it) are attractive to earn one time and ongoing referral commissions from smart customers. One the other side, brand ambassador programs are for the real die-hard fans of your brand, who do not need incentives to promote your brand. You need to choose your brand ambassadors wisely after testing whether they are real fans of your brand. If they are money minded, they are better off as affiliate marketers of your products.
If large merchants or businesses approach you to promote your product, you can offer them the brand advocacy program (link it). It's also one of the best ways to promote your brand consistently at higher levels with good conversion rates.
Offer advanced product features based on user performance in free subscriptions
Make advanced product features available to users if they bring in more referrals. You can make this a limited time offer. This introduces your product and gives a taste of these features to the users. If they market your advanced features, you can offer more incentives to them. You can waive off 6 month or 1-year standard subscription.
Based on the number of quality projects that a user creates; you can offer more incentives to them. Users can share these projects with the product community. You can also think of creative and gamified ways of seeking feedback. There are tools that help you gather customer feedback such as Testimonial.to and boast.io. Feedback can be about the user's performance. You can make this whole process interesting and fun. Prospective customers will get attracted to your product. This will be due to creative and gamified ways of seeking feedback. And, the element of competition will also help make the product go viral. Build this whole ecosystem of user performance-based incentives. It will help engage the users and get more referrals by rewarding the users. These users will definitely bring more customers. You will get more feedback about your product. Both positive and negative feedback from real users of your product. You can use them as customer testimonials on the product website and review websites.
Create social media advertisements featuring social influencers
Your brand is more likely to go viral when a big social media influencer sends a tweet or shares your post. The Kardashians, Cristiano Ronaldo, Rihanna, Oprah Winfrey could lift a brand overnight.
Even before conceiving a product, you can create the strategy for making a product viral.
Make users feel special about themselves and feel like insiders of your product
Find the exceptional USP of your product. Make your prospects feel special about themselves. You can achieve this by connecting the USP of the product with the users. Users start identifying themselves with a brand. They become loyal promoters and brand ambassadors of your product. Now, it becomes easy to upsell and market anything to them. Users share this combined identity with their friends, relatives, and colleagues. Then it's hard for them to break away from the brand or product
Create magnetic triggers for your product
When you create engaging and magnetic triggers. They always remain on the top of your prospective customer's mind. Customers are more likely to come back to your advertising campaign, blog, and video. They convert to a paid customer from a free trial customer. Triggers drive users to perform a certain action. Triggers attract attention by sending a message or playing a jingle or tune at the right time. People have limited attention span and memory.
Triggers can be in the form of a:
• Jingle,
• icon,
• logo,
• color combination,
• reminders, and
• pop-ups
They remind users that they need to take a certain action.
You can also use different types of triggers:
• Location-based triggers,
• Emotional or physical state triggers,
• Activity and thought triggers
Add an element of emotion and care to your product
People like to identify with something exceptional.
You can add an element of care and emotion to your product around subjects such as:
• Children,
• Environment,
• Sports,
• Music,
• Poverty, and
• Other social causes
Then, link them with your product. People who care about these subjects will definitely endorse and promote your product.
You are basically helping society through your product, which is called Cause Marketing.
Here are two great examples of cause marketing:
#1) How Saltwater Brewery is making its packaging edible
Saltwater Brewery has created a new biodegradable and edible packaging made from barley and wheat ribbons for their beer cans to replace the plastic ring that earlier killed sea life and water creatures.
This social cause required investment. With zero investment for marketing, in less than five days, it received:
110 million social media views
over 1.9 million Facebook shares
1.3 million Facebook likes
over 3.5 billion global impressions about the campaign
With the growth in subscribers and increase in user base, Saltwater Brewery also received monetization benefits from the social media platforms.
Your brand and your product launch gets a big boost with this kind of social cause marketing. These followers who believe in your brand’s cause stick with you as they can relate with your brand and its cause. If you start your cause marketing campaigns at least 4-6 months early, your brand and product launch will not need much marketing effrotsefforts. Your followers will do all the work for you. You can start the Brand Ambassador and Brand Advocate programs to rope in your followers. They will be happy to join these programs because of the cause your brand stands for and the positive change it brings in the lives of people, children, animals, senior citizens, animals and people in trouble or who need help.
#2) Care Counts™ laundry program by Whirlpool
The Care Counts™ laundry program by Whirlpool brand was envisioned to remove one small but important hurdle for regular attendance in schools by installing washers and dryers in schools. When school kids got access to clean clothes, attendance percentages, grades, and engagement levels improved in at-risk students.
Create a product that offers great value and maximum benefits to customers
When prospective customers see a lot of value and benefits of your product, then they are more likely to grab it. If not immediately, they definitely buy it the next time.
In the 1960s, J R R Tolkien wrote a trilogy titled Lord of the Rings. It went viral and spread like wild fire. The protagonist Frodo Baggins' fought against all challenges and the oppression of Sauron. Frodo became an icon and "faith for the oppressed" and "FRODO LIVES!" became viral and was written in every public place by the counter-culture masses of the 1960s. This is one instance where a product, a book went viral even without the internet and any marketing. If a product is good, there is no need for marketing it.
Some captions go viral such as "Kilroy was here". This caption was accompanied by a doodle of a man with a big nose, looking over a wall.
For a few years during and after World War II, Kilroy was universal: a doodle of a big-nosed man, looking over a wall, accompanied by the inscription "Kilroy was here." When Kilroy's popularity was at its peak, Kilroy was found everywhere: in bathrooms and on bridges, in school cafeterias and on homework assignments, on naval ships and on shells of Air Force missiles. A classic Bugs Bunny cartoon from 1948, "Haredevil Hare," depicts how deeply Kilroy had entered into pop culture. Kilroy was depicted as the first rabbit to land on the moon. Bugs was unaware of the slogan "Kilroy was here" that was glaringly engraved on a rock behind him.
Think of the factors you will consider while making a buying decision. Conduct user research. Find out the needs, pain points, and expectations of your prospective customers. Mix a bit of knowledge about human psychology and quality practices with marketing. Try to provide a lot of value to your customers. It will bring them back to you. And, you can sell your upcoming products to them😊
Retarget users who drop off without purchasing by convincing your app users to opt in for push notifications on the installation wizard
Push notifications are a great method of communicating with the users of your app. You can introduce push notifications in the product installation wizard itself. This will give a taste of exciting, useful, and fun push notifications to them in advance. They will be more likely to turn on push notifications. And, users will definitely share the app with their contacts and friends. The fun element in these notifications will definitely drive growth and virality.
Push notifications are a straightforward and persuasive method. It helps you retarget users who drop off before purchasing. These users need a push to subscribe to a plan, complete a checkout, or download a digital resource. Push notifications help bring the customer back to the abandoned shopping point. These are like the runaway brides who run away before experiencing fun in their lives.
derive max conversion and user benefits from Interactive push notifications
This is a great way of connecting app users who are trying to get a job with prospective employers and receiving positive feedback to use them as testimonials. Users or candidates can use your app to create portfolios for getting a job. In reply, a product can help employers to send push notifications in the form of a reply to users. The UX writer can moderate and improve these user and employer messages. Users can choose to show or hide the replies of employers to all users of the app.
Make the product offering clear and tune it perfectly with customer expectations
You can you make the product offering clear and market the product to the right audience. For this you need to define clear goals. UX research findings can help you get a thorough understanding of user, market, and competitor research, and tasks performed by them. Tune these findings to customer expectations and their real wants. Prospective customers will connect with your brand. Even if they do not make a buying decision immediately, they get engaged with your brand.
Create a long-lasting ripple effect in your product's marketing
Videos posted by general people using the product have a long-lasting ripple effect. People share them more as they feel real. Followers of social media channels share videos of stunts, and weird and exciting things.
Do some things that make a big difference and a positive impact in the lives of your users and prospects. It is going to stay with them and their family. For example, sponsors and brands of some reality shows and music reality shows gives the contestants and the winners an opportunity to get trained with the experts from the music industry for the singing and dance reality shows, which they could have never got if they did not enter these reality contests. So, these brands, the prizes, the memories, the moments shared with the crew stay with them for life. The memories stay with the audience both at the contest site and with the online audience. The audience remembers the name of the show along with the sponsor.
The trick is to sponsor the right events during the right time and season. The lucky draws, prizes, deals, and the photographs taken during the event, the fun experienced during the event and the prize ceremonies, the celebrity prize distributor remains in the memory of the participants. Find all the online and offline platforms, places, events, and moments where you can be a part of providing a memorable customer and audience experience.
Launch your product for free on Product Hunt and get best star ratings and awards
Find and launch your product on the best product launch platforms to get the best leverage for your product launch. Product Hunt is one of the best platforms that help businesses launch their products for free. They rate your product and give a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly best product award. Know how to launch products successfully on these platforms. Review successful product launches. Go through the checklists, follow their requirements and rules exactly. Be smart with your launch strategy. Attractive images, designs, and messaging go a long way in making the launch successful.
To get the maximum and full day exposure for your product, launch it at 12:01 am PST on product hunt. Do not forget to include a clear call to action in the right places.
The moments your audience, prospects, and customers can cherish remain with them for life. They make the strongest impact on their lives, health, and growth. If this happens, your product is bound to be known for some unique selling points (USPs) such as precision, robustness, durability, or utility in the world. Your product is definitely going to become viral and earn a fortune for you.
I am sure your existing or new product or app will definitely go viral using these ideas. If you have new ideas or your story of making a product viral, feel free to share it with us. It will benefit our community of passionate creative product creators.
Best of luck!!!
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I review top-rated apps and software to help you find the best solution. When you purchase through links on my site, I may earn affiliate commission. I only recommend tools that I trust.
