Viral Growth Hacking: Techniques for Creating and Scaling Viral Marketing Campaigns

“Growth Hacking is more of a mindset than a tool kit” - Aaron Ginn

Welcome back. Matt here.

So, last time, we went over when and how to refresh your brand identity.

Today, it’s about mixing growth hacking with marketing to get potentially record-breaking results.

Anyways, straight to it.

Let’s start with a refresher.

Growth hacking is when you use creative and cost-effective strategies to get and retain more customers.

However, to BE a growth hacker, it’s more than just knowing how to run good marketing campaigns.

It’s about:

• ?Having technical skills.
• Being able to coordinate with the backend team while also knowing how to set up and use a CRM, an ERP, and other software that might be needed.
• Being able to use various analytics tools to make decisions based on data and iterating quickly and creatively to find marketing and sales setups that work.
• Experimenting with different marketing campaigns and processes to find that ‘trick’, that ‘hack’ that sticks and can be scaled for an eye-watering ROI.
• Knowing how to work out effective distribution and customer outreach strategies to get in front of more of the right people - the people your offer resonates with, the early adopters that’ll get your word-of-mouth marketing started.

So, growth hacking is less of a position per se and more of a mindset.

An approach. A method to deal with things. A skillset.

An ability to do many things, and be capable of every single one of them.

"But how does a growth hacker help in getting virality? Do they know people? Do they have insider knowledge? Can they ‘hack’ the algos? What can they do that I can’t?"

Two words: Experiment extensively.

If one ad doesn’t work, you could try changing a lot of things:

• The creative.
• The copy
• The timing
• The targeting
• The offer
• The cta

And then, with different combinations(ie a salesy cta with a catchy creative and short, punchy copy being one) and testing and tweaks and iterations…

You’ve got the ad that works.

You've got the tricks, hacks, and strategy figured out that could potentially be scaled, profitably.?

For all of this, however, you need data.

Data you only get when you do something.

And that Something only happens when you experiment and play around with various things.

AKA Experiments.?

It’s all about doing experiments. Lots of them.

Doesn’t matter what angle, offer, platform, or strategy you have.

If you’re not testing multiple variations, monitoring various metrics, and testing lots of variables and their iterations…

?it won’t be easy to get something that sticks as soon as it goes up.

However, a few things can (and probably WILL) tip the scale in your favor.

First, understand what virality is.

If someone likes your content, they might decide to share it with people they know.

If it resonates with THEM, they might end up doing the same.

If this keeps happening…

Congrats. You’ve got a viral piece of content.

So, all you have to do is be able to come up with something that will resonate with your audience.

Something that speaks to that oh-so-painful pain point or that burning desire.

Something that keeps them awake at night.

Something they’ve unsuccessfully tried to solve.

Something that appeals to them.

And for that...you'll need to collect points.

That happens when you sit down to do research. (If you’ve got a standing desk, that works as well.)

First, you’ve got your goals. That is, what you aim to get out of your efforts.

If it’s a piece of content, you might be pushing for lots of engagement.

If it's a flier, you're probably just hoping people scan that QR code you put somewhere on it.

If it’s an ad,? you might prefer they sign up, and incentivize it by offering up a free trial of your premium SaaS service.?

You even decide to sponsor a sports team, simply to use the back of their shirts for something useful.

After you’ve nailed down what you want from them, you go out and find your audience.

The people who you want to make up most of the traffic.

Is it teenagers in private schools in an upper-class neighborhood in Kansas?

Or are teachers around the world teaching geography to middle schoolers?

Perhaps you want to target men?

When you’re going to be running paid ads, it’ll be better to have decided and niched down on the demographic and other details of your target audience.

It’ll not just save time, but ad spending as well, as well as reduce the chances of getting unwanted impressions and clicks, giving you as accurate data as possible.

Now that you’ve decided on your desired outcome and your target audience, figure out how you’re going to get the message across.

There are two parts to this.

1. Your messaging. What will you want your overall communication to be like? Harsh, forward, and straight to the point?
2. Or gentle, mellow, and understanding?
3. Or will it be straight to business, no-fluff?
4. That’s up to you to figure out, depending on what your target audience is.
5. Your platform of choice. This depends on your offer, which will determine where you have the best chances of things possibly taking off.
6. Will things be more picture oriented? Maybe going down the Instagram-Snapchat route is your best choice.

Remember, your message, whatever tone, flow, or vibe it has, has to be clear-cut, simple, and easy to understand.

There are so many different types of posts, ads, and content out across platforms that, if you want people to stop and think, you’re going to have to come up with something punchy, appealing, to-the point, relevant, and understandable…

All without being too overly salesy, while aiming to be a pattern-interrupt, getting people to stop and focus, instead of just scrolling by.

With even shorter attention spans, it’s not easy.

But that’s why you have something like testing that you can use to help you figure out the best combination of things you can use…

Before risking scaling something that has potentially unreliable results.

And then you’ve got the incentive.

Why would someone even want to share something? Because it’s good. I mean sure…

But here, you’ll have to go out of your way, tell someone something, click that post button…

A hassle, isn’t it?

So, in that case, why not offer something up, as a way to say thanks?

That could be a free premium subscription to your SaaS tool, a discount code for both the referrer and the person signing up, a free sample, or limited access to otherwise-paywalled membership areas, content, and member-only pricing.

Incentivizing won’t simply drive them to potentially end up taking action; It’ll work towards building the value of your brand as well.

So, simple really. Some research, some testing, an incentive and you’re done. Or are you?

These steps cover the really broad steps you’ll take to end up with something with some sort of potential to take off.

Just doing the right type of research and targeting the right people can set you apart from many, because you’re going to be making sure you’re getting the right message to the right people at the right time, where they’ll appreciate getting it.

So, what are the things that you can do to push things even further?

Well, here are some general pointers you’d be better off considering, regardless of your offer.

1. Make sure you appeal to emotion, rather than logic. Sure, be logical as well but focus on the emotions part. That could be by presenting your story, a struggle you faced, or anything that would make the audience a silent member of your journey, nodding their head as they go on.
2. Cut the fluff, always. If you can say things in fewer words, do that. Be that email, ads, or cta-driven content. Make it as easy and simple as possible for your audience to be able to do what you want them to do.
3. Now, if that necessitates babying them and giving them steps and pointers to make things as much of a no-brainer as possible, do it. Remove as many reasons as you can that could stop them from making a decision.
4. Make sure what you have is different. Chances are, your audience has already been exposed to similar offers in your industry or niche. If you come off as someone they’ve already passed on, why would they even consider you? What’s that different thing that you can offer your audience?
5. Make sure you can handle a potential sudden increase in traffic, sales, orders, inbound inquiries, calendar bookings… Whatever your intended ‘metric I’d like to increase’ is. Otherwise, if things end up breaking and not working at the very moment they need to perform, it could end up having a detrimental impact on your brand.
6. It’s not always going to be about the overcomplication, the systems, the money you spend, or the research into appeal which will pay off. Instead, experimenting and coming across something that the internet likes and wants is what’s going to get you to the level of virality you’re looking for. And finally…
7. Always go back to the basics. Everything from a quickly loading website brimming with social proof to a to-the-point, straightforward home page that makes it clear in a single glance what’s going on can help you get and retain more customers.

Now, all that remains is… experimenting.

Experimenting with different combinations of copy, graphics, and ctas, playing around with various types of content, ad spends, audience targeting strategies, angles, pain points, benefits…

Maybe your audience would rather you play hard-to-get. They’d like to research and find things out on their own.

Maybe they’d like to get everything in one place, so they can make a decision right then and there.

Maybe they give better results when you focus on retargeting as well as the main campaigns for visibility.

Maybe different time zones, days of the week, and holidays work better than others.

Maybe they enjoy the freebies, giveaways, and valuable referral programs, and, as a result, give a lot of importance and value to your brand.

All of these things, these micro-details, will help make things just that much more relevant and just that much more optimized.

However, these hyper-relevant insights that work for you will only be discovered when you play around and experiment with things. That’s it.

It’s all about experimenting, seeing what sticks, and scaling that as much as possible.

That’s how you figure out what works, and what’s better than just being shelved.

Anyway, if you’ve got any further questions or would simply like my help with one thing or the other, feel free to let me know . I’d be more than happy to see if we can work something out.

Until next time, Keep building,