Mobile Marketing

How To Go Viral with an Irresistible Offer

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Mobile Marketing - How To Go Viral with an Irresistible Offer

I want to tell you about a really cool problem one of my clients had recently.
A few weeks before Christmas I got a call from George at Bohemein chocolate saying "Help me Phil, I can't keep up. I'm getting 60 responses per day for our special offer. We can't produce enough chocolate and our poor little shop is not big enough to fit all these people in at lunch time. The response is overwhelming us and I need you to dial it down."

That's the last thing a marketer wants to hear right?
I mean George had actually peaked at 101 sign-ups in one day. How can anybody want to slow that down!

I eventually agreed and we came up with a slightly less appealing version of the offer.
A couple of weeks later George was getting around 5 responses per day and everybody had a merry Christmas and lived happily ever after.
Well, actually we'll turn the dial up again when the rush dies down, but that's a story for another day.

Oh, and did I mention that the only ""promotion"" we did was put a sign-up page on George's web site and stick a poster of the wall of his shops. That's it.
So how did we create this overwhelming response?

Well, we used a simple cross-channel marketing system, and the poster I mentioned.

Here's what the poster looked like.
It has a simple headline about getting some free chocolate. Obviously not just any chocloate. This is Bohemein. And people know how good it is because they're in the shop and they can see it.

We have a web address where you can sign up and get your chocs. And a phone number to send a SMS text message to. And a couple of QR codes to make it really easy for smart phone users.

The key to understanding why this went off like it did is to understand that steps that people went through when they they joined the campaign.

Firstly, the sign-up process is instant and we let them do it their way.

A prospect walks into the shop, sees the poster, wants the free chocolate.

If they have an old style mobile phone, they can send a text message.
They instantly get a text message back containing a voucher code.
They show the voucher on their phone to the shop assistant and they get their free chocolate, immediately.

If they have a smart phone, they can visit the web address on the browser in their phone and sign-up.
Or they can send a text message to sign-up.
Or they can scan the QR code to visit the web site and sign up there.
Or they can scan the QR code to send the text message to sign up.
It's really easy and it's instant. They get both email and text message replies while standing in the shop and they collect their chocolate instantly.

We even found that people see the QR code on the poster and pull out their smart phone just to play with the QR code scanner.

The second most important factor after having an offer that is truly irresistable, is to have a system that makes it incredibly easy to sign-up.
Because what happens next, is that people go back to work and they tell their work-mates. And then they tell their friends outside of work.
We found that 5, 10 or even up to 100 people from the same company would all sign-up in batches.

Everybody had an email and a text message from the system, so it's really easy to pass on the offer to their friends.
And because it's so easy to sign-up using any method they choose, this is like greasing the wheels and everything just spreads faster and faster.
I don't even know how high the daily signup rate would have gone if we hadn't turned it down when we did.

George's offer was so good that we didn't even need to do anything else.
But if we wanted to this to spread even faster, we could have followed up a few days later offering people another $5 worth of chocolate if they like us on Facebook.
And then a week later, we offer then another $5 chocolate if they tell a friend who joins too.
All of this is completely automated, so all these extra steps don't create any work whatsoever for George, other than managing all the new customers. In fact it's like having a sales person who works for free, constantly making follow-up calls.

Every business has their free chocolate. And sometimes it can be hard to find.

A car dealer would not give away free cars. But they could offer a $15 petrol voucher to people who join their list that announces new vehicles arriving in the yard. If you think about the value of a lead for your business, it's probably way more than $15.

A property manager would not manage somebody's property for free. But they could offer a free guide to managing your own property. A guide that shows how hard it is and how much money you lose when you get it wrong.

A real estate agent would not sell a house for free. But they could offer a free marketing plan (minus a few important 'how to' details of course). This eliminates other agents from the running and accustoms the seller to using the agent's service.
And it's pretty easy to sell to someone who's already using your service.

So start thinking outside the box and identify your irresistable offer.
What can you offer, that doesn't cost you much.
What can you give people to get them accustomed to using your service?

Prosperous marketing,
Phil

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