I know what you’re thinking. Can you really make something go viral?
I’ll be honest, there is a tremendous amount of luck involved. You have to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right message, and the right strategies.
I can’t teach you to be luckier, but I can share some proven ways to increase the virality of your crowdfunding campaign. I hope these tips help, and if you enjoy this post, don’t forget to leave a comment so I know!
I know that a “viral coefficient” sounds fancy, but it’s not. It’s simple. It measures how many people will use or visit the product as a result of previous customers or visitors.
The higher the viral coefficient, the faster the product will spread. Here’s a quote from The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries.
“For a product with a viral coefficient of 0.1, one in every ten customers will recruit one of his or her friends. This is not a sustainable loop.
Imagine that one hundred customers sign up. They will cause ten friends to sign up. Those ten friends will cause one additional person to sign up, but there the loop will fizzle out.
By contrast, a viral loop with a coefficient that is greater than 1.0 will grow exponentially, because each person who signs up will bring, on average, more than one other person”
But, often times, the term “virality” does not refer to actual customers of a crowdfunding campaign. Just because one backer decides to pledge does not mean that they recruit another backer with their support.
However, we find the principle of virality quite often in the social media postings about a campaign. For example, one person who sees a social media post about the campaign decides to first click on it and then share it, leading to 4 people deciding to click on it and share it, and the loop continues.
Therefore, if we want a campaign or message to spread either through the backer ecosystem or on social media, we must be thinking about why this visitor, customer, or individual would share it with their friend. Remember, the viral coefficient MUST be greater than 1.0.
The next time you’re on social media, I want you to pay attention to the messages that you decide to like and share. Ask yourself what compelled you to do this.
Research shows that there are 6 core reasons why we decide to talk about products with our friends. Jonah Berger wrote about this extensively in his book, Contagious.
Social Currency. By sharing this message, product, video, or image, it says something about our identity and who we are. Websites like BuzzFeed are great at prompting us to share because they appeal to our ego. We want the world to know what we like, what group we’re a part of, and even what issues or endeavors we support. Why else would social quizzes be so popular?
To go even further, we also want to appear in the know, intelligent, like we’re a lot of fun, beautiful or handsome, and interesting. Sometimes, I can’t believe how unbelievably curated some social media photos are. Both men and women will take multiple photos so that they can present their “best self” to the world. They’ll ask themselves similar questions when sharing informational content. “How will this make me look?”
Triggers. Marketers go to great lengths to trigger you to think about an idea or product. For many, the color red triggers the mental picture of coca cola. Even in our personal life, we may purchase a gift of jewelry with the intention that every time your significant other looks at that gift, they think of you. Triggers are cues that remind people to talk about your product.
I believe that triggers can be woven into your pitch video so that the next time one of your backers goes on a hike, your product comes to mind, or the next time they feel the bulkiness of their watch, they think about yours. Remember, we communicate the things that are on our mind. Triggers are a way to get your product in the minds of your customers and increase the chance that they’ll talk about it.
Emotion. Emotion is at the heart of both virality and influence. Don’t believe me? Just look at how political candidates incite emotion. Usually, the ones that stir up emotions the most are frequently talked about among friends, family members, and online. It’s important to communicate data and information, but the real heart of a pitch is transmitting a specific emotion to the viewers. You must make them feel something for them to take action.
When someone watches your pitch video do they feel awe? Surprise? Anger? Emotion is what prompts action. Believe me, if someone comes away from your video with a sense of awe, they are much more likely to post on Facebook saying “THIS IS SO COOL!!” along with the link to your campaign. In fact, if you’re very good at targeting, that individual would post this on the wall of a specific friend that they know would love the product.
Public exposure. No, I’m not talking about that kind of exposure (haha). I’m talking about the number of people that see your product OR that see your friend talking about or using your product. We take notice when people around us are talking about a new band, using a new tool, or wearing a new messenger bag. The more we see it, the more curious we become.
If you see 3 of your friends like a link on Facebook and share it, how likely are you to check it out? Probably pretty likely, even if you won’t admit it. And if you’re not, the vast majority of users are. We naturally want to be kept in the loop. A great example of this is when everyone started changing their Facebook profile photo support marriage equality and people started to google “What is this red equal sign on Facebook.”
Practical value. This one is pretty straight forward. Whatever it is that you’re selling or marketing happens to be actually really useful. It solves a genuine problem. No doubt, this is why discoveries are quickly made known to everyone and spread or talked about at the dinner table. It has inherent value to the people around you and the human race.
Many times, I speak with and coach entrepreneurs who want to raise money for a product or have customers pay for a product when there’s no indication that it generates any real results. There’s no clear sign that it’s a step ahead of the mainstream solution. When you come from this perspective, it’s very hard to make your pitch compelling. This is also the reason why most investors wait until you have product-market fit until they pour in any money.
While crowdfunding can be used to test assumptions, I think that the best entrepreneurs (Like this campaign that raised over a million on Kickstarter), test the majority of their assumptions before launching to maximize their results.
Stories. People treat stories different than normal information. Stories “are vessels that carry things such as morals and lessons. Information travels under the guise of what seems like idle chatter.” They are amazing tools for capturing and maintaining someone’s attention because once you start a story, you become invested, and you want to know how it ends!
With regards to your campaign or your product, the story will not only introduce your audience to your values as a company and how you came up with the product, but it will also give them a chance to get to know YOU.
I don’t want to use this example, because of the previous bad news surrounding Jared Fogle, but for a long time he was the central story behind Subway’s marketing. People who weren’t willing to be blasted with advertisements about how Subway is healthy and nutritious were willing to hear his story and share it. Also, if you’ve been reading, you’ll know that his story evoked a particular emotion.
Finally, stories offer a hidden benefit. They are amazing public relations material. Stories are what journalists seek out, because they know that people are hungry for and will read a great story.
Once you nail down the techniques, most of marketing consists of learning about your customers and trying out different approaches until you find the one that resonates.
In case you’re still confused, I’ve included a slide share that explains “How To Make That One Thing Go Viral.”
#3 Nail down down how you’ll evoke emotions
By now, it’s pretty obvious that emotion is the key to virality, not logic. Ironically, I was quoted by Indiegogo, Kickstarter’s competitor, for this very point in their article about advice from crowdfunding experts.
So the question becomes, how do you evoke the desired emotions in your visitors and backers? More importantly, the question is how will you evoke these emotions in THEIR friends.
This comes down to three things.
- Your video
- Your copywriting/images
- Your actual product, project, or cause.
Unfortunately, that’s beyond the scope of this post, but I have a lot of other articles on this blog and podcasts with successful crowdfunders! I also urge you to join my email list, where I share a lot of my best tips and tricks!
