How to do marketing at zero cost?

Small and medium-sized enterprises have everything they need for marketing , except money.

If small and medium-sized enterprises want to survive, they have nothing to fear but not knowing how to market.

Because the money is limited and marketing must be done, the money spent on marketing should be based on two words: "effectiveness".

To put it more directly, it is about pursuing "spending the least money and doing the best marketing results."

What should we do when the requirements are so practical? Don’t be anxious. There is a marketing technology and thinking called “ viral marketing ”, which emphasizes “making the most of a small effort” and achieving a high volume of communication at a low cost.

How to play? This article will break down the principles and typical methods of viral marketing for you.

1. What is viral marketing?

As the name suggests, viral marketing is to design marketing like a virus, which can be quickly replicated, spread and transmitted to achieve marketing goals in a short time.

The marketing purpose can be to convey specific marketing information to a larger audience, or to gain enough attention and traffic, as well as acquire customers.

2. Why do we need viral marketing?

Viral marketing is a marketing technique, but also a way of thinking . This way of thinking tells marketers that the design of marketing content and activities must be "self-propagating", that is, the audience must be interested in watching and participating, and be willing to actively share and invite others to participate.

When marketers have a viral marketing mindset, when designing marketing communication information and activities, they will enhance the “self-propagation” of information and activities, reduce marketing communication costs, and improve communication efficiency.

For example, Durex’s Weibo copywriting, CAR Inc.’s Beat U communication plan, and the deliberately designed typo of the character “黎” in “怪蜀黎” all embody both the technology and the thinking of viral marketing.

Including Jiang Xiaobai's quotation-style packaging and the copy on the Three Squirrels packaging, the content is the kind that makes people interested in reading and can't help but want to share it, reflecting the viral marketing thinking of the marketing designers.

3. How to play viral marketing?

1. Customized viruses

Everyone has the need to show off. By improving the shopping experience, designing a customized experience, and increasing customer perceived value, customers will most likely share your experiences with their friends or actively recommend you to their acquaintances.

For example, give him DIY gifts, customize packaging boxes for him, engrave words on the product for him, give him a brand spokesperson certificate...

2. Old customer virus

Maintaining an old customer is equivalent to acquiring three new customers. The cost of acquiring customers is so high now. It would be a huge waste if an old customer only buys from you once and then leaves.

Therefore, you need to serve and maintain old customers well. Old customers may buy from you again and again, and may also introduce new customers to you.

(1) Gather old customers together;

WeChat is the lightest and most convenient tool for customer management and relationship operations. By setting up a WeChat group, you can attract old customers to the group, or add old customers to WeChat to establish connections with them.

How to attract users to join the group or add customer service WeChat?

Make use of products to add a small card to each product packaging to give customers benefits and attract them to join the group. For example: a certain toy brand is played like this

For example, men's socks are more aggressive and they can directly send red envelopes (you need to use the Youzan plug-in to play)

After old customers join the group or add the customer service WeChat, we need to find ways to maintain the relationship through operations and develop fission.

For example, the group regularly distributes benefits

Use the appointment notification function of XiaoU Butler,
http://www.xiaouguanjia.com/productFunction.aspx

Distribute benefits at 12:00 noon every day to cultivate the habit of customers to check notifications and grab benefits:

Benefits can be

1. Promote store activities by offering gifts, discount codes, coupons, free gifts for purchases over a certain amount, price reductions, limited-time discounts, and order cash back.

2. Push slow-moving products with fixed prices or discounted packages:

3. Flash sales will promote old inventory products:

The above benefits are ways to fully understand old customers and maximize their value. In addition to fully understanding old customers, you also need to let old customers help you split.

For example, fission activities include "group buying by multiple people, sharing coupons among friends, discounts for old customers bringing in new customers..." There are many ways to play fission activities, and the specific one to use depends on the actual situation.

3. Game Virus

We talked about gamification before.

"Lazarus' Four Key Elements of Fun" states that players can get four kinds of fun from the game:

1. Simple and fun:

External: accumulate points one by one

Internal: Addiction to the process of accumulating points and obtaining special benefits

2. Difficulty and fun:

External: Upgrade to a certain level

Internal: Addiction to the results of leveling up and obtaining level privileges

3. Other people’s interests:

External: Interacting with others and being pretentious

Internal: Addicted to the interaction and pretense process, and then actively promote

4. Realistic fun:

External: Learn skills and earn benefits

Internal: Addicted to skills and benefits, and actively participate

Therefore, you can use WeChat groups and public accounts to lead your audience to play games.

1. Use WeChat groups to attract customers and play Youyu-red envelope games:

http://youyu.weijuju.com/gameMarket.jsp?&type_gamekind=1

http://youyu.weijuju.com/gameMarket.jsp?&type_gamekind=2

http://youyu.weijuju.com/gameMarket.jsp?&type_gamekind=6

You can send out your coupons or store discount red envelopes to encourage them to repurchase or forward them to others.

2. Use the official account to attract customers:

Daily entertainment-interactive games

http://youyu.weijuju.com/gameMarket.jsp?&type_gamekind=5

Holiday Fun-Festival Games

http://youyu.weijuju.com/gameMarket.jsp?&type_festivalhot

When the audience forwards the content out of fun, they unintentionally promote the brand;

When you hide coupons and store discount red envelopes, you can also let your audience and their friends become your customers.

4. Test virus

I often see all kinds of serious and nonsense H5s in my circle of friends.

For example, test your fortune in 2019, test your rising sign, test your animality in the workplace...

This takes advantage of the law of self-exposure. Since everyone loves to show off themselves, various tests allow the audience to fully display their hidden personalities. Then, embed the product and brand into the process and results.

For example: the H5 of "Big City Battle Index" created by Youku and Xinshixiang,

Contains 5 battle keywords (drift, run, Buddha, fight, fight, etc.):

Ambition index, single index, money-making index, looks index, acting index...

Users can recall their own struggle history in big cities and generate exclusive posters.

For example, the following simple personality test: "My circle of friends is so large, do you understand me?"

For more virus testing cases, see the following:

Case 1:

http://www.chuangyihui.net/site/index/tags/41

Case Study 2:

https://www.digitaling.com/search/projects?kw=%E4%BD%A0%E6%98%AF

If you want to...

1. You can buy ready-made test source code and then rigidly implant your brand:

A. https://s.taobao.com/search?q=%E6%9F%8F%E6%8B%89%E5%9B%BE%E6%BA%90%E7%A0%81

B. https://www.huzhan.com/code/goods220104.html

C. https://www.huzhan.com/code/goods219984.html

2. You can also learn to do it yourself:

http://www.ih5.cn

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzI0NjA2NDI2MA==&mid=2650521642&idx=3&sn=1ab41089fd0b4868be4bb21f3da9cb21

3. Or hire a designer to do it:

http://www.epub360.com/designer/

5. Check-in virus

Daily check-in: Keep, 100words, Do Your English, etc. 

Viral marketing can easily spread on new media such as Weibo and WeChat

But this does not mean that viral marketing must rely on new media, because the previous article emphasized that viral marketing is not only a marketing technology, but also a marketing thinking.

As long as the content you create can arouse the audience's interest and design good reasons for sharing, viral marketing effects can be achieved in traditional media and in marketing activities. For example, the following newspaper ad

Finally, I would like to emphasize that don’t expect viral marketing to bring much publicity to the brand, achieve much conversion and sales, as this is unrealistic.

Think about it, every year there are countless viral marketing campaigns planned and implemented, but only a few of them can achieve screen-sweeping effects and become cases.

Although marketing cannot be separated from the techniques and thinking of viral marketing, its essence and main means are still to honestly invest resources in promotion, advertising, and public relations. Viral marketing can only be the icing on the cake.

In the final analysis, communication effect = creativity x resources . No matter how good your creativity is, you still need money to buy media and channels to spread it. If you have no money and no resources and hope to make a comeback through creativity and viral marketing, it is speculative thinking and is not advisable.

Author: Liu Guoqiang

Source: Liu Guoqiang Demolition Marketing (sslj36)