Viral referral marketing is a powerful strategy that can boost your brand awareness, customer loyalty, and sales. It involves encouraging your existing customers to share your brand, product, or service with their friends and contacts, typically in exchange for some kind of reward or incentive.
But viral referral marketing is not a standalone tactic. It works best when integrated with other digital marketing strategies, such as email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, and SEO. By combining these channels, you can amplify your reach, engagement, and conversions.
In this post, we’ll show you how to integrate viral referral marketing and digital marketing for maximum impact. We’ll also share some examples of successful campaigns from Viralify, your ultimate viral referral marketing growth partner.
What are the benefits of integrating viral referral marketing and digital marketing?
Integrating viral referral marketing and digital marketing can help you achieve several benefits, such as:
- Increasing your organic traffic and leads. By incentivizing your customers to share your brand with their networks, you can generate more word-of-mouth referrals and social proof. This can drive more traffic to your website and landing pages, and increase your chances of ranking higher on search engines.
- Building trust and credibility. People are more likely to trust recommendations from their friends and family than from ads or strangers. By leveraging the power of social proof, you can build trust and credibility with your prospects and customers.
- Reducing your customer acquisition costs. With viral referral marketing, you can acquire new customers at a lower cost than with paid ads. You can also increase your customer lifetime value by rewarding your loyal customers for their referrals.
- Enhancing your customer retention and loyalty. By offering rewards and incentives for referrals, you can increase your customer satisfaction and loyalty. You can also create a sense of community and belonging among your customers by encouraging them to invite their friends to join your brand.
- Boosting your brand awareness and reputation. By spreading the word about your brand through referrals, you can increase your brand awareness and reputation. You can also reach new audiences and markets that may not be aware of your brand otherwise.
How to integrate viral referral marketing and digital marketing: 7 proven tips
Here are some tips on how to integrate viral referral marketing and digital marketing for maximum impact:
1. Choose the right viral referral marketing platform
The first step is to choose the right viral referral marketing platform that suits your needs and goals. You want a platform that is easy to use, customizable, scalable, and compatible with your other digital marketing tools.
One such platform is Upviral, which offers various tools to create viral campaigns for your business. Upviral allows you to:
- Choose from different types of campaigns, such as contests, giveaways, waiting lists, milestones, refer-a-friend programs, etc.
- Customize your campaign design, landing pages, widgets, emails, rewards, etc.
- Track and analyze your campaign performance and reward your super-fans
- Connect with your favorite email autoresponders, CRMs, social media platforms, etc.
With Viralify, you can launch a viral campaign in minutes and grow your brand with referral marketing.
2. Define your target audience and goals
The next step is to define your target audience and goals for your viral campaign. You want to know who you want to reach, what you want them to do, and how you will measure your success.
Some questions to ask yourself are:
- Who is your ideal customer persona? What are their demographics, psychographics, pain points, needs, desires, etc.?
- What is the value proposition of your brand, product, or service? What problem does it solve or what benefit does it provide for your customers?
- What is the main goal of your viral campaign? Is it to generate leads, sales, sign-ups, downloads, reviews, referrals, etc.?
- What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your campaign? How will you track and measure them?
By defining your target audience and goals clearly, you can create a more effective and relevant viral campaign.
3. Choose the right incentives and rewards
One of the most important elements of a viral campaign is the incentive or reward that you offer to your customers for referring their friends. You want to choose an incentive that is valuable, relevant, appealing, and easy to claim for both the referrer and the referee.
Some examples of incentives are:
- Discounts or coupons
- Free products or services
- Gift cards or vouchers
- Cash or points
- Exclusive access or features
- Recognition or status
The type of incentive you choose depends on several factors, such as:
- Your budget
- Your profit margin
- Your customer lifetime value
- Your customer preferences
- Your campaign type
You can also experiment with different types of incentives and rewards to see what works best for your audience.
4. Create a compelling landing page
A landing page is a web page that is designed to capture the attention of your visitors and persuade them to take action on your offer. It is where you showcase your value proposition, incentive, and call-to-action (CTA) for your viral campaign.
A compelling landing page should have:
- A catchy headline that captures the attention of your visitors
- A clear subheadline that explains the benefit of your offer
- A captivating image or video that showcases your product or service
- A simple form that collects the necessary information from your visitors
- A strong CTA button that tells your visitors what to do next
- A social proof section that displays testimonials, reviews, or ratings from previous customers
- A FAQ section that answers common questions or objections from your visitors
You can use Upviral’s templates or create your own landing page using Upviral’s drag-and-drop editor. You can also test different variations of your landing page to optimize it for conversions.
5. Promote your viral campaign across multiple channels
Once you have created your landing page, you need to promote it across multiple channels to drive traffic and generate referrals. You want to use a mix of paid and organic channels, such as:
- Email marketing: Send an email blast to your existing subscribers announcing your viral campaign and inviting them to participate.
- Social media marketing: Share posts about your viral campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc., using hashtags, mentions, and tags.
- Content marketing: Create blog posts, podcasts, videos, infographics, etc., related to your viral campaign topic and include a link or CTA to join it.
- SEO: Optimize your landing page for relevant keywords and phrases that people may search for when looking for information about your topic.
- PPC: Run paid ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc., targeting keywords, audiences, or interests related to your topic.
- Influencer marketing: Partner with influencers who have a large following in your niche or industry and ask them to promote or endorse your viral campaign.
- PR: Reach out to journalists, bloggers, podcasters, etc., who cover topics related to yours and pitch them a story idea about your viral campaign.
You can also use Upviral’s widgets to display pop-ups, popovers, or embedded forms on your website or blog pages that invite visitors to join your viral campaign.
6. Engage with your participants and followers
Another key aspect of integrating viral referral marketing and digital marketing is engaging with your participants and followers throughout your campaign. You want to keep them interested, motivated, and informed about your progress, updates, and results.
Some ways to engage with your participants and followers are:
- Send email notifications when they join, refer someone, earn a reward, or win a prize.
- Send email reminders when they are close to reaching a milestone or deadline.
- Send email tips on how to get more referrals or increase their chances of winning.
- Create a leaderboard that shows the top referrers or participants in real-time.
- Create a community group on Facebook, Slack, Discord, etc., where participants can interact with each other and with you.
- Respond to comments, questions, feedbacks, or complaints on social media or email promptly and politely.
By engaging with your participants and followers regularly, you can build rapport, trust, and loyalty with them.
7. Analyze your results and optimize your strategy
The final step is to analyze your results and optimize your strategy based on data-driven insights. You want to measure how well your viral campaign performed against your goals and KPIs.
Some metrics that you should track are:
- Number of participants or sign-ups
- Number of referrals or invites sent
- Number of referrals or invites accepted
- Conversion rate of referrals or invites
- Cost per acquisition (CPA) of referrals or invites
- Customer lifetime value (CLV) of referrals or invites
- Return on investment (ROI) of referrals or invites
You can use Upviral’s dashboard to monitor these metrics in real-time and see how they compare to industry benchmarks.
You should also conduct A/B tests to compare different versions of your landing page, email, social media post, etc., and see which one performs better. You can use tools like Google Optimize, Optimizely, or Unbounce to run A/B tests easily.
By analyzing your results and optimizing your strategy, you can improve your viral campaign performance and achieve your goals.
Conclusion
Viral referral marketing and digital marketing are two powerful strategies that can work together to grow your brand. By integrating them, you can increase your organic traffic and leads, build trust and credibility, reduce your customer acquisition costs, enhance your customer retention and loyalty, and boost your brand awareness and reputation.
To integrate viral referral marketing and digital marketing effectively, you need to:
- Choose the right viral referral marketing platform
- Define your target audience and goals
- Choose the right incentives and rewards
- Create a compelling landing page
- Promote your viral campaign across multiple channels
- Engage with your participants and followers
- Analyze your results and optimize your strategy
If you need help with creating and launching a viral campaign for your business, you can rely on Viralify, your ultimate viral referral marketing growth partner. Viralify employs various tools to create viral campaigns that suit your needs and goals. You can also get expert guidance and support from Viralify’s team of viral marketing specialists.
Ready to grow your brand with viral referral marketing? Schedule your consultation call with Viralify today!
FAQs
Q: What is viral referral marketing?
A: Viral referral marketing is a type of marketing where you encourage your existing customers to share your brand, product, or service with their friends and contacts, typically in exchange for some kind of reward or incentive.
Q: What is digital marketing?
A: Digital marketing is a type of marketing that uses online channels, such as websites, email, social media, search engines, etc., to reach and engage with potential and existing customers.
Q: How can I create a viral campaign for my business?
A: You can use Viralify, a viral referral marketing platform that offers various tools to create viral campaigns for your business. You can choose from different types of campaigns, such as contests, giveaways, waiting lists, milestones, refer-a-friend programs, etc. You can also customize your campaign design, landing pages, widgets, emails, rewards, etc. You can also track and analyze your campaign performance and reward your super-fans.
Q: How can I promote my viral campaign?
A: You can promote your viral campaign across multiple channels, such as email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, SEO, PPC, influencer marketing, and PR. You can also use Viralify’s widgets to display pop-ups, popovers, or embedded forms on your website or blog pages that invite visitors to join your viral campaign.
Q: How can I measure the success of my viral campaign?
A: You can measure the success of your viral campaign by tracking and analyzing metrics such as number of participants or sign-ups, number of referrals or invites sent, number of referrals or invites accepted, conversion rate of referrals or invites, cost per acquisition (CPA) of referrals or invites, customer lifetime value (CLV) of referrals or invites, and return on investment (ROI) of referrals or invites.
