What's the biggest challenge in your business? I'm going to guess and say growth is in the top 3!
If not, well done, you're doing better than 99% of businesses wishing they had more/faster growth.
For the other 99% of people looking for growth, here are some creative marketing ideas to test this quarter. They range from channel to platforms to niche.
Add your number 1 growth challenge in the comments and I'll reply with a potential solution.
This post is a list of the most creative marketing ideas we've seen customers of VYPER implement and get amazing results from. Whether it be growing their email list, video engagement, social channels, app store rankings or hacking their Facebook ad engagement. This stuff is gold!
Idea 1 - User Generated Content Through Instagram
Everyone can see a stock or brand photo/image from a mile away! You're not fooling anyone. A little growth hack around this is using user-generated content in your emails, ads and on your website.
The trick is getting this user-generated content without spending a ton of money or hours asking for it, following up and dealing with Dropbox links.
The easy way to automate this and get a ton of user-generated content!
Step 1 - Create an evergreen contest that is part of your purchase email drip (triggers after someone purchases from you). Make sure the customer gets this email containing your contest after they have received their product.
Step 2 - Choose a prize e.g. $500 gift card, 50% off your next order or a free/complimentary product.
Step 3 - Create a contest that requires people to upload a photo to Instagram, the photo has guidelines like (it has to be you using the product). If you do not want people to upload it to Instagram you can also choose the direct upload bonus entry, the Instagram entry just gets you a little bonus social impressions!
(Selection of bonus entries for your contest. Choose "post a photo to IG" or "Upload an Image")
Step 4 - Watch those entries roll in! Here's an example of the contest if you want to take a look.
Idea 2 - Hack the Facebook Relevancy Ad Score
Facebook's all the rage, but unfortunately, like all good things, the effectiveness is decreasing every year.
Organic reach is dropping, engagement is dropping and CPA's (cost per acquisition) are increasing!
What do you do when things like this happen? Innovate and find ways to "game" the system, that's exactly what this marketing tactic is about.
So what do you do!
Step 1 - Create a contest with the bonus entry of liking, commenting and sharing a Facebook post you create. Make sure this post that you create is adding value and has a soft sales pitch in it, like an educational video with a discount and link to the purchase page in the text area (we will want to turn this into an ad later).
Here's and Example contest.
Make sure to ask people to do all three actions. You can ask them from 1 bonus entry or make a separate bouns entry for each engagement type.
Step 2 - Run and promote the contest. Add it to your website, email your list, run some ads etc. Over the duration of this contest, you will start to collect hundreds of social engagements.
Step 3 - When you have enough social engagement, a good number is 100+ likes, comments, and shares, turn that post into an ad.
Below are a few of the bonus entries that this company used to get people engaged with their new podcast. The goal is to get your new podcast in as many social feeds as possible and collect as many subscribers and reviews within the first week as possible.
The early signs of traction are rewarded with higher placement in the iTunes store and even the possibility of being featured at the top of your category, remember to choose a sub-category to increase your chances.
For example, instead of choosing Business, choose Business -> eCommerce as your primary category.
Here's also a great post on how to get to the top of the iTunes podcast charts.
In summary, it all comes down to sending engaged traffic that's subscribing, reviewing and downloading your podcast. All of that is possible through your launch contest ;)
Idea 6 - Incentivize App Downloads
What determines the success of an app? Downloads, daily and monthly active users usually. Revenue comes into play once you have these things in place (there're always exceptions but this is a general growth cycle for a mobile app.)
For the revenue to happen you need the downloads, this is the first step and the direct response conversion goal to optimize to.
Paying for downloads and installs can get expansive $3-15 CPA’s are common depending on your industry, For example, an install on a free game is going to have a way cheaper CPA than a paid finance app.
A little hack we have seen VYPER customers using to cut their CPA’s is including the app download from iOS and Play Store in their contest.
We recently added a templated bonus entry for this due to demand for app contests. Not only that but you can also use the entries to incentivize other actions to improve your app marketing efforts. Example.
- Leave a star rating
- Leave a comment review
- Share the app launch on Twitter
- Share your app download page on Facebook
- The list goes on as these are customizable actions you can create.
What Next? It's your turn!
This week, go and implement at least one of these creative marketing ideas/strategies.
Time needed: 8 days.
The steps for any marketing a simple.
- Ideation
There is no need to recreate the wheel in marketing, 9 times out of 10 it has been done before. You just need to take an existing idea and tailor it to your niche or industry. It has been done many times.
To get these ideas, read blog posts, case studies and connect with people in a similar role to you but a different niche.
For example, that's how Uber was created, ordering stuff online and having a two-way quality scoring system via an app was not new. They just applied that technology in the taxi/transportation niche (note - super simplified explanation). - Plan out your campaign
Once you have an idea you would like to test. You need to set some goals (Use SMART - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely) and create a to-do list for everything that needs to happen to get this idea into reality.
- Set up your campaign
Once you have your to do list, delegate or complete the list yourself.
Remember to double check everything, you do not want something breaking during launch and messing up your campaigns data. - Manage your campaign
Launch your campaign and manage it. Make sure it's all working make optimizations and adjustments if you see opportunities and above all make sure you are tracking the results.
Pageviews, conversion rates, conversions, bounce rates, traffic sources etc. Use Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics. - Reflect and assess
Once you campaign is over, sit down for 1-2 hours and reflect on the campaign. What worked and what didn't?
Was this campaign successful, what could you improve next time, is it worth running again? - Repeat
If the answer is yes, we should try this campaign again but with these changes, repeat the above steps from number 2.
You do not have to use VYPER, you can manually recreate these same viral campaigns (it's just a little harder, we make your life easier ?)
I'm sure your head is filled with ideas at this point and hopefully, some of these hacks will give you some actionable tasks to better market your product, app or service.
If you have any questions or hacks to add, leave them in the comments below!