5 ways to encourage sharing

Whitepaper

5 W ay s t o Encourage Customers to Share Your Content

by Sanjay Dhalokia “Whatever your methods, find a way to incorporate a social element into every marketing campaign you run by finding compelling reasons for people to share. That’ll make every dollar you spend on marketing look like two.”

Ready To Make Your Marketing Viral? www.CrowdFactory.com (888) 801-9197 Others who ampflied their social with Crowd Factory include:

Engage,, Integrate and Motivate: Five Ways W to Gett Fans to M Market for Y You Gone are e the days of o outbound marketing, when comp panies used to spend lo ots of time and money on o new and improved ways to bomb bard you witth messagin ng of how fa antastic their product was. Somew where along the way tha at outbound d messaging g that used tto be effective he inbox and d earned the e label “spam m.” became nothing more than noisse in the mailbox and th e lots of studies now th hat have con nfirmed whatt we all susp pected – con nsumers tru ust There are ads only about 20% of the time – but, they trust recom mmendationss from peerss 80% of the e time. Wh hat to do wh hen your besst customers are turning g their head ds and telling g you to talk to the hand d? Stop talking and let your y customers do the ttalking inste ead. Create remarkable inviting content c and empower them to show w their love for your braand by sharing it acrosss their soccial footprintt. Crowd Facctory’s Socia al Campaign n suite of ap pplications a and tools allo ow you to crreate a varie ety of social offers that you y can eassily integrate e into your e existing online marketin ng pieces. e five creativ ve ways to in ntegrate soccial into all o of your markketing effortts, engage a and Here are motivate e your existin ng brand fan ns and creatte new oness in the proccess. All of tthese examp ples used Cro owd Factory y Social Cam mpaign to po ower the cro owd. There’’s a lot to be e learned fro om the brands that have e embraced social and are a getting iit right. n Sharing Intto a Game #1 – Turn People lo ove to comp pete – and they love to win. That co ompetitive, gaming insttinct can drivve consume ers to share your conten nt and bring lots of new w folks back to you. Forr instance, w when Microsofft was launch hing Window ws 7, their ‘S School Pride e’ campaign n asked web b visitors to vvote on video os submitted d by high sch hools trying to win a co mputer lab makeover. The new tw wist that Micrrosoft added d was a sociial layer thatt allowed vo oters to use to the socia al graph to g get their friends and con nnections to o come back k and vote fo or their favo orite entry ass well – therreby ng their overrall chances of winning. As a resultt, they saw a nearly 75% % uplift in ne ew increasin traffic.

Another case in point, the band Hanson recently ran a campaign that asked fans to share content about their tour and rewarded them with concert tickets and merchandise packs.

Everyone who registered had a chance to win the concert tickets and the merch packs, but the top prize--a personalized video from Hanson--was reserved for the one fan who generated the most traffic back to the site. That’s something that fan will be bragging about for a long time.

From prizes for top sharers to offering multiple entries into a sweepstakes, adding a competitive element to your campaign can dramatically boost results. #2 - Identify, Recognize and Reward Superfans Up and coming bands have had “street teams” for decades--superfans who are willing to walk the streets to get the word out about their favorite band by handing out flyers to anyone and everyone. Street teams still exist, but they now exist online, and the club isn’t exclusive anymore nor is it limited to the music industry. Whether you’re selling music or lipstick your superfans can help you sell it if you just give them the chance.

If you were to run a social campaign and track the users who shared content out and drove traffic back to your site you would see that a relatively small number of fans are responsible for a very large percentage of your traffic. These are your superfans, and should be recognized and rewarded for the influence they have every time they talk about you and your brand. Superfans will camp in line for days to be the first to see your movie premiere, line up outside a bookstore at midnight to buy the first copy of your book at 12:01am, and proudly tell all of their friends they’re doing it. Crowd Factory’s Social Campaign allows you to track your influencers so you know exactly who your superfans are and what their reach is.

Superfans aren’t necessarily motivated by discounts; they’re motivated by their status and the influence they have on the brand and other fans. How do you get your fans to engage and amplify your message when everyone else out there is offering them the same thing?

Give them a reward and make it personal. Stiletto recording artist Tally Hall were looking for a way to promote their new album “Good and Evil” and the supporting tour, so they turned to Crowd Factory to create a referral offer that would help them help their fans get the word out. They simply asked their fans to share out news of the new album and tour in exchange

for entries into a contest to win a prize. Not just any prize, but a 30-second personal theme song written and recorded by Tally Hall specifically for the winner.

#3 - Appeal to Their Altruism People are more likely to share something if they feel like something good will come out of it.

Molson recently crafted a campaign that appealed to the sense of altruism in all of us and raised brand awareness while doing it. The Canadian Red Leaf Project campaign was launched to boost volunteering for parks projects across Canada and plant 100,000 trees. The ask was this: volunteer for a parks project, and earn free concert tickets. No time to volunteer? No problem. Click a button to plant a virtual tree and Molson will plant a real tree for you.

Rememb ber when the e American Red Cross used u to give e out little sttickers that ssaid “I gave e blood?” The hope was w that som meone else would w see yo ou wearing tthat sticker and it would d trigger them to go give g blood themselves. It was a goo od idea at th he time, butt had limited d impact. Unless U you wore w that sticker to a massive m sociaal function you probablyy didn’t impact many po otential dono ors. Your inffluence is on nly as big as your reach..

Enter the e concept off the status badge. The e American R Red Cross raan an article e on their website alerting peo ople to the fact f that the e huge winte er storms of 2011 had re educed theiir blood do onations, be ecause the weather w had made it imp possible in ssome areas ffor donors tto get to do onation sitess. Red Crosss encourage ed people to o donate blo ood as soon n as they cou uld and share the “Reco overy Blood Donor Wintter Weatherr” badge acrross their so ocial networks to encourag ge others to o do the sam me.

e Them Som mething Exclusive #4 - Give Every customer wan nts to feel sp pecial, and one o way to m make them ffeel special is to give th hem somethin ng exclusive e. Sony Musiic artist Pitbull used soccial sharing tto generate awareness for his latestt CD Planet Pit. The dea al was this, iff you shared d a message e from his w website on Faceboo ok or Twitterr you could listen l to the e CD online before the g general pub blic could bu uy it.

But Pitbu ull didn’t sto op there, be ecause he kn new that the e real powerr lies in the h hands of the e Superfan ns, that relattively small group g of fan ns that gene erates the m majority of th he buzz. So, he offered a challenge: share the content out to t your frien nds and if th hree of them m come back k to visit the website you u unlock thre ee bonus tra acks.

#5 – Let Them Co-Create Value People will mobilize when lots of folks can get a benefit. With the advent of DIY group deals, you can create campaigns where everybody wins if they get their friends to do something together. Giving fans the ability to choose which version of a product should be offered, or to vote for the discounts or special offers they want to receive, helps ensure they’ll share it. For example, HarperCollins’ Bookperk website, which keeps readers up to date on new books and special deals, lets members select which books will be offered at a discount. Once members have chosen a book, they have the option to log into Facebook and share their selection with friends, therefore spreading the word about the discount.

Another great example comes from pop icon, Britney Spears. When Sony Jive Records decided to launch Britney’s most recent album, “Femme Fatale”, they decided to give her fans the opportunity to create their own exclusive access – and market the album in the process.

Visitors to Britney.com saw an offer to pre-order the album and share the offer with their friends. If fans got 10 or more of their friends to visit Britney.com, they got a 20% off promo code for the entire Britney catalog.

% of all trafffic to Britney y.com at lau unch came th hrough this channel – and Femme Over 30% fatale de ebuted at #1 on the Billb board chartss.

Know Yo our Crowd and Amplify It Crowd Factory is the e leader in crowd-powe c ered marketiing applications and analytics. Our applications allow co ompanies to o easily embed social ele ements – fro om Flash De eals to Grou up es and more e -- into any marketing e experience. These applications can n be Deals to Sweepstake deployed d to any marketing chan nnel -- includ ding Facebo ook pages, e emails, regisstration pages, ecommerce sites, an nd more – allong with po owerful, buillt-in analyticcs to track, m measure and d optimize e these prog grams in reall-time. We work w with a g growing listt of the top brands like McAfee, Sony Recorrds, and MolsonCoors, as a well as m many small an nd medium sized businesses. Call us and a find outt how you get your custtomers and prospects to market fo or wdfactory.co om and click k on “Get St arted Now”” – we’d love e to talk to yyou! you. Visit us at crow

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