Travis Steffen - Viral Hero

What Is Viral Marketing?

PART I: What Is Viral Marketing?

How to Go Viraland Why Most Products Never Do (or Should)

Viral Marketing EnginesFoundations

Viral Marketing EnginesSuperchargers

Viral Marketing EnginesPsychological Engines

PART II: Building a Viral Business

Initial Viral Architecture

Viral Loop Basics

Key Pieces of Virality

Measuring Viral Success

PART III: Making Your Viral Engine Run

Tips from the Pros

Sparking Initial Virality with Inbound Marketing

Fueling Your Viral Engine with Outbound Marketing

Using Offline Marketing and Other Methods to Feed Your Viral Fire

PART IV: Projecting Your Viral Success

Saturation and Viral Decay

Factoring In Churn

Users

Growth

PART V: Viral Marketing Cheat Sheet

Thirty-Five Things to Remember

Introduction:

What Is Viral Marketing?

The only sustainable growth is viral growth.

Peter Thiel, Zero to One

Stop Googling How to go viral as if theres a magic bullet. There isnt.

If youre asking this question, chances are you dont actually know how viral marketing works. Not completely anywaybut few truly do. Which is why the first thing were going to do before we move forward is nail down an understanding of what viral marketing is.

When somebody asks, What is viral marketing? the first thought most people have likely has something to do with the latest and

greatest thing going viral, whether its a hilarious cat video or the latest Kardashian ridiculousness.

While those things might make us laugh, bring us joy, or capture our attention like a train wreck, they play merely a supporting role in the game changer that is viral marketing. If you want to spread your product and grow your business at an exhilarating rate, youll have to broaden your horizons beyond this limited definition of virality. And it all starts by asking the right questionswhich is exactly what well do in this book.

So Youre Wondering How to Go Viral

If you have a product, website, app, or business youre working on, chances are youve had this thought: If only I could create something for my site that spreads virally . . .

Anyone with a working brain, diligent planning, access to a bit of capital, and a data-driven approach can achieve viral growth to some degree. However, few actually do to a meaningful degree. This is mainly because most people dont truly understand the mechanics of viral marketing.

Here are a few things that contribute to the miseducation of the masses:

1. Most resources on viral marketing are actually resources on social media strategy. They steal the term viral to make what they do sound sexier.

1. Most viral marketing firms are actually production companies that specialize in creating controversial or funny videos and memes that people share. This is not viral

marketing. Its a marketing channel that Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares call unconventional PR in their book Traction . It is essentially the purposeful use of publicity stunts to get media coverage.

What Is Viral Marketing?

I created Viral Hero to help entrepreneurs achieve viral success the right way. But wed better clear up a common misconception firstthat the word viral simply describes a piece of content that spreads like wildfire.

This is false.

Take the latest funny video on YouTube for example. While the video content is an important part of viral marketing, in this case its actually YouTube thats experiencing viral growth, not the video itself . The video is just the viral media, or the thing thats being shared to spread the site or app.

Think of it this way: So you see that latest funny video on YouTube and then send it to a few friends. As this video spreads, more and more people are exposed or reexposed to YouTubes video player. YouTube then gets more users to its site, reactivates dormant traffic, and likely sucks users in via various recommended for you features to get people watching even more videos. So, its not the content or media being shared that spreads virally; its the application that houses it in this case, YouTube. The media displayed in YouTubes player is just a tool to help its application spread, and it is just a single piece of a much larger viral puzzle.

Of course, on a user-generated-content site like YouTube, content creators can experience some added benefit themselves from taking

a ride on YouTubes viral loop, but usually, content creators are simply using YouTube as a medium of marketing more akin to PR and arent experiencing viral growth themselves.

( Note: YouTube is unique because its user-generated-content model also allows for channels. Content creators actually may see user growth in the form of channel subscribers, though this is still a feature on YouTube itself .)

Think you can answer the question What is viral marketing? with certainty?

Hey now, dont get cocky.

Why Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing gets its name from the spread of disease. If one person is infected, the people he or she touches will likely be infected as well. Those people then infect others, who then infect others, and so on. Before you know it, theres an epidemic. Content spreads in a similar way on the web, so marketers adopted the same term.

Lets try this again. What is viral marketing?

Viral marketing is the act of leveraging your own audience to pass your website or app to their friends.

In a nutshell, viral marketing is a form of direct-response marketing in which your users are the ones who pass your message on. As you get more and more users, you will have more and more people simultaneously spreading your product, so the exposure of others to your message mayin some casesbe exponential.

This is why going viral is such a big deal.

Why Ive Written Viral Hero

As a growth engineer, I recognize the sheer power virality has for marketing success. As such, Ive focused on gaining a much deeper understanding of viral marketing mechanics so I can use these lessons to build companies. I wrote Viral Hero to put my thoughts down on paper, poke holes in them, allow my own understanding to evolve, and help piece the puzzle together.

Ive scoured books, research papers, and blogs. Ive done countless case studies and built my own viral products to test what Ive learned. As Ive done these things, Ive dissected some of the strongest, most applicable pieces of knowledge from top founders, brilliant investors, and even top virologists in medicine. From these dry, academic, and jargon-laden resources that are more likely to bore you to sleep than inspire you to succeed, Ive pieced together what I like to think is a far more approachable resource.

And now that were hopefully all on the same page about what viral marketing is, we can move forward in our discovery of everything this resource has to offer. Weve got a long way to go toward mastering virality and becoming a viral hero. But dont worryIm going to help you get there every step of the way. Just keep on reading.

To ensure you get maximum value from Viral Hero, Ive created the exclusive Viral Hero Workbook for you to fill in as you read - absolutely free. Go get your copy right now at viralhero.com/workbook.

Part I

What Is Viral marketing?