Getting into Twitter’s trending topics provides superfast viral marketing exposure. Two recent promotions worth mentioning:
- today’s July 21 Starbucks free pastry day (Here’s the Mashable link to show the huge spike in Twitter traffic)
- Moonfruit (small UK development shop) 10 MacBook Air giveaway in early July, picked up in the Wall St Journal which took them from 400-47,000 followers in a week
The operative word is FREE though. Promotions should have two of three key elements:
- FREE goods
- Clear value of giveaway and brand identity (Starbucks uses it’s own brand, and Moonfruit piggybacks the Apple brand).
- Low value, 100% odds - Starbucks free pastries
- High value, perceived decent odds - Moonfruit was a small company giving away 10 MacBook Airs, one a day, so initial Twitter users must have perceived the odds as being fairly good. Once the promotion took off into trending topics, the value of other users registering lent credibility to the promotion.
and here’s a fourth element:
Permission to indulge.
A number of years ago a bank did a study as to what would lure potential customers to open new accounts the best. They listed 4 things, the first 3 practical things like a better interest rate. The fourth thing was a fun product giveaway. Which do you think was the most effective? Yes, item #4, even though the first 3 choices were better economic deals.
Give people permission to indulge and they’ll love you for it.