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5 Essential Types of Marketing Material that Every Small Business Must Have

Many startups are talking about the word of mouth advertising and hoping for viral growth. But the viral effect happens very rarely, especially if there are no consistent, targeted actions from the company. So, what are the best types of marketing material? How to make your product or brand go viral?

Donatas Jonikas (Ph.D.), the author of Startup Evolution Curve (startup marketing manual), has surveyed more than 1.500 startups worldwide and already did nearly 400 in-depth interviews with startup founders. His research showed that many early-stage startups (67.5%) most of all would like to get help scaling their business.

The fact is that 78.9% of startups were already after the official product launch or were launching their products at the moment. But only 10.6% of all startups who took part in the research had at least some type of marketing material for viral growth ready. It means that 7 of 8 startups don’t have their marketing material for viral growth but expect a miracle to happen! Why?! A simple reason stands behind that – most startups don’t know what to do or how to do it effectively.

Source: Results of the survey by Dr. Donatas Jonikas (template from SlideModels)

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Considering the findings of startup research by Donatas Jonikas (Ph.D.) and a report on what people like sharing most on social networks by Kim Garst, there are five main types of marketing material that can boost your viral growth.

5 Essential Types of Marketing Material that Every Small Business Must Have

1. Viral Landing Page

This is nearly a must for any business, even if it doesn’t sell online. The primary goal of an ordinary landing page is to collect visitors’ contacts to initiate marketing automation campaigns or do a manual follow-up and lead the potential client to finally purchase the product or order the service. It’s hard to find the reason why you should ignore such a possibility to collect potential customers’ contact details and implement a follow-up strategy to sell your product.

Usually, landing pages are being designed to capture leads – to make as many visitors as possible submit their contact details in exchange for some valuable gift. Yes, most landing pages have built-in sharing and invitation buttons, but that doesn’t make them very viral. If you want to create a landing page that could go viral and be promoted by word of mouth through social networks, you must give a reason and a convenient way to do that.

How it Works:

People like to share things that make them look cool. Discovering something that solves a serious problem or is fascinating might initiate the “aha” moment and willingness to tell their friends about that. So generally there are three main requirements for your landing page to become viral:

  • the pitch on the landing page has to be worth signing up for;
  • there must be a significant nudge to share it with friends;
  • it has to be straightforward and easy to share.

If you want to get more details on how to do that, read this article by Gerry Dimova, where she covers a couple of real case studies on how to create a viral landing page for a startup.

2. Infographics

According to Jesse Mawhinney, content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without related images. Also, infographics are liked and shared on social media three times more than any other type of content. So why don’t you consider finding a freelancer on Fiverr who will create a professional infographic for 50$ or less?

  • Select an important topic relevant to your target audience.
  • Find the right data and analyze it. Your goal is to find an answer or insight which might be useful and exciting.
  • Create a story based on the findings. Don’t just spit all the facts you’ve found. Try to bind them in a storyline, i.e. at least showing the problem and possible solutions.
  • The design is the task of the designer which you can find on any freelancing website, and it’s not necessary to pay an enormous amount of money.
  • Polish the design and the story. It should be smooth, nice, and catchy.
  • Distribute via your marketing communication channels (i.e. social networks, landing page, email campaigns). But don’t forget about appropriate directories and blogs where you can upload your infographics (InfographicJournal.com, InfographicsShowcase.com, infographicsArchive.com).

Once you have your infographics ready, check this article by Neil Patel where he gives more advice on how to boost your viral growth by sharing your infographics.

 3. Videos

As Dave Loyd forecasts 74% of all internet traffic in 2017 will be video. Furthermore, using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19% and click-through rates by 65%. Considering this and the fact that today online video streams easily on the high-speed internet, video needs to be included in your content marketing mix. Creating a video is not hard: it can be direct to camera video, a video capturing your screen or it can be sourcing videos from YouTube that enhance your story. But… not every video goes viral, and there is no secret recipe for how to create a guaranteed viral video. Thus, most viral videos (we are talking about startup videos, not just any random videos, which do make no much sense) meet these conditions:

  • there is an emotional story (but not depressing), or the video itself initiates emotions;
  • or there is value in video, a solution to a particularly painful problem (we already talked about that people want to look cool and thus are prone to share their found solution);
  • the branding and advertising are kept minimal and subtle;
  • a marketing plan stands behind the video (whether it’s paid or free promotion, there is a plan for how the link to the video will be initially distributed – if you want to set a fire, first you must collect the driest timber and ignite them);
  • quality and length of the video must be compatible with your target customer’s time commitment (how much time and attention they are likely to spend in the typical situation).

 4. Quiz

Number 4 in the types of marketing material is the Quiz. Let’s take Shoe dazzle for example. They sell shoes for ladies. Well, what a startup you would say? But the way they started to sell shoes was quite innovative and granted a significant viral effect. If you want to look at what they have to offer or want to get their exclusive deal, you are invited to take a quiz. It’s a comfortable, enjoyable, and pleasant quiz, especially knowing that once you do the quiz, you’ll find out your profile style and will be offered only those shoes which fit your style.

small business promotional items

Source: Shoedazzle.com

So even if a shoe seller can find a way to use the quiz for viral growth, then it is a must-try for you as a startup assuming you have an innovative product or a service. Quizzes are great to introduce innovations. While the product is new, potential customers are unaware of it and don’t search for it. But if you would create a quiz that reveals how this innovation solves the well know severe problem (think about the ladies when they have to decide which shoes fit their style best :)), that could initiate “aha” or “wow” moments and your target audience will be sharing your quiz like crazy.

 5. Giveaway

Generally speaking, the giveaway is any kind of added value (free seminar, manual, book, tickets to events, starter package of your product, etc.). Who doesn’t want to get free stuff if it’s useful? Who doesn’t want to look cool sharing useful stuff for free? As the research of more than 1400 startups showed, most, early-stage startups share their giveaway in exchange for contact on their landing page, which, by the way, in most cases is far not a viral landing page. The giveaway is just marketing material that is worth sharing. You must come up at least with a simple strategy on how to initiate the virality of your giveaway. Here are a few ideas:

  • create a giveaway for a particular blog or another channel that reaches your target audience – let the owner of the channel share it with his audience;
  • offer a free account to thought leaders and ask them to share their experience with the public;
  • reach out-group leaders on social networks (Linkedin, Facebook, Meetup, or any other social network where your target customers are active) and ask them if they’d share your giveaway with their group members;
  • use new marketing tools like Maitre App or Pay with a tweet to fuel up viral sharing of your giveaways or any other content.

How it Works:

Some call the Maitre App a revolution in viral marketing. It’s a very simple solution to what previously required massive investment or coding skills. Maitre App not only helps to collect your website visitors’ emails but also encourages them to share your content with their friends if they want to get a reward. Also, it allows you to use engagement emails to remind your subscribers to share their referral links and increase virality. Such emails can be triggered by special events, like when a subscriber (factual or potential customer refers) to a new person or they lose their position in the list.

Source:  https://maitreapp.co

 

Pay with a tweet does what it says – allows visitors to access your content after they share your link and message via their social network account (Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, G+, and a few others). As Donatas Jonikas (Ph.D.) advises this tool would be best to implicate on those visitors whose emails you already have (i.e. they signed up for a free or trial version of your product and you can offer an additional giveaway, meaningful discount, some exclusive features, or benefits in exchange if they just share your link and message via a social network).

Extras:

These types of marketing material weren’t covered in the report, but we think that in modern times, you should be well aware of them. Here, we’ll discuss a quick summary of social media marketing and strategic partnerships.

6. Social Media Marketing

For the sake of modernity, here we have the concept of social media marketing. Nowadays, social media sites like Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram and flooded with millions of users each day. So, it only makes sense that with a user base that big, social media, in general, should be a pretty lucrative avenue to follow if you’re looking for more traffic or sales. In this context, buying followers on TikTok emerges as a strategy for businesses and individuals aiming to quickly amplify their presence and credibility on the platform.

A great way to go about this is affiliate marketing. I’m sure you’ve heard the term “influencer” many a time, and the term was coined for a reason. If you are able to shell out a small commission for every sale that someone else makes on your behalf, you could bring in some serious traffic. Some influencers have followers of over 10 million people, so imagine the number of people you could reach!

Another social media marketing strategy is to put your videos on the sites. You can create your own original content and hope it goes viral! In this case, it would help to hire a copywriter, video producer, or content developer.

7. Strategic Partnerships

Among the types of marketing material is strategic partnerships. If you are a budding company, it could really help your marketing to strategically form partnerships with other companies.

For example, say you are a beauty product company. You could collaborate on a makeup palette with a different brand to boost awareness jointly. You can offer promotions in tandem with your “friend” companies. Therefore, both of your audiences can migrate between you two! Once both brands have a good following, you can continue to do collaborations. These will excite those who are fans of both companies and build more awareness through that hype.

Conclusion

You already know about the top 7 types of marketing material that can boost your startup’s viral growth. But before creating any marketing material, be sure, you are providing something people want, and that is worth talking about. Otherwise, none of the tips and tricks will help you. Even on the contrary – you could get anti-advertising by creating a negative viral effect. Trying to leverage other people’s audience is another condition you should keep in mind. If you can find any way to leverage someone else’s audience, then you will be taking advantage of a traffic shortcut and will be standing on the right track creating a viral effect. That’s the essence of viral growth. But to use someone else’s audience, you must provide valuable and exciting to share content.

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