Whether your are eyeing for your retail business to grow or just to start it all out, any business can actually benefit with the boom of popularity or increase in sales from a trending product. But how can a retailer do to achieve this kind of buzz for one of their products or services?
Sometimes it’s nearly impossible to predict what will go viral, but there are some things you can do to help your product reach must-have, viral status with your audience. Before you decide to invest the time and effort into trying to make a product explode online, make sure that the product you’re promoting is worth the effort. When something becomes popular, it inevitably comes under more scrutiny, so quality is key.
Business nowadays has become more than just the capability of being able to supply according to the current demand. But by creating impact to actually make more demands yourself by putting your brand into the limelight.
So now, let’s take a look at some things that you can do to make your retail product go viral.
Almost everyone knows that timing is everything. You’ll need to plan when your product will hit the market and when your marketing campaign will run. Timing is crucial when it comes to how to go viral. For the purposes of creating a lot of buzz, you’ll want to center your launch around a relevant event. For example, launching a holiday item a few weeks or months before Christmas, rolling out a clothing item in time for the appropriate season, or launching a product in time for a relevant event — like a concert or local festival.
If your product doesn’t naturally tie to a specific event or date, then make one for it. Centralize your marketing campaign around the big launch date — give the date a product-centric name and make sure it’s hitting shelves or online everywhere on the same day. This single message helps customers remember the day, builds a sense of urgency to be an early adopter, and increases the chances of your first wave of inventory selling out.
Next, you’ll want to build anticipation for your launch through paid and organic marketing. If you anticipate your product going viral, put the majority of your paid marketing behind building anticipation before the launch and let the organic, social buzz take over from there.
Uniqueness
It’s not enough to simply offer the same products as everyone else in your market.
You can capitalize on the power of differentiation by offering a product that is distinct from your competitors. Products that go hand in hand with other trendy and up-to-date materials that people use day by day. Surely, products like these will never come out of light.
Sharing is the key
Sharing on social media platforms is a necessity to be able to achieve success. And there are a lot of ways to motivate social sharing, this includes coming up with a contest where entrants must follow your account and share the contest information with their followers.
You can also encourage your followers to share your product by creating a content that makes them laugh or creating visually engaging content that people are more likely to summarize and share. Also, ensure that your content is topical and current (i.e. relevant to an upcoming holiday or news event.)
Social sharing is important — many retailers are stumped on how to go viral with organic social media reach. When it comes to organic sharing, people tend to share content that connects with them. In a similar article it says that the importance of connecting with your audience and telling a story is stressed and if people are going to share your product, they need to be able to tell its story. That can be as simple as a clear statement about what the product does, or as complicated as a really interesting origin story.
Emotional Connection
The thing is, people are more likely to share something that they connect with on an emotional level as much as they’re likely to develop brand loyalty and recommend your product to a friend. In addition, eliciting an emotional response to your product is a great way to make consumers feel good about using the item.
Many entrepreneurs highlight the emotional relationship that the brand has forged with their consumers. From their nostalgic holiday campaigns, their brand have become a master at pulling at the heartstrings and creating content that people love to share.
When building this connection with your audience try to create content that really connects. People build real relationships with brands that they can trust, that appear authentic and have a defined brand identity.
Consumers were also put into ties with brands that effectively make them feel nostalgic. These brands have had great success with nostalgic content that reminds people of another time or their childhood.