By now, you know quite a bit about open virality.
This type of viral marketing essentially describes the virality involved when creating a marketplace-type product that houses smaller products within it. (Think the App Store.)
Open virality ensures that those producing the products within the marketplace are vested in bringing others to that product.
This, in turn, inadvertently exposes their customers to your marketplace.
To clarify, if you’re the one who builds the marketplace (e.g. Apple building the App Store), you will experience this sort of virality directly.
It would be like owning a department store selling other people’s goods.
If you’ve instead created a product that can be distributed WITHIN a marketplace, you’re a prime candidate for the niche search marketing channel.
Niche search marketing is like creating a product that is sold within somebody else’s department store and then working hard to get it placed on the shelf in the direct line of sight of your ideal prospect.
To put it another way, say you produce a sugary cereal.
Niche search marketing is like going into every single grocery store that sells your cereal brand and physically moving your boxes to the best possible position on the shelves - in front of the competition and right at the eye level of sugar-crazed eight-year-olds.
(Note: Probably not a cool thing to do in the world of cereals. But it’s a totally legit practice in online marketplaces.)
The key is to place your product in the most successful marketplaces.
Specifically, the would be the ones that already see significant traffic from open virality, in addition to their own non-viral marketing efforts.
By placing your product within those high-traffic marketplaces – and then optimizing your product listing to more frequently be seen by those looking for a product like yours (which is called “niche search optimization“) – you can temporarily hijack their audience for your benefit.
In other words, sugary cereal for everyone!
For example:
Utilizing a marketplace where tons of users already flock can help tie your product’s growth to that marketplace’s viral engine – which can be a very good move on your part. Imagine Apple giving you a piggyback ride. Sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it?
Unlike most other marketing channels we’ve discussed, you must be careful when encouraging virality using a niche search marketing channel.
One reason is you don’t want to work hard to drive traffic to your product from customers who are sharing and inviting others, only to then have those new viral leads get sidetracked by other items in that larger marketplace.
For example, if you’re an app in the App Store, I recommend you look into deep linking.
This will send existing users directly into your app while directing new prospects directly to the download page for your app.
You also need to pay close attention to the economics of the marketplace itself by crunching the numbers.
For example, say a marketplace takes a decent chunk of your sales every time a sale of your product is made in their marketplace.
Yet you make far more when you sell the same product from your own website.
In such an instance, consider routing your viral traffic to your own internal sales page rather than the sales page on the marketplace itself.
Remember, the marketplace is a business that encapsulates your business.
They need their own margins, and if they can get their users to grab other products that make THEM more money – even though you sent the traffic their way to buy YOUR product – they will always act in their own self-interest.
Expect this behavior, and look for a way to use it to your advantage - such as increasing your conversion rate and reducing your return rate so much that they feature your product more prominently.
(They’d be fools not to since they’ll make more money by doing so.)
Previously on our trip through the 16 Non-Viral Sources to Fuel Your Viral Engine, we took a pit stop to get a little more imaginative using content marketing.
Up next, I’m going to share with you another great opportunity to flex your creative viral muscles.
Let’s move past all this talk of niche marketing and work with something everyone can utilize, no matter their industry.
I’ll brainstorm with you how in our next chapter.
SIDE NOTE: if you want to hear me talk about all things growth, startups, and inspiration, hit me up on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn!