What 3 Types of Facebook Marketing Apps Drive the Most Viral Sharing?

Everyone business or marketer has a secret desire that their marketing goes “viral”.

It is the holy grail of marketing. Firstly because it generates high velocity sharing and secondly because its often seen as free.

It can accelerate a brand from relative obscurity to nearly famous.

It is “word of mouth” marketing enhanced and supercharged by the internet and social networks.

This “earned” media sharing that is seen as totally free is often initially sparked by paid media (such as banner ads, paid search marketing on search  engines or mass media such as television).

Viral Marketing is Often Not Free

Marketing that fits this ultimate marketing profile are campaigns such as “Old Spice“.

This campaign was sparked by a 30 second advertising spot during the Superbowl and then driven further by paid advertising on digital and mass media

Paid is often the catalyst to create the powerful free earned media that is seen in friends sharing on Facebook and  Twitter.

7 Facebook Marketing Campaign Types

Marketing on Facebook is one of the main social networking platforms that are employed by business marketers.

So what types of marketing campaigns can you design for Facebook and what are their strengths?

Wildfire (a social networking marketing platform with 200,00 users) looked at 10,000 campaigns that were run over 9 months.It looked at 7 major campaign types that companies and brands used to market on Facebook.

Each type of campaign has its advantages. Some campaigns will achieve greater participation rates (entries). Other types will result in more sharing and earned media. This is the powerful viral marketing that you don’t have to pay for. Also known as crowd sourced marketing.

The Top 3 Types of Facebook Apps to Drive Sharing

If your main marketing goal is to encourage Facebook fans to share then you need to use these three types of marketing campaigns and apps to drive Facebook sharing of content via the Facebook news feed .

1. Favourites is the top app type at over 37%
2. Quiz ranks second at 30%
3. Trivia comes third at 27%

The Top 3 Types of Facebook Campaigns for Participation

Coupons are used frequently in marketing to provide an incentive for people to participate.Everyone loves a discount!

These three application types are the ones to implement if you are looking to have thousands of participants.

1. Coupons rank clearly as the top performer with an average of over 3,000 entries per campaign
2. Giveaways comes a distant second at 1,888 entries
3. Sweepstakes is not far behind at 1,630to

Case Study

In looking at these results from the study then you need to provide a variety of marketing tactics and choices to appeal to the greatest audience. Just like people prefer different social networks and also will consume a variety of media depending on whether they will read an article or watch a video.

Delta Airlines is a great example of offering a range of tactics to create the highest level of participation and sharing.

In the example above, Delta has more than six custom content applications available for users to interact with. Each tab does something different, and while the activity offered on one tab will perform better at enticing user signups, another tab will be best for inspiring user-generated content submissions and sharing.

Takeaways

A strong social media marketing strategy is one that approaches the creation of branded content and applications for users from multiple angles

• Designing some owned media to achieve high consumption and participation rates
• Designing other owned media to influence high sharing activity (to generate the earned media that grows communities so successfully).
• Use paid media to amplify your owned content even further, and you’ll reach new users outside of the existing network, thereby generating many more opportunities for earned media.

What About You?

Are you implemeting these tactics for your Facebook marketing campaigns?

Are your goals to motivate sharing, participation or both?

What has worked for you? What hasn’t worked?

Look forward to hearing your Facebook marketing stories

More Reading

Is the Best Digital Marketing Earned Owned or Bought

11 Social Media Marketing Lessons from the Old Spice Campaign