Open this book every week - "Crazy" to make your products, ideas, and behaviors go viral like a virus

Anyone who wants to convey information and let the public recognize you. Please read the book "Going viral—let your products, thoughts, and behaviors invade like a virus." This book tells you in the form of stories the scientific methods that make all types of products, ideas, and behaviors spread crazily.

Why do products, ideas and behaviors become popular?

1. From a traditional marketing perspective, it is believed that incremental improvements, low prices, and advertising can help products, ideas, and behaviors become popular, but this is not applicable to all situations. For example, some names are more popular than others. Easy to catch on.

2. The author Jonah Berger believes that the deeper reason is social influence. Social influence can be spread from one person to ten, and from ten to a hundred through oral communication.

The author of this book has conducted research and concluded that for a product, idea or behavior to go viral, the following conditions must be met:

Just like people can use money to buy goods. Like service, using social currency can lead to more favorable reviews and more positive impressions from family, friends, and colleagues.

Research shows that more than 40 people talk about topics that reflect their personal experiences and relationships. The freedom to express and disclose information is an intrinsic reward for individuals, and the willingness to share is also the basis for the popularity of social media and social networks.

How to mint social currency

1. Intrinsic attraction

Break the rules and propose products, ideas and behaviors that are contrary to people’s thinking patterns to increase events The inherent appeal, creating mystery and controversy are also two major factors that produce extraordinary attraction. For example, if you tell people that frowning while smiling can burn calories, people will be more willing to pass on the message because it is their own social currency. So this is why there are so many miracles, so many principles, and so much useful information shared on the Internet. It’s all called minting social currency.

2. Leverage principle

Every year, 180 million passengers accumulate airline points, but less than 10 of them actually redeem their miles. Why do so many people want to accumulate miles without redeeming them? Because this is a game. Participating in such promotion games allows primates to find a sense of superiority in society. This is the principle of leverage. The principle of leverage requires us to amplify customers' feelings through games. We need to create a measurement mark to let people know and record the results they have achieved. The principle of leverage also means that you need to help people show their achievements to show that they are doing better than others and have reached a more superior level to increase their social currency. For example, the points system, various badges, various cards that reflect identity, etc.

3. Make people feel like one of their own

In 2008, a website called Lulala was born. They required members to register before they could shop, and only after becoming members could they participate in limited-time sales. Each flash sale is only for a short period of time, and if you miss it, it will be on sale at double the price. In 2009, their sales reached $350 million. The core of the game is making customers feel like they are one of their own. Entered a small circle. She will be more willing to share her privileges with others. Just like best friends say "don't tell others", this kind of news spreads the fastest. Scarcity and exclusivity are at the core of this strategy. This right allows members to feel a sense of belonging.

4. Mobilize people’s achievement motivation

Why do volunteers sometimes work harder than paid employees? Because money corrodes personal motivation for achievement. This is why there are many volunteer moderators and event organizers online. Give them morals, not money.

Without any financial incentives, everyone talks about 60 brands every day. But why are some brands talked about and not others? How to use some stimulation to instantly activate people's memory and make them think of brand-related content. This kind of stimulation is the so-called inducement. Incentives stimulate word-of-mouth communication behavior and trigger subsequent behavior after a certain stimulus.

Why do people like to talk about certain products more?

Because these products make people feel novel and interesting, advertisers often work hard to design shocking and surprising advertisements to get people talking. But is this really the case?

Jonah Berger and his colleagues conducted a large number of experimental studies and came to a depressing conclusion: the level of interest, novelty, and stimulation has no relationship with the number of times people talk about a product.

So what factors promote word-of-mouth communication behavior? ? What types of word-of-mouth communication are divided into?

Word-of-mouth communication includes:

1. Temporary word-of-mouth communication

It occurs when people are new to something, and people will simply publicize the details of the thing. Experience, research proves that movies and interesting and novel products can only generate temporary word-of-mouth communication. New and interesting products will get more temporary word-of-mouth than boring products.

2. Continuous word-of-mouth communication

This type of word-of-mouth communication will continue for a long period of time, at least a few weeks, sometimes months or even longer. What caused it?

How to induce people’s emotional behavior?

1. Frequency of product use: The more frequently a product is used, the more likely it is to arouse people’s discussion. So it’s a good strategy to associate your product with something that people often mention. For example, your product is related to gutter oil, smog, college entrance examination, etc.

2. Easy-to-understand thoughts and opinions: The study found that when French music was played in the supermarket, most people bought French red wine; and when the music was changed to German music, most people bought French red wine. German wine.

3. Surrounding environment stimulation: Printing the initiative to eat vegetables on the dinner plate is much more effective than putting up a banner outside the canteen, because this incentive is the most direct at the moment of eating. of. A very difficult song is popular on the Internet, just because its name is "Friday", and people's demand rate is particularly high on Friday.

The work of the word-of-mouth agency

The word-of-mouth agency will look for suitable spokespersons on its network and invite them to join the promotion. These agents set up a public email address to receive relevant product information, trial items and coupons. In the case of electronic toothbrushes, they receive a free toothbrush and a $50 discount coupon to provide more toothbrushes to others. These agents span a wide range and can be qualified by people of all ages, incomes and occupations. After a few months, the word-of-mouth agency will record the details of the conversations between participants promoting their products. The agency does not need to pay any fees to participants. Participants get early access to new products without any sales pressure. The key question is, can people spontaneously bring up new products in ordinary conversations?

People have to talk, and having nothing to say during small talk can be stressful. As long as the topic is easy to understand and relevant to everyone's daily life, everyone will be happy to talk about it. Inducing a product more frequently can increase word-of-mouth behavior by at least 15%. This is how popular LocknLock is. So instead of looking for attention-grabbing topics, consider the context in which they circulate. A powerful inducement will be more effective than a catchy slogan. The slogan of the Government Employees Insurance Company of America is "You don't have to be a primitive to buy Government Employees Insurance." This sentence is very powerful, but there is no inducement. So it's rarely talked about. On the contrary, Budweiser's "wassup" became popular all over the world. Because young people will say this when they meet to drink. Coca-Cola has a lot of fashionable slang printed on its cans, and that’s what it means.

Sometimes negative reviews or bad reputation can also increase product sales. Huang Xi, Wu Mochou, JD.com and Milk Tea Girl are all such cases.

Sometimes you're lucky and have a natural trigger: Mars chocolate bars are associated with Mars because they have the same name as the natural object on Mars, whenever people think or talk about NASA's successful landing program , you will unconsciously think of Mars chocolate bars. People who sell air purifiers have natural incentives in Beijing. But when you are not so lucky, you have to learn to create artificial incentives. Kit Kat Chocolate found through research that people often eat chocolate when they need to take a break, and most often it is accompanied by a cup of coffee. So, they created a series of advertisements "Look for coffee with Kit Kat chocolate, or look for Kit Kat with coffee." Through advertisements, people will want a piece of Kit Kat chocolate when they think of coffee, which is a common thing. This is human inducement.

Note: It is also a clever strategy to allow your competitors to become incentives for your brand. This is also known as the toxic parasite strategy. Like what Pepsi did to Coca-Cola.

How to create effective incentives?

1. The most important thing is activation frequency

That is, how often a stimulus can appear in people's daily lives. The combination of KitKat and coffee; the combination of Red Bull and energy; the combination of pulsation and absence of state; the combination of Sprite and spicy; the combination of Jiaduobao and getting angry; the combination of iPhone and kidney...

2. The coordination between stimulus frequency and stimulus intensity

If you connect a product or an idea with too many things, it will lead to unclear memory. Red represents too many things to induce anything more now.

3. The connection between the place where the inducement occurs and the time when the customer’s consumption behavior occurs

It is best to show consumption scenes in advertisements, otherwise everyone will forget it.

Research has proven that contagious content can often stimulate people's immediate emotions, and things that trigger emotions can often be talked about by everyone, so we need to stimulate people's desire to share through some emotional events.

Jonah Berger analyzed the most popular email links on the Internet and concluded that more interesting articles have 25 more popularity points than boring articles, and relatively useful articles have 25 more popularity points than useless articles. More than 30 popular points. But that's not all.

The reasons for the popularity of a large number of scientific articles are not in this category. Why is this so?

The progressive innovation or continuous journey of discovery and exploration in scientific articles can inspire a special emotion in readers, which is awe. Awe can inspire hedonic behavior by shocking and moving people, but not all emotions can inspire hedonic behavior. We sometimes repost some natural wonders out of awe, and our admiration for Aunt Susan also comes from awe of humanity.

Psychologists have divided the emotional dimensions into two dimensions. In addition to the original positive emotions and negative emotions, they also add the dimension of motivation or physiological arousal. As shown in the following table:

Some positive information is easy to be forwarded by people, but sometimes negative information can also become a hot topic. For example, make a complaint against a large company. So positivity and negativity alone cannot determine whether a message is easy to spread. Psychologists discovered the concept of arousal.

Holy Fire Fuel: The Science of Physiological Arousal

Physiological arousal: is the state of being activated and ready for action. It can help the brain activate human physiological functions, mobilize its various organs and respond in time when encountering danger. The feeling that you are eager to do something is called arousal. But not all emotions have an arousal effect, and some emotions even have the opposite effect of inhibiting behavior. For example, the emotion of satisfaction can easily paralyze people's ability to act. After losing a pet, you will not want to do anything. This is low arousal.

How to effectively use emotions to stimulate people's *enjoyment behavior

1. Focus on emotions: Canadian singer Dave's $3,500 checked guitar was dropped while flying on American Airlines. After experiencing the hopelessness of claiming compensation, he wrote his anger into a song called "American Airlines Ruined My Guitar" and filmed it on MTV.

Within one day, it received 3 million clicks and 14,000 comments. Four days after the video was released, American Airlines’ stock price fell by 10%, resulting in a direct loss of US$180 million. In 2009, Time magazine listed the song as a top ten hit. This is the power of emotion.

2. Ignite the fire of high-arousal emotions: BMW's advertisement "The Hire" successfully used negative emotions to ignite the fire of communication. In the film, it reversed the feeling of sunny and broad roads in the past, and instead placed BMW in a Gunfights, kidnappings, coups, organ transportation, and other dangerous and even dark environments triggered a large number of reposts.

Note: When using emotions to stimulate enjoying behavior, you must also be prepared in advance and be careful of the vicious spread of bad emotions or word-of-mouth. (For example, the current situation of Lanxiang Technical School)

3. Wharton School asked some students to sit quietly on chairs for a while and asked other students to jog for one minute. Then give them the same information and ask them if they would like to share it with a friend. As a result, 75% of the people in the jogging group were willing to share, which was double that of the sitting group! Physical arousal can also encourage sharing, so find ways to get your customers moving.

Jobs discovered that the previous Apple logo only considered the user's visual experience, and when the laptop was opened, the Apple logo seen by the person sitting opposite was the other way around. This was something Jobs couldn't stand. Because Jobs valued public visibility above all else, Jobs knew that people would observe what others were doing at any time and imitate it. So, by making certain things more observable, you can make them better imitable.

Reasons for imitation

1. Others can provide us with corresponding reference information

We like to see what the next table ordered and buy hot-selling items. , even watching a movie will make you laugh because the people next to you laugh.

2. It has the effect of social proof

(Everyone else does it, so I should do it to prove that I am not an outlier in society) This is why the longer the queue The reason why more people line up in the restaurant.

The power of visibility

1. Visibility plays a vital role in whether products and ideas are popular. Why do most people not like drinking, but they often drink at dinner parties? Because the act of drinking and having fun is visible, but the thought of being against drinking is invisible. You don’t know what brand of toothpaste your neighbor uses, but you can clearly see the brand of the car he drives. Your neighbor’s car buying behavior actually affects your purchasing decision; after investigating the sales records of 15 million cars , Professor Jonah Berger concluded that nearly one-eighth of car sales are affected by social influences like neighbors.

2. Make hidden products public. A group of boys decided to grow beards in order to call attention to men's facial health. More and more people joined in, making people see the hidden product of men's facial health. Pink ribbon represents breast cancer awareness. These are all ways to make concealed products public. In the same way, it’s easier to discuss a famous painting hanging on the wall than something locked in a safe.

3. Advertising yourself in the product is also a visual method. When you use your iPhone to send a WeChat message, there will be text sent from your iPhone at the end. This is advertising for yourself. This trick is very effective in making your product visible. Eggs can even have advertising slogans printed on them.

4. Create behavioral surplus. What will people do after consuming the product, and whether it can have further impact on the surrounding customers. This is called behavioral residual. Nike released a yellow wristband with Armstrong as its core theme. Yellow is the symbol of the Tour de France and is particularly eye-catching. Within six months, Nike sold all 5 million wristbands, and demand exceeded supply, causing the price on eBay to increase tenfold. In the end, Nike sold 85 million wristbands. The biggest advantage of wristbands compared to holding a competition is that they can create more behavioral surplus. Sometimes a beautiful packaging bag or gift can inspire behavioral surplus.

Counter-example of public *** visibility application

The anti-drug advertisement shot by Nancy Reagan was disseminated on a large scale in the hope that people who watched it would not take drugs. But research shows the ad drove more teens to take drugs. Because it makes the behavior of drug abuse visible, which seems to be a common imagination nowadays. So if you don't want to see more bad behavior happen, don't highlight these bad behaviors to people. For example, there is no harm without buying and selling, which will lead to more people trying to hunt. This advertisement is just to make it more convenient to raise funds. Another example is the frequent reports of missing female college students, which will lead to more missing female college students. These are all visual results.

People have a tendency to help each other. In the past, we helped our neighbors build houses, but now we don’t, so we need to provide more useful information to our friends.

Save a few bucks

A barbecue grill, originally priced at $350, is now on sale for $250. The same barbecue grill at another store, originally priced at $255, is now on sale for $240. Which one would you buy? 75 people chose the first one. This is the bounded rationality principle of Kahneman, the 2002 Nobel Prize winner in economics. People do not evaluate things absolutely according to economic principles, but according to comparative principles. The reason why old people seem to be stingier than us is because their price reference point is still the same as 30 years ago. TV shopping often says that there is no need for 998, no need for 698, only 188... This is the technique of constantly using price reference points to influence you.

Increasing the value of surprise will make people more willing to talk about you

1. Exceed people’s expectations: The information provided by the promoter is more likely to be used by people when it exceeds people’s expectations* **Enjoy.

2. Put some restrictions on enforceability: If time limits or frequency restrictions are added, the sales of certain products will appear more attractive. For example: membership days, limited time discounts, limited purchase of one item, etc.

3.100 rule: The product price uses 100 US dollars as the dividing point. When the price is lower than 100 US dollars, "" is used to display the price discount; when the price is higher than 100 US dollars, an absolute amount discount is used to display the price discount. In addition, promotional products The practical value should be more easily seen by consumers, such as the amount of discounts enjoyed, how much money has been saved, how many points have been added, etc.

Beyond Money

In addition to sharing information about discounts, you can also ask customers to share various practical information. For example: knowledge about the use of isolation cream; 5 ways to lose weight; 10 ways to celebrate the New Year. A cosmetics manufacturer offers its customers a useful app that not only provides local weather forecasts but also provides professional weather-based skin care strategies.

Sometimes unconventional news can become viral content. For example, the post that vaccines cause autism caused childhood vaccine sales to plummet. It was later proven that this was a pseudoscientific article.

It is not difficult to find out the use value of a product. Can it make people healthier? Can it help people save money? Can it bring people more happiness? Will it save people time? …

We need to package our knowledge and expertise so that people can get to know us through this information. We need to make the usefulness of our products clearer to customers so that people are willing to spread the word.

Stories circulating in human blood

1. Stories are the most primitive form of entertainment. The Trojan Horse is more famous than any historical work because it is a good story.

2. Plot narrative is essentially more vivid than basic facts, and contains the emotions of the narrator and the listener.

3. Social currency and practical value may be the reasons for telling stories. Storytelling is sometimes done out of social needs, and sometimes it is also about using stories to convey useful information to the listener.

4. Most business information is embedded in the story.

(Placement Advertising)

5. Stories can convey ideas, lessons, fables, messages or conclusions.

The role of stories

1. Stories are important resources that can help us understand the cultural consciousness of the world. That is, understanding the basic norms and norms of a group or a society.

2. Stories can quickly and easily provide people with a large amount of business information. (Use of brand stories)

3. Stories can be seen as proof of analogy with other products. (I will carefully consider the recommendations of friends and family before deciding to buy)

4. Compared with advertising, people rarely reject stories. The story is more interesting and the purpose of persuasion and propaganda is less obvious.

Create a Trojan horse

That is to create a carrier that allows people to continue to talk, and then allows people to continue to talk about our products, ideas and behaviors. (Event Marketing)

How to make communication more valuable?

1. Get rid of the misunderstandings in word-of-mouth communication execution: Businessmen often focus on how to get people to talk about it, while ignoring what they most want people to talk about.

2. Integrate brand or product benefits with stories. Create a brand story and build brand value.

3. Grasp the key story details and make them clear and detailed.

?Social influence relies on oral communication, and oral communication needs to have strong appeal to achieve the effect of going viral. Jonah Berger, the author of this book, has summarized the above communication through a large number of experimental demonstrations. Six principles of contagion: social currency, incentives, emotions, fairness, practical value and stories. I hope it will be helpful to you in the future when operating your own products, ideas, communities, etc.