7 viral marketing tactics for mobile internet services

Viral distribution has been key to growing online web services as it provides a very low user-acquisition cost.  Without viral distribution PC-based online services like facebook would never have been able to grow to the level that they have without huge investment in marketing.  One of the big problems mobile internet applications and sites have had historically is that it has been difficult get any viral mechanisms working.  At the same time, search is not yet an effective channel for driving large volumes of traffic on mobile.  As a result, most mobile sites and applications are forced to invest heavily in PPC advertising on mobile ad networks like admob in order to build a user-base. 

However, it is no longer the case that viral marketing doesn't work on mobile.  There is a lot of innovation happening in this area from both mobile startups and big mainstream companies so here are 7 ways you can drive viral growth for your mobile site or application.

1. Link to contacts/ address book

Linking into your email address book/ contact list has been the key way that sites like Bebo and Facebook and others have grown traffic and users virally.  Until recently, this hasn't been something that mobile social networks have used (or any other types of mobile sites for that matter).  However, this is no longer true - Heysan, a mobile messaging service and mobile chat community have developed a fantastic mobile implementation of this feature - check it out in the mobile screenshot below:

This functionality is not without its critics - whenever we cover Heysan people complain that they are "spamming" using this feature.  However, without out it, we would never have achieved critical mass in services like facebook.  Heysan also follow good practices like asking permission before using your address book in this way.  Plus - the traffic that Heysan is building says it all - amazing growth to 100m page views a month and 600k users.

2. Integrate with Facebook

Another viral mechanism that the web guys have been using recently is integrating with Facebook, mainly through developing a facebook application which can be promoted within the newsfeeds or through mass invites.  Again, this isn't something mobile services have made much use of - until now!  Locle - a fantastic Irish mobile LBS startup has managed to integrate its service with the facebook mobile extension of the developer platform - allowing them to promote their mobile app and site through the social network.  This is the first time I've seen anyone doing this on mobile and it's potentially incredibly powerful. 

3. Twitter blasting

Twitter is a great fit with mobile as a lot of users are mobile savvy and people often get twitter messages fed to them via mobile either through SMS or mobile web on m.twitter.com or a third party client like m.slandr.net or dabr.co.uk.  Twitter have made it easy for mobile sites to be shared over their network through their API - you can easily create a form on your mobile site to allow a user to login to twitter and share the site to their followers. 

 

A slightly more complex version of this is an auto-ping using twitter where twitter is automatically blasted when you use the service.  The best example of this is Qik which sends out a customized message to your twitter followers when you start streaming.

  

4. 'Tell a friend' - via SMS

SMS is the obvious viral channel for mobile, as unlike email, 99.9% of people have it right on their phone, and you can click straight through from an SMS to a mobile internet site or to a download.  Some mobile sites like mippin, have experimented with providing users with free SMS to tell friends with - but they found that some users were abusing the feature as a way of sending free SMS ! However, if the user is willing to pay to send the text (not unrealistic if they are on a text bundle - or feeling generous) it is quite easy to enable someone to text their friends about a mobile site. 

You just use the following XHTML code to automatically create an SMS with your URL and message filled in when the users clicks on it:

<a href="sms:?body=Check out the X at http://m.domain.com"> <b> Sharethis site</b></a>

See the screenshot below - which was fired up through a text link on the taptu (mobile search startup) home page:

 

5. IM status 'hijacking'

This is quite a neat trick being used by some of the messaging aggregators including Fring. When a user signs into its mobile instant messaging platform it changes your status message to include its URL e.g. "on mobile by www.fring.com" - see below - a great way of giving a mobile app visibility to anyone logged into a messaging service. 

6. message footers

Message footers were one of the original viral tactics used most famously to help spread hotmail, which attached a link back to hotmail at the bottom of all messages sent using the email system. This tactic is already being used on mobile pretty extensively - for example all Blackberry's typically attach a footer to the email sent with them like this:

 

Google also does something similar with messages sent via the google mail application:

 

Obviously this only works for apps with a messaging system or email of some kind.  However, people like igloo.mobi are offering a free mobile email service bolted on to their other services like a directory, chat sites, site builders and so on.  So - it might be possible for more types of mobile sites to use this approach.

7. Adding a URL to content downloads

Last but not least, here's a trick we use at mjelly.com.  When someone downloads a ringtone from the site the mjelly.com URL is added to the file name (e.g. mjelly.com - doorbell.mp3 click on the link here to see the example http://mjelly.com/track/download/3295-Dingdong-Doorbell .  This means that anyone that bluetooths the mp3 file to a friend will help to spread the word about mjelly.  We get a lot of searches for mjelly.com on the site so this seems to work quite well!

Conclusions

If mobile services are to really take-off and achieve mass market traction we need to get viral distribution mechanisms working.  To date, it has been assumed that it is hard for mobile to do this, but this is no longer the case.  If you run a mobile site or application then think about if any of the approaches above can work for you!

If you have any other ideas for viral marketing of mobile services then please leave them in the comments and we'll add them with a link back to you. 

Related posts:

12 ways to promote your mobile site

Comments

[orange county pay per click]

The Mobile Web refers to the access to the World Wide Web using a mobile device such as cellphones, PDAs, and other portable gadgets connected to a public network. Such access does not require a desktop computer, nor a fixed landline connection.
Services on the Mobile Web can include capabilities that do not exist on the traditional Internet, such as SMS text messaging.
However, Mobile Web access today still suffers from interoperability and usability problems. This is partly due to the incompatibility of the format of much of the information available on the Internet with mobile devices and partly due to the small physical size of the screens of mobile devices and other device limitations.

-faith-

[Create youtube videos]

Some of this tactics can be used online promoting your website. Great share btw.

[Viral Marketing Agency]

Wow what a great list!! I will definitely try many of those you mentioned. Thank you!

[Jeff Paul Big League Players Club]

Hi, Great post! I felt great reading your blog post. I’m working with my friend in a small internet marketing business as a web developer. When I’m free I go around for some IT info

[SEO]

Excellent post.Truly impressed with the knowledge you are posting here.Thanks!!

[sykoz]

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