Hey Abdul,
Happy holidays! I’m following up on our chat about prioritizing launching the product in some form to gain feedback and traction instead of more fundraising.
On our call, I mentioned that I had just read Jonah Berger’s Contagious, and some lessons may inform your product marketing strategy. He is the Marketing Professor at the Wharton School of Business that we discussed. I should check if he teaches an undergrad class at UPenn like other UPenn professors whose books I’ve read, Adam Grant (Think Again, Originals) and Angela Duckworth (Grit).
I understand that Dot offers a simplified banking experience for African students offering direct payments to hundreds of thousands of merchants, transfers between students, and other personal finance management services. Where I’m unsure, I’ll make assumptions since you’ll apply these six principles of virality how you see fit anyways, and your marketing concerns are not immediate.
I hope this is a resource you can return to when crafting or revising your marketing strategy.
#1 Social Currency
Prof Berger explains, “People prefer sharing things that make them seem entertaining rather than boring, clever rather than dumb, and hip rather than dull.”
A well-known example is the frequent flyer miles programs that many airlines have to upgrade your class. What you don’t know is that many people don’t even cash in the points they accrue, and some, like Prof. Berger, even admit to taking longer flights with more stopovers just to get those mile points.
Dot can apply one of the three ways of minting social currency: make people feel like insiders. As part of the personal finance education service, Dot users may join a community or group to learn more finance tips. When members share the value they get from this exclusive group, they are likely to mention Dot.
The other two ways are leveraging game mechanics and finding inner remarkability. The frequent flyer miles program is an application of game mechanics. An example of Inner remarkability was a campaign by Snapple, the beverage company, where interesting facts were written under the bottle cap.
When you read a fact like “the average person spends 2 weeks of their life waiting for traffic lights to change," you’re inclined to share it, along with where you found it – a Snapple bottle cap.
#2 Triggers
Triggers are like little environmental reminders for related concepts and ideas. When I see my water bottle, I don’t think of plastic; instead, I question if I’ve had enough water.
You can grow your idea or product by creating new links to existing stimuli in the environment. By coincidence, when the whole world watched NASA’s pathfinder mission to collect samples from Mars, it caused an uptick in sales of Mars candy bars.
To apply the links deliberately and not by coincidence, Berger recommends picking triggers that happen where the desired behavior is taking place. For Dot, that might mean at the point of sale where the user pays with Dot. Is there some way to nudge the user to introduce Dot in the conversation with a friend?
#3 Emotion
This chapter has some insights, but I didn’t find them too practical. I didn’t know that Awe is the dominant emotion determining whether something is shared. If it makes you go ‘wow,’ you’ll want to share with someone.
Additionally, emotions that arouse action increase the likelihood of sharing. This means that while more positive emotions are more likely to be shared (I got a job!), some negative ones are powerful, like anger, because they carry a message about taking action or changing behavior.
A movie about only peace and balance feels good but doesn’t evoke awe or action and is, therefore, not in theatres.
#4 Public visibility
Public visibility boosts word of mouth.
Prof. Berger tells a story of how he observed some of his MBA students starting to grow funny-looking mustaches towards the end of the fall semester in November. The students grew mustaches as part of the worldwide Movember movement to raise awareness and money for men’s health issues.
The movement was successful because it took something private, support for an abstract cause, and made it public. Similarly, “I voted” tags do the same thing making your private actions of voting public knowledge.
With Dot, the question I see is how to differentiate a Dot user in a casually observable way. A unique sound that plays for Dot transactions at a POS sounds unfeasible. Credit card companies have all sorts of alluring designs for their cards, but I don’t know what this might be for Dot. Your understanding of the customer and product may give you more ideas.
Also from this chapter: “When we see a public behavior, we assume there are more people doing it.”
#5 Practical Value
Even with practical in the name, I didn’t find this chapter especially applicable, and the author admits this. The idea is we like to get things for a lower price or more quantity for the same price. The more pronounced this effect, the bigger the ‘wow’, and the more likely it will be shared.
Prof. Berger teaches the rule of 100 to guide price discounting decisions.
If the product price is smaller than 100, use the percentage. If larger, use the absolute savings amount.
Getting %20 off an $80 product sounds like a better deal than $16 off
Getting $50 off a $250 product sounds like a better deal than 20% off
#6 Stories
This chapter includes the story of the author’s cousin from the Bay area who moved to the east coast for work, bought his first winter coat, busted a zipper in the middle of Boston winter, but had a remarkable free replacement from Land’s End.
Stories are powerful for many reasons in general, and in marketing specifically. They work so well because they encode information in a familiar way. From that brief story, you know unique coats are needed for east vs. west coast winters, Land’s End makes them, and Land’s end has excellent customer service.
There were no specific rules for crafting a compelling story around your business and product. The general guides for good stories work as long as you ensure your product or business is embedded in the story.
Here’s the post I wrote on How to tell a great story.
This was long for an email, but I hope this book summary helped and you can return to it for broad marketing ideas. In summary, Dot can establish a personal finance community to increase social currency, improve the public visibility of using Dot at a POS, or perhaps provide deals, discounts, or benefits to get users talking and sharing.
Of course, each option has a cost, so make sure the marketing need outweighs whatever it costs to create that virality.
Always happy to help with any questions you have.
All the best,
Ayotomiwa
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A really good read 🤝🏾